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Question on GPU performance

M

mikeymop

n00b
Joined
Sep 2, 2012
Messages
10
So I currently have a Sony Vaio VGN-FW490j under the hood it has:
3.6ghz Centrino 2 (Core 2 Duo architecture)
Mobility Radeon 4650
4gb RAM

I dont recall the mobo chipset but its moot point. I was planning on selling my laptop for 500$ to a familiy member to pay the difference for the one.
I've had my eye on the Lenovo u410, I prefer the Series 9 however it's pricy for a student. Since I was compromising for the price I was thinking, I can get more bang for my buck and get the u410 with the dedicated GPU and have a few casual games on the go and that nice aluminum construction. Plus it's so much more portable and can last more than 40minutes off the plug thanks to Nvidia's Optimus.

The u410 has:
i5 Dual core (base config)
Nvidia 610m
and a good amount of ram.

Now my question is: Is the 610m more powerful than the DX10 card in my current lapptop? Or am I downgrading?
I saw it can handle Borderlands 2 on at least the minimum settings, does anyone know how far the u410 can push the game? I'm not too concerned with maxing it as I have a real gaming rig at home, however I would want at least a decent experience playing BL2, BF3, TF2, etc when I'm on the go. And does anyone know how servicable the laptop is? I'd much rather skimp on the RAM/HDD and upgrade it on my own down the line. I'm guessing the four rubber feet cover the screws used to pry the thing open.

If anyone has the 610m in their machine, or the same notebok I'd love to hear about your experience with them. And if anyone knows a decent looking ultrabook in the same range (i was looking at the series 5 however that's stuck with integrated) I'm open to suggestions. The aluminum contruction is important to me, as are looks since this isn't my primary gamer. What does [H]ard Forums think?
 
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Neither of those will handle BF3.

You really shouldn't be buying an Ultrabook if you're planning on doing any sort of gaming. The processor has a low TDP and lower performance, the GPU's are generally very weak and won't handle BF3. The Acer with a Kepler 640m LE is the only exception here, but even that suffers from throttling.

Until Haswell gets here, you're not going to see any respectable gaming performance from Ultrabooks. The current stock resembles more of a fancy netbook than a gaming capable notebook
 
I just watched a FRAPS recording of the 610m playing at the 13kx769 naitive res on high 0xAA 0xAI filtering. It was acceptable enough for me, is BF3 more taxing of a game than BL2? I heard BL2 was more CPU heavy than expected.

How do you think Haswell will hold up compared to the Trinity APU's which IMO have a respectable GPU for the price. And yea, I understand that. Any games I loaded up onto the machine would be for shitsngiggles.

Do you know how the 610m stacks up against the Radeon 4650m? If it's an upgrade across the board I dont really care if it can't handle any games as the battery life and portability are more important to me.
 
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The 610m is just a rebranded 520m Fermi chip. It's only as good as the on-die HD4000.

Here's the 4650m
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4650.13883.0.html

Here's the 610m
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-610M.63759.0.html

They both stink. You won't be able to get any sort of respectable gaming out of either of those, especially not for BF3.

Haswell should be a good bump over Ivy, though I doubt they'll get the 2x increase Intel claims. Haswell's GT3 will almost certainly be a very good on-die GPU capable of playing games pretty well. Even still, I'd be worried about drivers as Intel has a pretty horrendous reputation. It has gotten better, but there's still various issues in a whole slew of games that they haven't addressed now months after Ivy's release.

Battery life in Ultrabooks is also pretty shitty. Because of the thinner size they aren't able to fit larger batteries in there. As a result, your average 35W TDP processor laptop gets better battery life than your average Ultrabook with a 17W TDP chip while offering better performance. The U410 isn't particularly light either at over 4lbs.

I really wouldn't buy an Ultrabook right now. There are just too many things wrong with the platform that are going to be cleared up by next year that you'll really be kicking yourself for buying one now. If you do buy it, remember you'll have to deal with lower battery life, higher price, processor throttling, annoying fan noise, lack of upgradeability and all of that for thinness. Haswell's ULV chips are at 10W TDP and the 10W TDP chips offer the same graphics performance as the current 17W TDP ULV Ultrabook processors. Along with mSATA SSD standardization there's also battery standards that should help lower the price.

Ultrabooks do look nice, but if you're looking for something that will do any sort of respectable gaming and computing I'd look elsewhere.
 
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