Graphics Cards for Notebooks

Get to know more about graphics cards for notebooks.

Graphics cards have become a very important component of notebooks. The need for more detailed graphics for gaming or multimedia applications has determined the leading graphics card manufacturers to come up with the most advanced and improved products. The consequence is that it has become very difficult to choose a graphics card from such great variety.

Tips and types of notebook graphic cards are discussed in the following points:

• Types of graphics cards for notebooks
• ATI HyperMemory or NVIDIA® TurboCache
• Types of graphic cards for desktops
• Memory of graphics cards
• Tips for using graphics cards

Types of graphics cards for notebooks

Irrespective of the type of notebook graphics card you choose, the best are those from NVIDIA® and ATI. Furthermore, there are integrated and dedicated graphics cards. Integrated GPU is integrated with the motherboard so it does not have its own memory (with the exception of ATI Radeon Xpress 200M). The great disadvantage in this case is that it uses the system memory or RAM, thereby lowering system performance.

A dedicated GPU doesn’t depend on the motherboard and has its own memory (odd variants like ATI HyperMemory and NVIDIA® TurboChache are the exceptions). This type of graphics card increases the quality of the game or multimedia applications but shortens the life of the battery.

ATI HyperMemory or NVIDIA® TurboCache

These pose another problem. These new technologies use the memory system as a buffer for graphics information, developing the memory of the dedicated GPU into a system. The advantages are an advanced and cheap performance. The disadvantage is that the memory of the system is slower than the memory of the dedicated GPU.

Here, the confusion is created by the specifications. For example, the Sony S-series come with NVIDIA® GeForce® Go6200s and it is specified that it has a video memory of 128MB. In fact, the graphic card has only 32MB because the rest is shared.

The graphic cards for desktops depend first of all on the type of interface of the motherboard – PCI, AGP, or PCI-E. Most of the computers have PCI slots, but this type of interface is slower than the others. The best thing would be to use AGP or PCI-E interfaces if your computer allows this.

The common graphics processors on a notebook have 32MB memory. Graphic cards memory starts from 64MB and can reach up to 512MB. So, it is very important to improve the memory of your notebook to get high-quality graphics.

Before you buy a graphics card check the features and capabilities of your notebook. You must not forget that you must choose a graphics card depending on which computer you use, a notebook or a desktop. You must take into account that a laptop memory space has certain limits. It is better to purchase a graphics card online. In this case, you can change it if it doesn’t match with your notebook’s characteristics.

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