graphics cards differences

[Tuvs]

Hi, Im considering buying an computer,and not sure which one to choose, 1 has a graphics card AMD Radeon HD 8750M and its a laptop the other is an tower with graphics card of AMD Radeon HD 7730 1GB GDDR5 can you help me which one is better or are there no real difference, talking about highend graphic games skyrim assassins...?

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Those two cards will perform about the same, as they both have 384 shader cores, but the desktop part has a slightly higher clock speed, and both are only entry level, which will allow you to play the game at low resolutions with details turned down.

Laptops are rarely upgradeable, but the tower system would be, although with a card like that, the system builder probably cut corners on other components. You may be looking at more than just upgrading the graphics card to play games the way you are expecting.

 

[electrontau]

Also remember that laptop CPU and GPU are designed to be low voltage since they need to lower the temperature. And low voltage will affect their performance, compared to desktop equivalent.

In general laptops are not ideal platform for games.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Those are both entry level cards. They have a narrow memory bus that is 128-bits in width, and 384 shader cores that are clocked considerably lower than more mainstream cards.

While you can certainly game with them, you will not have high frame rates, high resolutions, and high detail levels. Neither card is suitable in that respect.

The only differences between the two are the desktop card using GDDR5 while the laptop likely uses slower DDR3 memory from the installed RAM of the main system, and the desktop chip clocks 800 MHz while the laptop version is dynamically clocked between 620 MHz - 725Mhz, likely depending on how hot the chip is running.

 

[tazmo8448]

IMHO you'll get much better performance with a desktop and you'll be able to upgrade almost anything on a desktop. Though the laptop is portable and that may be the factor in your choosing, but once you buy it no matter the configuration you are generally stuck with what you have with no ability to change graphic cards as they are generally integrated into the mother boards where as with a desktop you can change at any time. You CAN swap out RAM and Hard Drives on a laptop. I bought a laptop to game on in 2010 and one deciding factor was limited space (bungalow) but as time went by realized that the 512 MB graphics weren't good enough and the only way to upgrade was to install another motherboard that had a 1 GB gfx (about 400 bucks) then I came to the conclusion that I really liked gaming and bit the bullet and got a full sized pc with a good cpu as a platform to build on and MADE room in my little place to accommodate it.

There are gaming laptops out there but they are extremely expensive and if portability is a deciding factor by all means go with the best gfx you can afford. There are work arounds with external gfx's thru an external pci-e slot but they are clunky and can get expensive as you need a seperate psu and other paraphernalia to get it to work.


Long story short I bought a laptop first then a year later went ahead and got the desktop for all the above reasons and reading the responses to your post those too. I only use the laptop when I'm on the road.