Curse

Cherng Butter · Jul 30, 2008, 06:07 AM // 06:07

Thinking about getting a Macbook for college, finally caved in haha...anyway, was wondering if the integrated graphics was total shit and if it has any hope of running GW or...GW2 in the future? Since I'm pretty sure you can't upgrade a laptop...(yeah I really know nothing about PC's...)

Intel GMA 950 graphics, 64 MB shared

Thanks in advance!

Brianna · Jul 30, 2008, 07:47 AM // 07:47

That laptop will probably only be able to start Guild Wars, I'd be surprised if you could squeeze off 5-10 FPS on lowest settings.

It will be horrible for Guild Wars unfortunately, and the thought of it playing Guild Wars 2 is something like ''ROFLMFAO".

You can't really upgrade a laptop's hardware other than it's HDD, RAM, and Battery to my knowledge, adding new video hardware is definitely a no, not possible to upgrade that without buying a new laptop.

So to answer your question in short: Yes the integrated graphics is total shit, it's steaming in fact.

I'd say make a different choice, even the Intel GMA X3100 will still suck for games, and that's the current standard in Integrated graphics for laptops. Go for a laptop with any kind of dedicated Nvidia or ATI graphics card and you will have much more hope for games.

Here's some technical babble from wiki on it:

Quote:

GMA 950

The GMA 950 is Intel's second-generation Graphics Media Accelerator graphics core, which was also referred by Intel as 'Gen 3.5 Integrated Graphics Engine' in datasheets. It is used in the Intel 940GML, 945G, 945GU and 945GT system chipsets. The amount of video-decoding hardware has increased; VLD, iDCT, and dual video overlay windows are now handled in hardware. The maximum core clock is up to 400 MHz (on Intel 945G, 945GC, 945GZ), boosting pixel fill-rate to a theoretical 1600 megapixels/s.

The GMA 950 shares the same architectural weakness as the GMA 900: no hardware geometry processing. Neither basic (DX7) hardware transform and lighting,[2] nor more advanced vertex shaders (DX8 and later) are handled in the GMA hardware.

It was released sometime in 2005 or earlier, was it not? Some information seems vague, but at any rate it has been around since 2005 at least, when Guild Wars was released as well. Imagine how shitty integrated graphics is - then being as old as Guild Wars, anyway I'll stop beating on this lol.

Elder III · Jul 30, 2008, 02:40 PM // 14:40

I actually played GW with a GMA 900 when I first started..... it wasn't much fun. It worked on lower settings, but certain areas I could not even load, let alone play. So, I highly suggest you go a different route. As a rule - Integrated Graphics Suxorz for Gaming. You can something like a Geforce 7600 or even older for real cheap nowadays and that will play GW on MAX with 0 problems and ought to handle GW2 at a decent rate (playable at least). :d

Cherng Butter · Aug 01, 2008, 02:52 AM // 02:52

Alright thanks, how about this one?

nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M

Elder III · Aug 01, 2008, 05:34 AM // 05:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cherng Butter

Alright thanks, how about this one?

nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M

That video card should handle GW well enough. Remember it has shared memory though, so you will want minimum 2 GB on Vista and at least 1 GB on XP. I don't know if you will be able to play GW on the highest settings with that card, but it should be a pleasant experience in any case.

cgruber · Aug 11, 2008, 12:12 AM // 00:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cherng Butter

Thinking about getting a Macbook for college, finally caved in haha...anyway, was wondering if the integrated graphics was total shit and if it has any hope of running GW or...GW2 in the future? Since I'm pretty sure you can't upgrade a laptop...(yeah I really know nothing about PC's...)

Intel GMA 950 graphics, 64 MB shared

Thanks in advance!

I've played GW on a macbook. It was playable although it's more like a desperation sorta thing. I've since upgraded to a macbook pro which gives a desktop experience.

Flightmare · Aug 11, 2008, 02:10 AM // 02:10

Stolen from benchmarking site:

Quote:

3DMark 05in comparison
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 900 (min) - 234
...
ATI Mobility Radeon 9800 - 2800
NVIDIA GeForce Go 6600 - 2800
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400 - 2819
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M - 2943
ATI Radeon HD 3200 - 3064
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT - 3091
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 - 3241
...
NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX SLI (max) - 17230

those numbers are the 3D Mark 05 score, higher is better.
Just to give some sort of comparison.