Notebook Video Cards

Knowing what graphics chip or video card to get with your notebook computer can save you money or avoid frustration if you were expecting to play games. Like desktops, notebooks offer a wide range of graphics solutions to cater to different budgets and performance levels, of course the fancier the graphics card or chip the higher the cost and power requirements.

Top mobile graphics solutions are not as fast as top of the line desktop graphics cards just yet, mainly because of the limited space for cooling setups and power restrictions when in battery mode.

Most notebooks come pre-configured with a certain certain line of video cards and in most cases can not be upgraded, it is just recently that a few notebook makers started offering upgradeable graphics as a feature.

List of common mobile video cards or chips found in current notebook computers:

ATI

Mobility Radeon 9800
Mobility Radeon 9700
Mobility Radeon 9600
Mobility Radeon 9200
Mobility Radeon 9000
Mobility Radeon 7500
Mobility FireGL T2

Nvidia

Geforce FX Go5700
Geforce FX Go5650
Geforce FX Go5600
Geforce FX Go5200
Geforce 4 4200 Go
Geforce 4 460/440/420 Go
Quadro FX Go1000
Quadro FX Go700

If you're not into 3D gaming or 3D graphics design then it should not matter what you get, most of today's integrated video and low end chipsets can handle 2D and multimedia viewing without any problems while video editing or working with photos are heavily dependent on the main processor.