Re: Graphics card for laptop: nVidia, ATI or Intel?

J.O. Aho wrote:
Jef Driesen wrote:
For my work, I'm looking for a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It will be used mainly as a mobile replacement of a desktop system for scientific research (image processing, programming,...). So it's not intended to be used for gaming. (I also want to be able to use the laptop for office and multimedia applications (playing DVD and other videos, pictures,...) at home, but that is not the primary task.)

Most of the laptops I found, have one of these graphics cards:

Intel GMA 950
nVidia GeForce Go 7300/7600
ATI Mobility Radeon X1300/X1400/X1600

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Grafic-Cards.130.0.html

Class 2: OK for newest games
ATi X1600
nVidia Go7600
Class 3: Ok for new games, but with low detail
ATi X1400
Class 4: Not current games
ATi X1300
nVidia Go7300
Class 5: Older games, ok
Intel GMA 950

Thanks for the link to that website for the comparison.

Dell also offers an nVidia Quadro NVS 110M/120M card, but I don't know anything about the (dis)advantages of this type of graphics cards.

Not sure about 110M/120M, but Dell has used 1500M which is of top class, as the numbers are lower, the 110M/120M may be something of a midrange, maybe something like the Go7300.

According to the above website, they are both class 4.

How do they perform, compared to each other? And how is there linux support?

Yes, and there are different levels of support.

OpenSource:
All of them works with VESA driver, part of Xorg.
The nv driver should support the G70 cards, but provides only 2D support.
Intel provides a driver at their homepage
The "radeon" and "i810" drivers that are part of Xorg don't support any of the cards listed by you.

That makes the intel card probably the best choice for use with an open source driver.

Closed source:
nVidia has a driver that supports all the current cards, this one can be downloaded from their homepage, requires kernel source installed.
ATi has a driver that supports most of their current cards, this one can be downloaded from their homepage.

How is the quality and performance of the ATI driver compared to the one from nVidia? I have used the nVidia drivers before (both windows and linux), but I never had an ATI card. A few years ago, when I bought my desktop system, the nVidia Linux drivers where no match for ATI (at least thats what I concluded from the information on the web). Has this changed in the meantime?
.

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