Graphic cards for laptops were always a pain in the ass because of the low shared memory available. Of course, the low shared memory would not be a problem anymore if you buy a high end laptop with a even higher end graphic card. But do you know how much a high end piece of hardware costs? See what prices Alienware has for its laptops and you will be asking around if that laptop makes fries.

Well, it doesn't make fires, but a laptop with a strong grapchic card it is the thing you want to have. Again, there is an 'of course' part: with a strong grapchic card you will play better games which will probably heat up your computer. And you will soon need to invest into a strong and expensive cooler or cooling system. Or your laptop will be restarting whenever he is feeling hot.

Returning to our major problem: are there great graphics cards for laptops? Yes, there are. I'm going write some of the best here (the best after I run some banchmarking tests):

1. the GeForce GTX 480M SLI a.k.a. Fermi impresses with its 1200 points in memory speed
2. Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire points strong in the pixel shaders category
3. the GeForce GTX 285M SLI is a bit older than Fermi but it is probably the best sold laptop graphic card - it makes a strong impression in the shader speed test
4. the GeForce GTX 280M SLI almost as good as the third place but with a bit lower memory and shader speed
5. Another AMD Radeon graphic card enters in this top - Mobility Radeon HD 4870 X2: great pixel shader scores but loses some points because supports only DirectX 10.1, not 11

And the list can go on and on with other versions (low end versions) of those mentioned above. Graphics cards for laptops have a special design, have to use not to much energy and this is why with high end graphic cards for laptops comes a terrible notebook price. I know you and, sincerely, even I want a cheaper graphic card. If it is possible, I want the GeForce GTX 480M SLI for 3 bucks but for that amount of money it would probably come without pins, memory section, cooling system, processor and circuits. In fact, even the plastic costs a lot more than what you can buy with 3 american dollars.

So, if you want an amazing graphic card for your laptop, bring the money satchel.