Best Notebook computer for Shader Development

I’m looking for the best (cheapest) Notebook computer available at a Best Buy store that I can install linux or worst case use Windows on and be able to use GLSL on. Most notebooks use the Intel GMA 900 or 950 which I don’t think supports GL 2.0. What about the ones with the integrated ATI graphics (200m, xpress 1100, etc)? I’d like to spend less than $1000. Any ideas? Thanks for any info. PT.

For GLSL you need minimum GeForce FX / Radeon 9500 equivalent GPU.

GeForce FX will give poor performance, so Radeon 9k would be better.
If you want something better, then next generation would be Radeon X / GeForce 6 and in this case GeForce is better than Radeon.

Drivers are another story. Don’t know much about ATI+Linux but I’ve heard their drivers on Linux are worse than on Windows. I also heard that NVIDIA’s drivers are better on Linux than on Windows. And since I think NVIDIA has better drivers under Windows than ATI, then drivers ranking would look like this:

  1. NVIDIA+Linux
  2. NVIDIA+Windows
  3. ATI+Windows
  4. ATI+Linux

I would suggest something like GeForce Go 6200 + Linux.

Is it possible to install the vendor drivers for these laptop GPUs?

Not sure - there is a possibility to download GeForce 7 Go drivers at NVIDIA page, so perhaps. Hopefully someone with more experience with notebooks will enlighten us.

Thanks for the info. Looks like I’ll try to find a laptop with the Go 6200 or 7400 series. Does microsoft windows have support for OpenGL 2.0+? I couldn’t determine from their website what version of OpenGL windows runs. Obviously they’d really prefer developers to use DirectX.

I would think you’d be able to install vendor drivers. Why wouldn’t you?

Originally posted by V-man:
Is it possible to install the vendor drivers for these laptop GPUs?
Ironically yes - ever since I started with linux this was no issue on linux (Geforce 5200 Go - 7900 Go)

Dell M65

btw: you should consider that posting the same question in two different threads does not mean that you will get twice as many answers. i rather think you’ll get less answers, as far as i’m involved.

Choose laptop with nvidia GPU and check www.laptopvideo2go.com

The best advice is to get this little device:
‘ASUS Introduces XG Station - Upgradeable Graphics For Notebook Computers’

“The XG Station is the world’s first docking station to provide a standard PCI Express slot for additional graphics computing power on notebook computers with Express Card slot, delivering VISTA Premium performance. The device also conveniently accommodates future graphics technology such as, HDCP and HDMI upgrades possibility. According to the press release, lab experiments on a notebook based on Intel 945GM graphics connected to the XG station with a ASUS EN7900GS graphics card showed the 9 times faster acceleration.”
The XG Station is currently scheduled to be released at the beginning of Q2 2007. A full package will include the XG Station graphics docking station, one ASUS EN7900GS graphics card and assorted accessories.

This should solve the problem. If you got the space/power requirements, and all that good stuff. :smiley:

Originally posted by PT_Barn:
[b] Thanks for the info. Looks like I’ll try to find a laptop with the Go 6200 or 7400 series. Does microsoft windows have support for OpenGL 2.0+? I couldn’t determine from their website what version of OpenGL windows runs. Obviously they’d really prefer developers to use DirectX.

I would think you’d be able to install vendor drivers. Why wouldn’t you? [/b]
Sounds like a good choice to me.
Win2000 and below supports 1.1 as software rasterizer.
WinXP supports 1.1 as a D3D wrapper.
Win Vista will be 1.4 as D3D wrapper.
Graphics card drivers support 2.0 and some are 2.1

Originally posted by PT_Barn:
I would think you’d be able to install vendor drivers. Why wouldn’t you?
Not on laptops (Windows). I think nVidia recently added support for laptops (Windows)
Laptop users had to get patched driver to get the latest driver for their GPU.

That’s why I asked about Linux. Linux is a complex world of advantages and disadvantages.