Graphic card laptop

When it comes to graphics hardware, laptops are somewhat different to the traditional desktop PC. There are core similarities, and just like desktops, notebooks can run with either integrated graphics that means a GPU [Graphics Processing Unit] built into the processor or discrete graphics, which denotes that the graphics card is a separate entity to the CPU, and therefore bigger and more powerful.

As with a desktop PC, if you want a gaming laptop, it should ideally run with a discrete GPU [although integrated graphics are getting more powerful these days, and can produce solid results with many games more on that later]. If you use your machine for just general computing and browsing the web, then youll get by with an integrated GPU just fine.

Discrete dominance

Lets take a look at discrete graphics solutions first, which, as mentioned, are really the domain of gamers [or professionals working with heavyweight graphics rendering programs].

Notebooks used to be a world away from desktop PCs in terms of the power of the GPU you could fit inside obviously theres far less room for a card in a laptop chassis than there is in a big old desktop tower, not to mention far more in the way of power issues but that gap has closed in recent times.

Nowadays, you can whack a fully-fledged GeForce GTX 1080 into a laptop for some serious pixel-pushing power to handle demanding games in higher resolutions and details. We say fully-fledged, but in actual fact, a notebook GTX 1080 will have been toned down somewhat in terms of the clock speed, although itll still give you pretty close to the same performance as a GTX 1080 that youd plug into your gaming PC.

On the Nvidia front [well come to AMD shortly], the GTX 1080 is top dog for gaming laptops plus you can even SLI a pair in a notebook but you can also get portables with a GTX 1070, 1060 or 1050 [or 1050 Ti].

The trade-off with these machines, though, is that the chunky card and the rest of the components to match it means youll be looking at a fairly hefty laptop. A not-so-portable, if you like. Whats more, youll pay a premium for this power, too.

Optimized to the Max-Q

Nvidia tackled this portability problem, though, when last year the firm introduced Max-Q variants of the aforementioned GTX GPUs. These are simply honed versions of the graphics solutions which are optimized for power usage, and benefit from advanced thermal and electrical designs, not to mention the fact that they run more quietly.

This means that the likes of the Asus ROG Zephyrus GX501 can fit a Max-Q toting GeForce GTX 1080 in a laptop which is only 17.9mm at its thickest point and weighs 2.2kg. The resulting performance is positively blazing for a portable although battery life does suffer, as you might anticipate. And its not a cheap machine; you pay for the tech trickery necessary to pull off this slimline beast of a notebook.

More midrange discrete GPUs from Nvidia include the likes of the GeForce MX150, which is capable of handling many popular recent games acceptably at Full HD resolution, although youll likely have to turn the details down considerably [and more demanding games will make mincemeat of this GPU].

Itll be fine for the likes of Overwatch at high details, but with other games, youll likely have to drop to 720p resolution if you want better details [depending on the exact game, of course].

AMDs armory

So what about Nvidias big graphics rival, AMD? That company, too, offers a range of discrete graphics cards for notebooks, although it isnt as competitive as Nvidia at the higher end. AMD hasnt brought its latest-gen tech [Vega] to laptops as discrete solutions, and currently, the top of the tree is the Radeon RX 580.

While thats still a powerful card for a notebook, bear in mind that the RX 580 is only around equivalent to Nvidias GTX 1060 [very roughly speaking] and of course thats far from the top of Nvidias line-up.

There are a number of midrange Radeon cards that perform similar duties to their equivalent Nvidia GPUs for example the Radeon R9 series so youve still got plenty of choice in the middle ground.

But where AMD has been most interesting of late is with integrated graphics solutions, where current-gen Vega tech has actually been brought to the notebook world.

As we mentioned at the outset, if you dont game, you wont really need a discrete GPU, and integrated graphics built directly into the processor will likely be just fine. This will often come in the form of Intel chips with built-in Intel graphics, but AMD also does integrated graphics, on board its own processors, and also Intels these days, too.

Intel and AMDs latest integrated graphics will not only run your everyday applications just fine, but can actually make a pretty impressive stab at keeping games ticking over nicely.

AMD has been particularly hot on this front with the Radeon RX Vega M GL integrated graphics packing power thats roughly equivalent to Nvidias GTX 1050, or even slightly better, as we found in our review of a laptop running this solution. That Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 [with an Intel Core i7-8705G CPU] managed to get 48 frames per second out of Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Full HD with ultra details. Not too shabby indeed.

Even so, if youre going to be partaking of any demanding gaming, youll still want a discrete graphics card but it really is quite amazing how far integrated graphics have come.

• Check out our list of the best laptops