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laptop graphics card #866554
02/06/13 07:36 AM
02/06/13 07:36 AM
Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 1,013
Kent UK
monbron Offline OP
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monbron  Offline OP
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Having recently gone wireless I would like to get a laptop as well as a desktop and I had the idea of installing XP (which I have a disc) on the laptop so that I could play some of my old games which will not play in 7, could you recommend a good graphics card for this and will it talk to my desktop which has 7?? thanks

Re: laptop graphics card [Re: monbron] #866581
02/06/13 09:47 AM
02/06/13 09:47 AM
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 40,644
southeast USA
Jenny100 Offline
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Installing XP on newer hardware may be a problem -- especially with a laptop. Newer video cards may not have drivers for XP. But at least with a desktop you can choose a video card that works with XP. And then there are all those other parts of a laptop that probably won't have drivers for XP (unless you buy a laptop that's over 5 years old).

Many new laptops that claim to have video cards that look good specswise use "Optimus" technology, which piggybacks Nvidia graphics on top of Intel graphics. There are no XP drivers for Optimus, so you end up with the laptop only detecting the nearly useless (for games other than casual games) Intel graphics. Even older games may have problems with Intel due to driver incompatibility.

So if you want a laptop with XP, I'd recommend buying a used one that is pre-Optimus -- and check the manufacturer website to make sure they have XP drivers for the model. The alternative might be to buy a high end gaming laptop that only has a Radeon or Nvidia video card and doesn't use "Optimus." All but one of the laptops I saw at at the local Best Buy use "Optimus" (which is a power saving technology), and that's all you're apt to see in a pre-built laptop. The one exception at Best Buy was a laptop with a low end Radeon that had no discrete video RAM, which wouldn't be much use for gaming.

If you've got the money, you could go for one of the non-Optimus models at a boutique shop like http://www.xoticpc.com/ or http://www.gentechpc.com/
As you can see, these can run into some serious money -- and you still have to check for XP drivers, which may not exist. If you are interested in doing this, be sure to email the shop and make sure the laptop parts have XP drivers. They probably won't be.

"Talking to the desktop" shouldn't be an issue as long as the networking/wireless is set up right since your wireless router should mediate everything. Of course you'll need XP drivers for the wireless card as well as the video card and you'll have to enable sharing on the two computers if you want to share files between them.

As for a laptop card, an Nvidia Geforce GT 650M or above would be fine for adventure games. You can read more about the 650M laptop graphics here
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html

Re: laptop graphics card [Re: monbron] #866810
02/07/13 11:15 AM
02/07/13 11:15 AM
Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 1,013
Kent UK
monbron Offline OP
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monbron  Offline OP
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Kent UK
I guess thats a NO then, seems like a an awful lot of trouble for a luddite, it did seem like a good idea at the time. Thanks for your time and trouble. oops

Re: laptop graphics card [Re: monbron] #866823
02/07/13 11:43 AM
02/07/13 11:43 AM
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,052
M
mj2c Offline
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You could of course partition your hard drive and put XP on the second partition (dual boot) then you will be able try what works and what doesnt. You could always remove the partition again if it's a no go.

Re: laptop graphics card [Re: monbron] #866827
02/07/13 11:45 AM
02/07/13 11:45 AM
Joined: Jun 2005
Posts: 19,983
Near St. Louis, MO
Draclvr Offline
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And there are always things like VMWare and VirtualPC. But there still can be driver issues on a new machine with an old unsupported operating system.


Gardens put to bed for the winter. Time for some gaming!
Re: laptop graphics card [Re: monbron] #866887
02/07/13 05:50 PM
02/07/13 05:50 PM
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 40,644
southeast USA
Jenny100 Offline
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Jenny100  Offline
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 40,644
southeast USA
You might check eBay for an old gaming laptop that comes with XP.

Also, if you found an older laptop with an Nvidia card and without Optimus, you could look for XP Nvidia drivers that have been tweaked for use with laptops at
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers

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