Does the Graphics card matter

mestala09

Hi All

Could anyone tell me if it matters too much to have a better graphics card in my laptop.
I'm just about to buy a new one,and I also want to take up my hobby once again of photography.I am thinking of buying Adobes "Lightroom",as you can use it as a stand alone feature.
I don't have an open budget,but the thing I'm more interested to know is,do I need a higher spec Graphics card.
The laptops I'm looking at,some have an Intel HD integrated card ,and others have dedicated cards,one an AMD,the other a Nvidea Geforce card....The processor speeds are ,2 have 2.2ghz,and 2 have 2.4ghz....RAM...6/8gb...HDD..750/1TB.
So does the graphics card matter for what I'm wanting to do..By the way,I don't do gaming.Sorry if this is a long winded question,but I need to make the right decision.
Thanks for reading..your answer would be appreciated..
M

S0litaire

Personally I'd rather go with AMD or Nvidia in my laptop. Intel are ok for low power graphics (good for day to day office programs).

Intel graphics i feel tend not to be updated as often as Nvidia or AMD drivers.

My current laptop has a dual core celeron CPU and has an Intel graphics, it can handle 720p Video fine but struggles with 1080 playback. and photo/video editing can be sluggish. (I've maxed out the ram it can hold and stuck in a SSD it's still sluggish for media work) Luckily I don't no a lot of media work on the laptop it's mainly for Word and programming.

RobTang

For photos no.

The integrated chipset in the newer haswel process are supposed to be pretty good anyway.

For photography id drop the extra cash into something with a decent screen or an decent external monitor with a good colour range.

closed

doesn't matter at all

yangptangkipperbang

You can have most expensive graphics card in the world in your laptop and you would be wasting your money !
If you are processing photographs on a laptop your are also wasting your time !

To get accurate (and repeatable) resolution and tones you must look at your screen at the same angle every time - this is difficult enough on a fixed PC monitor - impossible on a lap top.
Then you need a calibration tool - from a couple of hundred quid to a couple of thousand.

PS: Photshop Elements is a much better package than Lightroom.

debitcardmayhem

Get a desktop for your editing needs, and use a cheap or existing lappy for reviewing/viewing.

Cycrow

If the software you are using uses Cuda or OpenGL then having a decent GPU could have some benefit. Althou a laptop in general is not the best.

It also depend what you are actually planning to do

however i dont think lightroom uses it yet

ptrichardson

Only matters if you plan on gaming on the laptop.

The onboard graphics on the newer intel CPUs is pretty decent.