What's the difference between a laptop gpu and a desktop gpu?

[ClickerBoy]

Hey guys, I own an acer laptop that I game quite frequently on (mostly LOL and CS:GO apart from the occasional graphics-focused game) and this laptop came with a default intel HD graphics card and I was hoping to find out a little more about this graphics card. I heard intel HD graphics cards are horrible for gaming so I'm considering getting a new graphics card that could let me play my games without the lag and at better quality than ultra low but if there's one thing I know about graphics cards, it's that they're expensive, and I don't want to spend all that money on something that's no better than the one I've got. So basically, I wanted to know a few things about graphics cards so I can make a better choice while buying. I want to know what the difference is between a laptop gpu and a desktop gpu, I want to know what graphics cards would be considered modern and could run most games at a good frame rate and at least medium graphics settings, I want to know how good my intel HD graphics card is and I want to know what all of the parts of the name of a graphics card mean (eg, AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz) so I don't choose a low end graphics card by mistake. Thanks in advance

 

[Fuseymore]

Intel HD graphics is not a graphics card, it's the graphics built in with the cpu.

Desktop graphics card are way way larger
Obviously and perform better because they are able to get hotter since you can cool them easier in a case

You cannot add a graphics card to a laptop that wasn't made to have one as there probably isn't a slot for it, also it would consume too much power

 

[Denzor]

You can't upgrade graphics card on almost every laptop ever made. Intel HD Graphics is an integrated graphics processor in your CPU, that means it's built in your CPU. So in your case, there is no way to upgrade.

I'll give you a brief introduction to desktop GPU's:

There's 2 different board manufacturers: Nvidia and AMD. The most current GPU lineup on the market from Nvidia is the GTX 900 series and R9 300 series from AMD.

Good examples for a budget card atm:

gtx 950 or gtx 960 from Nvidia

R9 380 or R9 370 from AMD


When you are choosing a GPU for a PC you should look at benchmarks from different websites. The benchmarks give you real world information on how a specific GPU performs. What you are looking for is getting close to 60 fps on the desired resolution.