I need to get a laptop and it would be nice if it could play some games. I’m not looking for a killer laptop, but if it can play some of my older games that would be a nice bonus. Games like etqw, l4d, portal etc. I haven’t been up on the video card front either on the desktop or mobile chipsets, but it seems on the mobile front amd has taken a great lead in price/performance. My concern there is amd(ati) always had crap opengl drivers. Like all the amd users complaining when brink/rage came out. It’s because next to no games use opengl anymore and they don’t notice their poorly written opengl drivers.
Ignoring why amd can never write a good opengl driver, I’m wondering or hoping it may not be the case with etqw as it’s an old game and maybe amd incorporated some fixes for this particular game awhile back.
I’m also considering a laptop with an intel hd graphics 3000 which seems to have respectable benchmarks, but I have no clue how it’s opengl performance is or with etqw. I also noticed a laptop with 2 graphics chipsets. It has AMD Radeon HD 6620G + 7690M Dual Graphics but I read someone posted with opengl it uses the integrated graphics only which is the 6620 and that would seem to have poor benchmarks. Not sure if this poster is correct or there is a way to force opengl to use the more powerful chipset (which would only make sense but again this is amd drivers…)
So I’m looking to spend 500-600 (canadian) tops. Not laying out a grand for a laptop right now. In the current climate it seems nvidia’s offerings aren’t too good so it would be shame to ensure the laptop as nvidia just to get good opengl performance.
