The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    ATI Graphic Cards

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by marcinz, Jan 5, 2009.

  1. marcinz

    marcinz Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    31
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    I`m trying to decide between T500 or W500.

    W500 comes with ATI Mobility FireGL V5700 with 512MB VRAM Intel Graphics

    The T500 (someone is getting me a deal) comes with ATI Mobility Radeon 3650 with 256MB

    The reason why I`m considering W500 is for the graphic card. I`ll be using it mostly for Photoshop, Indesign, Web and MS Office. I won`t be playing games or doing 3d graphics.

    Would there be a big difference between those two cards ?

    Thanks,
     
    marcinz, Jan 5, 2009
    #1
  2. Patrick

    Patrick Formerly beat spamers with stiks

    Reputations:
    2,284
    Messages:
    2,383
    Likes Received:
    93
    Trophy Points:
    66
    Not really. I use photoshop and ms office on my integrated graphics and it runs just fine.
     
    Patrick, Jan 5, 2009
    #2
  3. WILLY S

    WILLY S I was saying boo-urns

    Reputations:
    478
    Messages:
    1,784
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Whichever one comes with the fastest cpu, assuming they both come with a decent amount of ram and a decent harddrive :rolleyes:
     
    WILLY S, Jan 5, 2009
    #3
  4. MidnightSun

    MidnightSun Emodicon

    Reputations:
    6,668
    Messages:
    8,224
    Likes Received:
    231
    Trophy Points:
    231
    The graphics cards in the W500 and T500 are the same, except the one in the W500 is tuned especially for CAD (engineering, modeling) applications. So for your uses, the T500 is fine, as it will get the same performance as the W500 (with equal specs). The W500's graphics card does have 512MB of RAM, but I believe given the bandwidth of the card, it will make little difference (someone correct me if I'm wrong here).

    Scratch that. In addition, the T500 has dual graphics (you can switch to integrated graphics when not running graphics intensive applications) if you want to save battery, while I don't believe the W500 does (someone correct me if I'm wrong, again).
     
    MidnightSun, Jan 5, 2009
    #4
  5. w500?

    w500? Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    118
    Messages:
    210
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    W500 does indeed have switchable graphics.
     
    w500?, Jan 5, 2009
    #5
  6. stewie

    stewie What the deuce?

    Reputations:
    3,666
    Messages:
    2,174
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    For Photoshop CS4, the FireGL V5700 will be better because a lot of new features are designed for OpenGL.

    http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb404898
    http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb405445

     
    stewie, Jan 5, 2009
    #6
  7. MidnightSun

    MidnightSun Emodicon

    Reputations:
    6,668
    Messages:
    8,224
    Likes Received:
    231
    Trophy Points:
    231
    Ah, I stand corrected ;)
     
    MidnightSun, Jan 5, 2009
    #7
  8. martinmach

    martinmach Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    32
    Messages:
    434
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    get the cheaper one, seems like u wont be needing any of the CAD enhancements. photoshop works fine on my t500. but get atleast 4gb ram for photoshop. get 2gb from lenovo and order 2 gb separately
     
    martinmach, Jan 6, 2009
    #8