which card is better?

the 3d mark scores dont seem to match up with the frame rates on the ati card.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9500M-GS.8167.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-3650.8839.0.html

I wouldnt go with either. Gaming on a laptop sucks. Period. Having a crazy graphics card like one of those just sucks your battery to nothing.

You dont game with just a battery.

quote ParanahJoe

You dont game with just a battery.

The 3650 and 9500M are pretty much on par with each other, some games put the 3650 ahead and some games put the 9500M ahead. The 3670 manages to step ahead a bit of both.

Most of it depends on your gaming, if you're just doing source games go with the ATI, if you're hoping to run NVIDIA endorsed titles then probably consider the 9500M.

As far as gaming on a laptop, I'd take a 3650 or 9500M over some garbage integrated chip or Intel GMA. If someone is planning to get a laptop then more power to them for getting a better GPU in their system instead of some archaic failure based on the Intel i740.

Battery life isn't impacted that much, if you really bothered to read reviews around the net, most new chips have advanced power saving modes as well, on top of that power consumption is reduced further with LED backlit displays versus your typical cathode based lighting. I've used quite a few 8600M GT based systems without seeing sudden death on battery life, unless 2 1/2hrs of moderate usage is your idea of sucking your battery dry, in such case I guess the 3GB of ram, DVD drive, Wifi, Bluetooth and the Core 2 running unrestricted at 2.2GHz probably attirbuted to that as well.

To me, battery life under 3 hrs sucks. Especially when most modern laptops advertise 6 hours of "wireless productivity" (whatever that means) I personally like my laptop to be able to afford me the convenience of watching the entirety of Saving Private Ryan all the way through somewhere where I cant charge my laptop. Thats just my opinion.

May I add one thing, though?

When you get laptops with 'powerful' GPU's, they have options so that when they are unplugged, they underclock themselves a lot and severely hinder their performance to help with battery life. For example, our laptop with an x1400 has 3 power options.

really? ill have to look into it more then. Ill admit, I dont know a huge amount about it other than my dads laptop has an x1300, my brothers has a 9500, and two of my friends have the 3xxx something. They all complain about the battery life. My mom has a macbook with an X3100 that gets about 4-5 hrs of battery life(bluetooth off, wifi on). my friend bought a refurb off apple.com macbook that gets 3.5-4 hrs battery life with the intel 950. thats where i based my info off of.

I'll be sure to let you guys know as soon as I get my new laptop in. It has a 9500M G graphics card in it. I know from reviews it will overclock quite well but, as for the underclocking I'll have to have a look at that.

I should have it by Wednesday and an answer for you come Thursday.

let us know battery too please! id like to know, cuz from personal experience i havent seen much in that way, but id like to know how somebody who actually knows how to use a computer fairs with the settings and such. Only reason I ask is Ill be getting a laptop within the next 4 weeks and I dont care how well it plays games at all, its not a consideration for me. I just need a long battery and Id like to know what my options are in terms of what gpu and such does what etc.

I know the laptop I bought only has a 6-cell battery. The battery wasn't really a selling point no matter what specs it is carrying. I just bought something with some power to last me my 3 years of college. I also bought this on the jive that I know I will always be around a plug. Specially if all I will be doing is working with networking equipment, Cisco switches, routers and whatnot in class. The second use I bought it for was the portable gaming capabilities it was showing in some reviews. But I will run some comparison tests for you so you can have some knowledge when the time comes for your purchase.

whats the deal with over clocking graphics cards is it like modded drivers of something?

Most cards can be overclocked within their tolerance, even in the early days it was possible. I have a 4200M Go from way back in the DX8.1 days that overclocks about 20mhz core and 40mhz memory.

Usually the application itself in the driver has the tools to overclock with. Unless it's an Intel GMA chip, then it probably just includes an application so it can stab itself over for sucking so bad.

The X3100 performs so amazingly well because it does nothing, it's barely a step about the GMA950. In short you might as well use the CPU to power the desktop UI instead of the GPU since it's essentially worthless.

An LED backlit display + 9 cell battery + power saver settings would get a modern GPU based system 3-4 hours with few issues. CCFL would suck a bit more power and a 6 cell isn't that great. The problem with laptops is everyone assumes that they should be able to run everything and have no problems. Since most apps don't disable the wifi and bluetooth and other items as needed the system takes a punch to the face.

An example on my present laptop is that in normal mode, (CCFL screen) If I run everything at max I get about 1 1/2hrs of life on a 3yr old battery. If I run everything in optimal modes (disable bg/disable bluetooth/optical/powersaver mode for gpu) I get almost 3hrs.

But I dont do it all the time so my average battery life is about 2hrs on battery at best since I usually use my laptop as a work machine and not an entertainment system.

Well I guess I can pass on some of my findings. Got this lappy today around 3. I must say it's money well spent.

So most of you want to know about the 9500M GS vs. Battery. Well with this sytem on power savings mode which slashes the cpu down to 32% of it's total power and whatever it sets the video card to I can squeeze out 2 hours and 15-20 minutes from this 6 cell Li-on. Only other things I have going is online music streaming over wireless and this webpage aswell as msn and xfire signed in. Hell, it's good enough for me. I doubt i'll be using just the battery at school all day. Oh and the LCD backlight is set to 1/3 of it's brightness.

If any of you people care it'll play cod4 online with no aparent lag. My expectations were quite high cause of my main desktops power while playing games. But it'll play anything on the market with no problems except for Crysis, I could see that being potentially a problem.

If there's anything else you'd like to ask, lemme know!

Nice to know, the 9500M GS is supposed to be the successor to the 8600M GT and it seems to do it well.

Crysis can run low, thats about it, even the 8600 on the desktop choked on Crysis and I'm sure it'll be similar for the 9500GS. =/ unfortunately it takes a class 1 to manage higher settings on that game.