4 ms·

I'm a game developer, and it might just be the first time I can work on a laptop with integrated graphics. Please don't :). New iGPUs may be catching up to old

by bd 11y ago

I'm a game developer, and it might just be the first time I can work on a laptop with integrated graphics. Please don't :). New iGPUs may be catching up to old dGPUs, but meanwhile new dGPUs are just skyrocketing in power far beyond them. I made this chart to easily see relative performance of most common notebook GPUs: http://alteredqualia.com/texts/notebooks/nvidia-gpus.png http://alteredqualia.com/texts/notebooks/nvidia-gpus.png Or if you are interested in both desktop and notebook GPUs relative performances: http://alteredqualia.com/tools/gpus/ http://alteredqualia.com/tools/gpus/ What Intel does is great for rising minimal specs you can expect in notebook graphics, but you can do much better than that, even cheap modern dGPUs wipe out the best iGPUs. You can extrapolate Skylake Iris Pro from Intel marketing claims vs older Iris Pros, it's going to be better but not Earth-shatteringly better. And this gap is just going to get wider in 2016, with HBM2 and 16 nm node sizes finally coming to GPUs (both to Nvidia with Pascal and AMD with Arctic Islands).

wlesieutre 11y ago
Even if you're developing a high-end crazy graphics game in UT4 on your desktop with SLIed GTX 980s, it's still useful to be able to work on it from a laptop at more than 2 FPS.
- reitzensteinm 11y ago
  That's exactly my situation. Going to 720p requires half the fill rate of 1080p. Turn off some postprocessing and antialiasing and you might get double the performance again. So if you're at 1/4 peak performance, you're still running a smooth game albeit not quite at full detail. If you're at 1/16 peak performance... things aren't looking too good by the time you get your game smooth.
- bd 11y ago
  And that was exactly my point :) In case it wasn't clear from the context, I was suggesting getting a notebook with a discrete GPU instead of integrated GPU (that's what iGPU/dGPU stand for, not a desktop GPU). If you are game developer / graphics programmer / game player / designer / photo or video editor / VR enthusiast / anybody who cares about graphics, I would advise to get at least GTX 960M (if you have budget or size constrains, this should get you roughly to PS4/Xbox One levels, so relatively safe for this gen), but preferably GTX 970M (best price/power and you can still get slim notebook). GTX 970M will get you about average GPU performance overall, including desktops (these days I get ~50-percentile rank in 3dmark firestrike with my GTX 970M notebook, so average GPU in September 2015 is at least as fast or faster, at least for that cohort of people).
coldtea 11y ago
>Please don't :). New iGPUs may be catching up to old dGPUs, but meanwhile new dGPUs are just skyrocketing in power far beyond them. So? When did the idea behind developing games got to have the most eye-candy to take advantage of new dGPUs?

by bd 11y ago

wlesieutre 11y ago

Even if you're developing a high-end crazy graphics game in UT4 on your desktop with SLIed GTX 980s, it's still useful to be able to work on it from a laptop at more than 2 FPS.

reitzensteinm 11y ago
That's exactly my situation. Going to 720p requires half the fill rate of 1080p. Turn off some postprocessing and antialiasing and you might get double the performance again. So if you're at 1/4 peak performance, you're still running a smooth game albeit not quite at full detail. If you're at 1/16 peak performance... things aren't looking too good by the time you get your game smooth.
bd 11y ago
And that was exactly my point :) In case it wasn't clear from the context, I was suggesting getting a notebook with a discrete GPU instead of integrated GPU (that's what iGPU/dGPU stand for, not a desktop GPU). If you are game developer / graphics programmer / game player / designer / photo or video editor / VR enthusiast / anybody who cares about graphics, I would advise to get at least GTX 960M (if you have budget or size constrains, this should get you roughly to PS4/Xbox One levels, so relatively safe for this gen), but preferably GTX 970M (best price/power and you can still get slim notebook). GTX 970M will get you about average GPU performance overall, including desktops (these days I get ~50-percentile rank in 3dmark firestrike with my GTX 970M notebook, so average GPU in September 2015 is at least as fast or faster, at least for that cohort of people).

coldtea 11y ago

>Please don't :). New iGPUs may be catching up to old dGPUs, but meanwhile new dGPUs are just skyrocketing in power far beyond them. So? When did the idea behind developing games got to have the most eye-candy to take advantage of new dGPUs?