Does anyone know if there is a website which can tell a laptop user where his / her mobile CPU and GPU stand in the bewilderingly confusing hierarchy of CPUs and GPUs (desktop AND laptop) ? The reason why I ask is that I own a gaming laptop which was cutting-edge about three years ago but is now getting on a bit and it's getting harder to be sure whether or not it will run newer games. Whenever a game is released the published system requirements (CPU and GPU in particular) are (understandably) for desktop computers, but knowing what the mobile equivalent is isn't obvious (to me anyway !)

My CPU is an i7-3720QM. The nearest desktop equivalent is, I believe, an i5-2400, though I may be mistaken. This is the "recommended" (not minimum) CPU required to play Pillars of Eternity.

My GPU is a NVidia Geforce GTX 680m. As far as I've been able to ascertain, this is roughly equivalent (perhaps slightly inferior) to a desktop GTX 660 or 570, though, again, I may be wrong.

I found the CanYouRUNIt website and it's very helpful, but it would be even better to find a website which shows you where your mobile CPU and GPU stand in the grand scheme of things.

Cheers triock. Hopefully I can understand all the info on these two sites. It all used to be so much simpler...

A website like that would be useful. Only one I knew has removed the Mobile cards :-(

I have known for a long time that graphics cards with that M added to the name are only 50% as fast as the M-less desktop variants and this is how it has been for many years.

Yes, a GTX 680m is no match for a GTX 680, but as a laptop user you want to know what the equivalent is and the information may be out there but it's scattered around and not easy to find. CPUs are even more bewildering.

Check those links:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-680M.72679.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphics-Cards.13849.0.html

Thanks. The first link shows me just what I wanted to know and confirms where my 680m stands in the pecking order, roughly. The only problem being that the 680m comes in both a 2GB and a 4GB version, and (as usual) it is not stated which version is being ranked. The second link looks useful too - I'll have to work out how to use the options first though. Many thanks :)

I'd say your CPU is almost equivalent to a desktop i7-3770T. Since your QM type i7 is a real quad core CPU with hyper-threading it really is more like a desktop i7 than an i5.

You can control even your CPU. just click on the "benchmark/tech" link on top of the page.

I have actually found a list of CPUs (including mobile versions) which I wrote down (took me ages - I don't own a printer !) and the i7-3770T does not make an appearance. The i7-3770S is included, though, and it ranks higher than my i7-3720QM. I've no idea what the "T" and the "S" refer to, it's really confusing. The i5-2400 is supposedly 5% slower than my CPU, or at least that's what I've written down here ! It's very difficult to know where a mobile CPU ranks in terms of performance when compared with the far more common desktop CPUs.

Also, the CanYouRUNIt website often tells me that my CPU is not fast enough, but doesn't take into account its built-in turbo boost feature. It's very difficult to know whether my machine will be able to handle new games just by look at the published system requirements, though I'm pretty sure The Witcher 3 is out of the question, plus a few others.

Rule of thumb for GPUs is usually that the mobile version is one card behind the desktop (though there are exceptions).

Like the 970m for example would be basically a desktop 680 or equivalent. There might be certain small tweaks between architectures and such, but that's the gist of it.

They're coming out with desktop 980s in mobile form factor, so those are exciting.

NEVER use that site!
I have a LOT of games - acording to that site (last I checked about a year ago) - I cant run any of them.

As to what you are trying to find out - benchmark sites are only useful to a degree - you might be better telling us what your intended use is (ie specific games ior neccesary programs).

I have to admit that I don't understand what you mean by "one card behind". Why is a 970m one card behind a 680 (desktop) ? I really need a table with GPUs listed in rank order to get a clearer picture. There are just too many GPUs and CPUs out there now for the layman to easily understand which is better and which is worse and what all the numbers and letters mean. I have a basic understanding but no more than that. Some games, for instancd, state that they require a Geforce 500-series GPU. But there is a big difference between, say, a 590 and a 550.

I have really enjoyed my first foray into mobile gaming. I will own up and admit that I'm an older gamer with very little technical knowledge who has always wanted to own an overpriced Alienware machine, so I just decided to go for it. I would advise anyone considering going down the same route to invest in a decent pair of headphones because laptops can be noisy beasts. At the moment, though, my obsolescent machine just purrs - it just never gives me any trouble at all which can't be resolved with a pair of headphones.

I'm not treating what CanYouRUNIt says as gospel truth, but I do need some kind of a guide. I'll take heed of your warning though, cheers. I also tend to be wary even of games whose recommended specs are close to those of my machine. I would never buy a game whose minimum specs are similar to my system specs. Even then I will do plenty of googling to be sure I'm not about to waste my money.

There isn't one specific game which I'm thinking about, but Far Cry 3 would be one, and also Far Cry 3 : Blood Dragon. I have a Windows 7 laptop which I love, but I know it's becoming obsolete and I just want to know what I can and can't expect to play on it in the next 18-24 months or so.

Sorry, I should have made that clearer : I intend to keep my Windows 7 laptop for at least 18-24 months and I just want to know which games old AND new I can expect it to be able to handle. But when you have a laptop and all system requirements are stated only for desktops, it is hard to know whether your computer will be able to handle a game or not. It was a lot simpler back in days of yore when there were only a dozen CPUs and GPUs and there is precious little info available about how mobile hardware compares with desktop hardware, nor do the the numbers and letters (GPU series etc.) make any intuitive sense - to me, at any rate !

there are none.

edit: ok I see what you meant. you were more after finding out where laptop hardware compares to desktop hardware.

there's things you have to keep in mind.

processors in laptops and gpus, are constrained to very aggressive thermal environments. they run at lower voltages, are packaged for and matched to boards designed for very tight thermal constraints. often times they are volted much lower and have much lower clocks. the same is true for GPUs but it's even bigger a factor there because GPUs tend to get much hotter much easier and are something for which there is a tradition of having access to a much higher grade of cooling. what that means is that while there is a measure of consistency on the CPU side of things, and you can get rough ideas of what something does compared to something else, when it comes to GPUs there are no guarantees. at all. even with benchmarks.

why? well, laptops are designed not around TDPs but "SDPs". it's not a simple matter of saying "this processor is going to consume this much energy and out out this much heat at peak operating level. design around this". in laptops, they've been using thermal sensors and scaling to "cheat". the processor might have stages where, depending on the total heat in the chassis, it will progressively scale its performance down. it might be set to start scaling down after a certain period of high activity even if it still has favourable thermal conditions just to maintain those thermal conditions should some other factor start affecting like a disc drive or GPU or CPU.

in general, the top of the line I7 will compete with a desktop i3.

with GPUs, nothing is certain. it often depends on GPU cooling that is usually custom to every model series. could even depend on how lucky you got on your particular processor's bin.