ATi is getting burned by nVidia so bad right now in the >200dollar segment, and it has so much to do with their drivers which are very very buggy. I personally know two people who went for the dual chip 4870x2  and then switched to the gtx295 simply because of random game bugs. If ATi made better drivers, I believe they would have so much more customers. I held on to my trusty 9800Pro for so long, but sadly those days are over. I am not certain, but i believe ATi is doing alright in the low end of the GPU market with cards like the 4650.

Chris, for the mobile cards, check out http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html. 

 

While it's not always 100% perfect, they've actually done a pretty good job.  Basically, the higher up the graphics card is on the list, the better it is.  The nice thing is that this includes integrated graphics too, so that you can see where they stand relative to the other cards.  And if you click on a specific card, it'll give you the benchmarks for the cards so that you can reach your own conclusions.

 

When I'm comparing mobile graphics, this is usually where I start. 

Oh yes, I always check this site to compare mobile graphics cards.  Its a very helpful site, no doubt!  There are just sooooo many different graphics cards, its so hard to keep them all straight in my head.

 

Thanks for the link anyways (for other people to see), its a gem

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Credible_Chris wrote:

Oh yes, I always check this site to compare mobile graphics cards.  Its a very helpful site, no doubt!  There are just sooooo many different graphics cards, its so hard to keep them all straight in my head.

 

Thanks for the link anyways (for other people to see), its a gem

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It's a good site (I use it myself from time to time) but don't be fooled into thinking you'll find all that's needed to know to chose the proper computer. They only use a handful of tests and most of the results can't be used as is since they don't take into account the "rest" of the hardware(anything but the video card) for the final comparison.

 

This means this is a good website to have a quick glance for the type of performance you can expect from a video card but choosing a computer is far more complicated than just looking at a chart.

It should be made know that nVidia is launching there latest and greatest graphics card series (code named fermi) on march 28, if you are itching to upgrade I would suggest you hold out until then as it will mean price cuts - If fermi outperforms the 48xx series by a huge margin then you will see price cuts for the 48xx series. If fermi does not perform as expected then it quickly drop in price.

 

The retail "fermi" cards will be called the gtx 480 and the gtx 470 and looking at the specs they are promising, but don't let pure specs follow as both nVidia and ATI have released cards in the past... that on paper look very promising (nVidia - Fx 5800/ ATI - 2900 xtx) but failed to deliver

The GF100 cards look great and should outperform the HD 5870 with no problem BUT, with two or three time the transistors count compared to the HD 5800, I wouldn't be surprise to see the GTX 480 in the $550-700 price range.

 

PS: It's March 26th, not 28.