RobertBruce

...and am thinking of getting one to replace my desktop 'main' computer. I don't know much about mobile gpu's. How do I go about beginning to compare them to 'full size' graphics cards? How often do they have current generation numbering on last generation innards? Is gaming on a laptop a logical fallacy? The best so far I've seen is nvidia GT540M...

Takaharu

What sort of games do you want to be playing and what budget are you looking at?
If your budget's under £2,000 for a laptop you may want to look at lesser graphics than the top-end.

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blibbax

If you want a high end gaming laptop, you may find that it's actually cheaper to get a equivalent desktop and a cheaper laptop than just the high end laptop.

Normally it's fairly easy to compare mobile parts to desktop versions by looking at bus widths etc.

I believe the best mobile GPU going right now is actually the GTX485m, with, un-coincidentally, the same bus width and CUDA core count as a fully unlocked GF104 (the chip in the GTX460), albeit with much lower clocks.

Of course, a GTX460 is a £100 part for desktops, but you most likely won't find its (inferior) mobile equivalent, the GTX485m, in laptops prices in three figures.

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ET3D

Gaming on a laptop is viable, but the high end is pretty expensive. Take a look at some reviews and see where these laptops fit with your vision. Here's one from Anandtech. The benchmarks include quite a few game capable laptops which should give you an idea of what performance you can get at different price ranges. To compare to desktop graphics cards read reviews of these cards from the same source. The only problem is that the benchmarks for laptops are typically done on their native resolution.

I agree with blibbax that a desktop is still the best solution for gaming, but if your demands aren't too high, a laptop will be fine.

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Neshi

as long as you dont crank up the games to their highest possible settings, a decent laptop can still play newer games.
Take a look at my specs <--- which can still play Shogun 2, Darksiders etc. etc. I tend to use the native res which stresses the system more, and put details on medium.

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BlueMak

Usually the mobile GPU equivelant of a desktop GPU is (in terms of performance) one generation behind and 1-3 models down.
So, for example with random names
If there is the desktop version of 15800 which is high end, then the similarly named mobile version will actually perform like a 14600.

Not 100% proof, but close enough, at least of the higher end solutions.

If a laptop is viable as a gaming platform solely depends on what games you want to play. If you are interested in always the latest games at high frame rate and full details on, then unless you need to buy a laptop, you are far better off with a desktop PC which will end up half the price, if not 1/3, with higher performance than a top laptop.

There is one detail though. Over the last couple of years, most games that would cause problems, are in one way or the other, clones/console versions. This among the bad thing it has, has one good thing for PC gaming. The requirements remain quite low. A good computer bought 3 years ago, should perform well enough for most games today. Something that in the past was not happening.

The other thing that you need to consider is this. With probably all of the gaming laptops, as soon as you start playing a heavy 3D game, the laptop gets noisy, very noisy. Levels of noise where you need to wear special headphones or play everything very loud, as to not hear the fan noise from the laptop. If you don't like noise like that and you want to play heavy games, go for a desktop. Which of course can be very loud too, but at least with a desktop PC you have the option to make it even completely silent if you so wish.

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