What ATI Radeon is the best?

Question

I'm about to purchase a new laptop, but I don't know what graphics card I should choose. The only thing that's important is, that I'd never had a laptop that plays Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 fine!! So, ATI Radeon HD 4200 or ATI Radeon HD 4570? Which one runs RCT3 the best?

Wouter, The Netherlands

Answer 1

There are two types of graphics processing units (GPUs) in laptops: integrated and discrete. Integrated share the system memory and will reserve a portion of it (e.g., 512 MB of system RAM) for the exclusive use of the GPU. For example, if that laptop had 4GB of actual RAM, it would be reported as 3.5 GB. While they have gotten better, integrated graphics also tend to be weak for 3D graphics-intensive applications like games. With ATI mobility GPUs, those that end with "00" are usually integrated. So the ATI Radeon 3100, 3200, 4200 & 4500 are all integrated GPUs. (That;s not strictly the case, as ATI sometimes releases an "upgraded" integrated GPU such as the 3150.) As the number goes up, so does the processing power. Integrated graphics makes sense for most laptop owners because they don't play games on them and the power consumption of integrated GPUs is much lower than the current dedicated GPUs.



Dedicated GPUs will have their own (dedicated) memory that will typically run at a faster speed than the system memory. (That is, the dedicated GPU might have 512 MB or 1GB of GDDR5 while the laptop's system memory is DDR2 or DDR3.) Dedicated GPUs are almost always significantly faster for any game or application requiring 3D processing. The GPUs are physically larger because they include much more specialized 3D rendering processing. The downside is that even when not playing a game, dedicated GPUs use much more power than integrated GPUs. That means a significant drop in battery life. Also, when playing a game, dedicated GPUs get much hotter, which means more cooling must be designed into the laptop (which tends to make them bigger, thicker). On the very top-end gaming laptops, heat is such an issue that you couldn't comfortably place the laptop on your lap while gaming. You would get very hot or even slightly cooked over time.



Of those two, the 4570 will be much faster at games than the 4200. Now, for Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 specifically, either of those two may well run it. Going to the Can You Run It? web site at http://cyri.systemrequirementslab.com/CYRI/intro.aspx , the minimum graphics specs for the game are:

Video Card

Minimum: 32 MB Video Card with Hardware T&L (ATI Radeon+/GeForce2 or higher)

Features:

Video RAM 32 MB

3D Yes

Hardware T&L Yes

And the recommended is also pretty minimal:

Features:

Video RAM 64 MB

3D Yes

Hardware T&L Yes



I would expect either of those to run it, but the 4570 should do a better job. You might have to turn off more graphics features with the 4200 than you would with the 4570. You might still have to scale back the 4570 depending on the screen size of the laptop.

Answer 2

Really i would wait a few weeks because the Ati radeon 5800 series comes out very soon. Rumored to be around 9/22/09. It will blow the 4670 and 4770 out of the water. Priced to be said at $279-300. cheaper and probably faster then the new nvidia 295.

Answer 3

Well, usually with ATI, the higher the number, the better the card, however, there are alot of the 4 series that have a lower number and out perform the higher 4's.



I would suggest the 4570 for sure!

Answer 4

ATI Radeon HD 4200:



The AMD ATI (Mobility) Radeon HD 4200 is an onboard (shared Memory) graphics chip (on the RS880M chipset). It is based on the HD 3400 graphics core and features the UVD 2 video engine to decode HD videos (Avivo HD - can decode two HD streams simultaneously).



Compared to the old HD 3200, the 4200 now supports DirectX 10.1 and features the UVD2 video decoder.



Hybrid CrossfireX is a new feature of the chipset, that allowes to use the onboard HD 4200 graphics core in conjunction with a dedicated graphics card (of the Mobilty Radeon HD 3400 series) in Crossfire combination to increase the performance (similar to GeForceBoost / HybridSLI of Nvidia). Every frame is rendered by a different graphics core with this technique.



The UVD 2 video engine is able to decode HD videos (MPEG-2, H.264, and VC-1) in all stages and allows the fluent playback of HD videos (e.g. Blu-ray) with a relative low CPU utilization (called Avivo HD). The HD 3200 was the first onboard graphics card that allows the fluent playback of Blu-ray videos. The UVD 2 on the HD 4200 supports the decoding of two video stream and therefore got a full Blu-Ray support.



The graphics core of the HD 4200 stems from the Mobility Radeon HD 3400 and is therefore DirectX 10.1 capable. Because of the missing graphics memory, the performance of the card is a bit lower than of the HD 3400. Theroretically, dedicated memory chips can be directly added to the chip, making it a dedicated graphics card. Because of pricing it is unclear if any manufacturer will add memory to the chip.



Still older games like Doom 3 or Quake 4 should be barly playable. Compared to older onboad graphic chips (e.g., GMA X3100), the HD 4200 is much faster. Even the Centrino 2 graphics core (GMA 4500M HD) is noticeable slower than the HD 4200. Compared to the HD 3200 the performance should be similar



Using Windows XP, the HD 3200 seems to have problems with current and older drivers, as there is no 2D accelleration. This leads to very slow interactions with windows and scrolling (especially with Firefox as reported in various discussion boards). More information on the topic can be found at Planet 3D Now (de) or the AMD forum. It is still unclear if the HD 4200 also suffers from this problem.









ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570:



The ATI Mobilty Radeon HD 4570 from AMD is a DirectX 10.1 lower-middle-class notebook graphics adapter. Technically it is a faster clocked Mobility Radeon 4530/4330.



AMD specifies a slow 64 Bit memory bus, but some GPU-Z variants state a 128 Bit bus (should be an error).



The gaming performance of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD4570 should be very similar to the desktop HD 4550 which features similar specifications. Benchmarks of the desktop card showed, that the most DirectX9 titles can be played fluently in high details and 1024x768 (like Call of Duty 4, F.E.A.R., UT3, World in Conflict). Demanding games like crysis only run in low-medium detail settings in decent frame rates.



The Mobility HD 4570 is based on the RV710 chip and features 80 stream processors (16 5-dimensional shader cores). These cores do the graphic work of the shader- and pixel pipelines of older GPUs. The stream processors are also called ALUs and are grouped in five-way VLIW units. Each of the five instructions of a VLIW bundle has to be independent from the others and therefore the performance depends on the optimization of the driver.



A speciality of the Radeon HD 4570 is the possibility to use ordinary DDR2 and DDR3 graphic memory (as a cheaper alternative to GDDR3). However, cards that use that kind of memory will be slower than others equipped with GDDR RAM.



The Mobility Radeon HD 4570 includes the Avivo HD called video technology including an onboard soundchip for 7.1 sound output over HDMI or DisplayPort and the 2nd generation UVD (Unified Video Decoder). This UVD 2 supports full bitstream decoding of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 streams. In addition to this, it also supports dual video stream decoding and Picture-in Picture mode which makes the UVD full BD-Live compliant. Simplified, the Avivo HD technology handles all video tasks and enables the GPU to decode HD videos.



AMD published a current consumtion of about 12-15 Watt for the HD 4570. Still it is unclear if this value represents the chip alone or the whole mxm board including the memory (which would include about 5 Watt).



Compared to the desktop ATI Radeon HD 4550, the mobile 4570 features a higher core clock (680 versus 600) and therefore performs a bit better than the desktop 4650 (if the notebook manufacturer uses GDDR3 memory).



As 4200 series is a older verison and work less I suggest 4570.



Thnaks:)

Answer 5

ati 4570 , ask how good is the cooling system, and the processor though are also important factors in playing games