Gaming laptops: Intel Graphics vs. ATI vs. NVIDIA

Some things I have observed.

First off I would not even conside the INTEL chip as an option it just doesn't stack up in the real world. Now second point try to find a system with as much dedicated video RAM as possible shared video memory is a very big negative, even in laptps. Now as far as ATI vs NVIDIA here is my experiences. They both make some grat graphics chipsets and for a destop (I'm not a gamer player) I would consider a card from either vendor. That said here is a major got ya to consider ATI does not release driver updates for their mobil (laptop) chipsets but NVIDIA does. That point alone would swing me to a laptop with the NVIDIA graphics every thing else being equal. I've had to suffer too long from a graphics driver issue on a several year old HP laptop. HP doesn't relese video driver updats (unlike some vendors like DELL). That leaves me with a driver related bug that no one supports. If it was a NVIDIA chip graphics I could go to their web site downlaod the latest driver and be fixed. There has been one Windows Udate driver release for my ATI chipset that did improve things so I only experiece the video issues about once a month instead of daily. I always hate using video drivers from the Windows Update site since more than once I have seen them hang a system where I have had to boot into VGA mode then roll back drivers.

Just my 2cents added to the discussion. Oh by the way while I only own one laptop I support a great deal more at work and have helped friends resolve issues on theirs. I suppose about a half dozen brands over the years perhaps 50-100 total laptops representing several dozed different models.