Is Intel® HD Graphics 3000 a good card?
 

I'm thinking about getting a new laptop, and I was wondering if Intel® HD Graphics 3000 is a good card. Will it run POTCO on it's highest settings and capabilities?

P.S I know nothing about this stuff :/

You'd probably run POTCO at medium just fine. Because your graphics card is going to be an Integrated card ( Meaning that it's placed on the CPU and shares memory with it ) it's not going to be a good card. If you can afford one, I'd recommend getting a dedicated graphics card, probably one from NVIDIA. If you can tell me your budget for the computer, I can see if I can recommend you something that might run POTCO much better.

Avoid intel graphics even if it says you get very good perfomence. Try to get an Nvidia and if that fails then try ATI

That Intel® HD Graphics 3000 chipset will struggle handling "Low" graphic settings on most applications.

Laptops are never good for gaming, but, read step 5 for a solution for that.

1) They overheat a lot on excellent graphic settings (High)

2) They usually have a processor-based onboard graphics chip that's trash for all games out in the market today

3) All Intel Intel® HD Graphics chips in general are cheap as ever and won't run today's demanding applications.

4) You'll always lag with this graphics chip on all games.

5) If you want a laptop to play games on, be sure it at least has an AMD or Nvidia-based Graphics Card already built into the machine.

AMD or Nvidia cards are dedicated components meant for graphic processing (Gaming, Video/Photo Editing, CAD design, Graphic Design, etc). These are the laptops you want. The ones that have these cards in them. Not Intel chipsets.

is mobile intel 4 series express chipset family worse than Intel® HD Graphics 3000?

Intel isn't known for making good graphics cards. They make good processors, but I wouldn't trust them for anything other than your processor.

For Graphics cards, you'll want an NVIDIA or ATI Radeon. Avoid anything that doesn't have that name on it.

Generally, a higher # series means greater improvements to the chipset's rendering and processing abilities.

So, yeah, a intel 4 series express chipset would perform slightly better than the 3000 series chipset.

However, I do not recommend either.

I suggest you keep looking for a laptop that has at least a dedicated graphics card installed in it, AMD or Nvidia, that way you won't have to worry about getting the worst performance play from games ever on your new laptop.

Intel chipsets share memory with the CPU for graphics processing. This will just put more load on the CPU and give you horrid gameplay frame rates. CPU is better for instructions that do not include display intense graphics and stuff.

Keep looking for a laptop with an AMD or Nvidia card in it.

I would listen to Ice_Storm, you wouldn't be very happy with that card. Go on Newegg and look at some Christmas deals. Nvidia/AMD cards are really the only good cards out there.

P.S. It would be very nice if we knew your budget though, I could give you a bunch of recommendations.

It's said upgrading laptops are not possible.

It is possible, but laptops aren't meant for expansion like desktop machines are.

So, make sure you just buy a laptop with either nvidia or amd graphics card in, and tell us the series and product family it is.

Well anything under $1000. I would like an i7 if possible.

intel i7 series processors are excellent in performance and should be paired up with a dedicated graphics card to see a performance gain in frame rate or play at least medium settings.

Tell me the laptops you were looking at, like post a link here that directs to the page so I can look at it.

I'm guessing you're buying in-store, so you can try it out before you buy it right?

I'm going to go for a computer. There better for gaming. I found one:


http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pav...lion&cp=1&lp=1

It has NVIDIA GeForce GT 520

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pav...lion&cp=1&lp=2

This is i7. But has AMD/ATI.

Here's what I make of this machine:

Processor Speed: 3.1 GHz with 6MB of cache (Hopefully that's for L3) - Great

Memory: 8GB (Over the recommended amount) - Great

Hard drive: 1TB at 7200 RPM (The standard) - Great

Wireless: b/g/n (N-wireless giving the most range and performance) - Great

Graphics card and slot: NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 - (This graphics cards meets the minimum requirements for most games)

Here's a list of some modern games that it'll run on:

List of games

---

PCI Express x1 - This part scares me. It means you will not be able to upgrade your graphics card to a dual-slot length type graphics card that would boast greater performance, quality and frame rate.

PCI Express x1 is an old expansion slot that was meant for small graphics cards that would draw power directly from the motherboard, not the power supply.

It means you'll only be able to upgrade to weak graphics cards in the future. If you want high quality gaming, you need at least one of the following on your motherboard available:

1) One PCI Express 2.0 x16 free expansion slot
2) One PCI Express 2.1 x16 free expansion slot

These slots allow the more powerful GPU's to run in your machine. Some cards boast the power of 2 graphics cards combined into 1.

Dual-slot length graphics cards. I have one and really can play max settings on pretty much anything (besides Pirates, because it has coding problems).

Since your tower doesn't offer either slots, you might have to deal with the weak performance down the road.

Hope this helps.

Well the links are broken but from what I just read, that is a good computer. and if you want to have two graphics cards work as one (SLI for Nvidia and its called something else for ATI cards) for better performance you will need two X16 slots but I don't run SLI and I am fine for the games I play. And is that NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 built in or is it an actual card?