Originally Posted by
bigguyinpasadena
What would the difference be on a laptop?
If you're talking about a full-size laptop, the only question to ask is "Do you play video games?"
If so, you may need discrete graphics, depending on what games you play (indeed, many for serious gamers, in general you can never have a powerful enough graphics card, and all but a few laptop discrete chipsets are WAY weak.)
If not, for most full-size laptops with modern integrated video the difference is that the discrete graphics (A) cost more and (B) use more battery. There's no advantage for most people with a modern 2007+ chipset (X3100 or later. The old 2005-6 vintage GMA950s can get bogged down by Vista/Windows 7 Aero graphics if you have a lot of windows open, or if you're playing HD content.)
The one exception is in netbooks, where the integrated graphics chipsets (GMA950 and NM10) are still quite weak and the discrete options (Nvidia Ion, Broadcom Crystal HD, etc) are pretty much there to allow the machines to play HD content.
Originally Posted by
deubster
Only if you are a game player or require high-end graphics will you find a need to pay extra for discrete graphics.
High-end
3D graphics; a lot of things people think of as high-end graphics like heavy photo editing will see little or no advantage to discrete graphics chips these days.
Originally Posted by
tev9999
If you are planning on streaming HD video from Hulu, you may want to consider the discrete. My laptop has a hard time keeping up with HD if I put it in full screen mode. It seems to work the processor so hard it begins to heat up, which ends up throttling down the speed and results in choppy video.
The flash player that Hulu uses is a pig for HD, with or without discrete graphics.
Originally Posted by
nmenaker
As for usage, of course things like 3d gaming, and acceleration will be greatly affected by discrete graphics, but I find that doing more consumer things like ripping dvd's, making movies in imovie, doing photo manipulation, converting videos with handbrake, etc. all are WAAAAY faster with the discrete graphics on the MBP compared to the macbooks which simply do it slower.
Most of these require software to be specifically written to take advantage of the discrete graphics - most software in PC-land to do these things is
not written to do that, and even there, only certain parts of the process will take advantage of it (ie if you are ripping a DVD full-size to the hard drive without re-encoding, it will never be able to use the graphics chip; similarly, Photoshop only uses the GPU for a few filters, and not for general run-of-the-mill editing tasks.)
Meanwhile, a faster processor helps with just about everything; with the limitations a laptop-grade GPU and the BIG spread in CPU speeds right now, you're better off with a mobile i5/i7 with integrated graphics for any of those tasks above than with a Core 2 progessor with discrete graphics.