Intel HD Graphics good enough?

[Marute]

Tomorrow I'm going to help my friend pick a nice laptop for school and average everyday uses like internet, youtube, Word, Powerpoint, Excel etc. It won't be used for modern gaming, however he does have Age of Empires (very old game, might be AoE 2 or 3 but it's old I can tell you) which he likes to play once in a while.

Depending on his budget which I don't know yet (but not too expensive, he's not going to buy a 1000 USD machine) I think that I'll recommend either an Intel i3 or i5 processor. My question to you guys is if it's okay to buy a laptop without a dedicated GPU since both the i3's and i5's have Intel HD Graphics integrated graphics and they should be quite good all things considered. Will Intel HD Graphics be able to handle an old game such as the one I mentioned earlier? All recommendations and advice is very welcome.

Thank you all. :-)

[YukonTrooper]

Intel HD 4000 will definitely handle old games fine. However, even many ~$500 laptops come with a mid-range dedicated card. What size is he looking for?

[Bond007]

Any modern integrated will be fine for old games

[frontier204]

If AOE III is playable on Intel Graphics 4500 (3 generations behind) you could probably max it on today's generation of Intel HD Graphics: Age of Empires 3 review on intel gma 4500 - YouTube

At that budget however, have you considered an AMD A8 or A10? AMD shines in price/performance in the lower end. Not to mention the AMD's A series can run Crysis so you won't have to worry about older games

[antunica]

Pretty sure i've seen benchmarks of the HD4000 chip playing even some modern games at semiresonable frames so he should be fine :)

[terrybear]

Using intel onboard graphics of any generation is about the equivelent to doing a picture on a ech-a-scetch vs amd's offerings

Even @ $1000 if someone was buying a box they could get a decent mid tiered cpu, 256 gig ssd & mainstreme gpu like a radeon 7870 in a custom built box.

[MARSTG]

heck, Intel HD 2500 was playing NFSHP2010 @ 1024x768 at 35FPS but HD 4000 will be good even on modern games with lower resolutions.

[Marute]

So what you are saying is that Intel HD Graphics should be perfectly fine, but it wouldn't hurt with a dedicated if I'd happen to stumple upon a laptop with one? :) Any modern dedicated GPU will be an improvement to the HD Graphics?

What line of AMD CPU's should I be looking for? The reason I went with Intel is because I know more about their products and I like their technologies such as turbo boost and hyper threading.

Oh, and is there any point in getting anything better than an i3 in a laptop for everyday use? Will an i5 be overkill?

[YukonTrooper]

i3 will be plenty for what your friend needs.

[Bond007]

For everyday use an i3 is fine, but obviosly an i5 is faster. Some low end dedicated cards in laptops are around the same performance as the integrated ones, so ensure you check it out if it has dedicated.