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I got the chance to buy a new laptop Acer Aspire V5 571 with an i5 3rd gen, but it has HD4000. I see that it's not very good for these new games that require a better graphics card.

What are your thoughts on this? Anyone had any experience?

Don't expect anything awesome as far as gaming performance. It will do the job for some games, but once you turn up the eye candy you're going to be SOL.

1280x720, low-medium settings, you might average 25fps on some of the console-port games.

Borderlands 2, for example, is playable for the most part on an HD4000.
BF3 multiplayer is not
Starcraft II and Team-Fortress 2 almost run smoothly (ie, always above 30fps)
Skyrim runs surprisingly well on minimum detail (30-40fps)

Lower your expectations and you'll be pleasantly surprised with how much it can actually handle;
If you go in expecting minimum detail + lowest res = 20fps you will find that many games run much better than this - You can either raise the resolution or enjoy smoother framerates. Hell, sometimes even both at the same time!

If your sole performance need is gaming, go with a Trinity + Radeon 7670M. Especially if you're already satisfied with Acer:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834215663 (I mean, seriously, Newegg's price on your laptop is $499 and this is $529 - cough up the extra $30)

For everyday tasks, Trinity is fast enough, and for gaming the GPU will be your limiting factor. But it'll run way better than HD4000.

Or if you have $100 to spare, get an i5 with a GeForce 630M:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834215662

I think for gaming, the 7670M is going to be a bit faster, though at 1366x768 it probably doesn't matter. It's up to you as to whether or not you need the extra CPU and can part with the extra $$ to get it.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon ... 483.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeF ... 761.0.html

As a general rule, never consider a laptop a primary gaming machine with two exceptions:

1. You're running a few light or older games on minimal settings. A game like TF2 can probably run smoothly and you'll basically have a mobile version of the game.

2. You're specifically buying a laptop to take a mobile version with you, like WoW, Starcraft, and again, TF2. But don't plan on getting top notch performance.

Personally, I would make my choice based off what else I need the laptop for. After I've chosen a machine or picked out a few candidates, then I would look not at what I want to play, but what I can play. If you are looking to use the laptop primarily for gaming, pick out the games first to determine wether the chosen hardware would be acceptable.

Notebookcheck.net has an extensive list of games benchmarked on HD4000 that you can look at (HD4000 is row 210). The saving grace here is that laptop only has a resolution of 1366x768 which will work in favor of the IGP. As others have said, don't expect this thing to crank 60fps at high detail settings in demanding games like Crysis 2 or BF3. This is NOT a hardcore gamer's laptop. There are many games that can be played smoothly on it though. It really gets down to the games that you typically play. There are 2012 games that don't require much graphics horsepower at all to play and older games are obviously less taxing.

Look at the benefits also. A laptop with integrated graphics will use less power than a laptop with a discrete card. That generally means longer battery life if all other things are equal (they rarely are, especially between brands, but it's a rule of thumb). Not having discrete graphics allows for a slimmer profile, less weight, and lowers the price.

DPete27 wrote:

Look at the benefits also. A laptop with integrated graphics will use less power than a laptop with a discrete card. That generally means longer battery life if all other things are equal (they rarely are, especially between brands, but it's a rule of thumb). Not having discrete graphics allows for a slimmer profile, less weight, and lowers the price.

So many notebooks have switchable graphics that if you're not gaming on the battery, it's not really going to be any different

If you want a gaming laptop without spending silly money, look at a Clevo.

They have models in the 11.6"-14" range with a variety of dedicated graphics options for the same money as the big vendors sell their IGP offerings and they're at least as good in terms of build quality.

Avadirect (US)
Eurocom (Global)
Medion (Europe, mostly)
PCSpecialist (UK)

Thanks everyone for your advice, I'll think it out! I just don't have too much money to spend and I don't think I can order online, that's my main problem.

Thanks anyway!

What is your budget? I picked up an HP gaming laptop for $850. There are gobs of deals that can be had. Now, in picking my laptop, I made sure that the performance and screen resolution would be adequate for my gaming. That being said, most games just don'.... grip me. I play Civ V, I'm going throug Mass Effect finally. I play some Source games and Skyrim. That's about it. So I went with a 16x9 screen, and an nvidia 650m w/gddr5. If your budget gets you into the $700-$900 range, you can get a pretty great system that will game pretty well.

Just be realistic on your gpu and your screen resolutin.

TheEmrys wrote:

I went with a 16x9 screen, and an nvidia 650m w/gddr5. If your budget gets you into the $700-$900 range, you can get a pretty great system that will game pretty well.

That's probably the lowest dGPU I'd consider over IGP. Anything below a 650m and I feel like the step up from HD4000 isn't noticeable enough to be worth the extra cost. Remember, even with a dGPU in an Intel laptop, you're still paying for the CPU which has HD4000 IGP included.

That being said, this Acer M5 for $650 is a decent deal. My brother has an M5 without the dGPU and it feels pretty solid. Overall it's well thought out, the screen isn't great though.