graphics on core duo
now this topic is a primary concern for gaming enthusiasts and 3d-modelers. while studying my laptop’s graphics hardware, i came across two wonderful numbers. the 945 and the 950. so what’s the difference?
945 stands for the Mobile Intel® 945 GM/PM/GMS Express Chipsets. this family will be the grunts of Intel’s next generation of laptops.
included within the roster of the 945 series is the 940 (designed for celeron m) and the 950 gma (designed for core duo). gma stands for graphics media accelerator - it’s supposed to provide a 200% increase on 3d performance [compaq website] over the previous generation
but those are just minor definitions that one can find over the internet by themselves. i just posted them as part of my research and for people to correct me if i’m wrong. wouldn’t want to walk around talking about wrong ideas, heh.
let’s talk about performance.
when it comes to work, zoom can use as low as 8mb of shared memory for its graphics processing and up to a max of 128mb. now i’d say that’s a lot of memory already for my kind of work. i usually work with a few photoshop files at a time. and when i say work with photoshop, that means slicing images and rearranging some layers to get my clients what they want. hehe, most of the grunt work is done by my good friend rory.
what kills me though is it’s capability for dual monitors. yeap, i know it’s been around for quite some time already. but this is the first time that i’ve experienced dual monitors, so if you’ll let me have my piece of heaven, thank you very much. hehe. working has never been this cool. i’ve got a widescreen already on my laptop which gives me more real estate on the coding screen at dream weaver even if some panel groups are open. yes, the extra monitor consumes more electricity, but the coolness of browsing for snippets / research on one screen while happily coding away on the other is just fabulous.
enough of work. let’s talk about games.
doom 3. since i have to be honest on my report, let me make this quick. doom 3 crawls on my laptop. a full-screen 640×480 low quality everything is turned off settings just doesn’t cut it. if anybody knows how to make it work on a compaq v2000t, do not hesitate to pm me 
hehe, with regards to other games, i’d say that it’s good. currently stress testing it with max quality settings on never winter nights. a game from my high school days which i never really got to play and enjoy. good thing nwn has support for widescreens!
i could go on and write a more comprehensive review, but since it’s labor day tomorrow, i’ve got work to do. hehe. and before i leave, let me share one thing about my graphical experience on core duo:
+--------+ | | +--------+ | it | | rocks | +--------+...+mmmmmmmm+