Discrete vs. Integrated Graphics

Question: I'm looking at purchasing the ThinkPad T61, and I'm confused about Discrete Graohics or Intergrated Graphics card? The Discrete Graphics is kind of expensive. Is it worth it? What differences will I notice?

Intergrated Graphics card means video integrated with the laptop motherboard. Thus, it uses a portion of system memory and relatively slows down the laptop performance.

Discrete Graphics has its own (dedicated) memory to process graphics data. It supports multiple display and TV-out. The dedicated memory for Graphics doesn’t process other data, so the performance is relatively faster.

Why Discrete Graphics costs more? First of all, the manufacture needs to purchase the separate hardware including Graphics chip and memory. Second, the manufacture needs to design an interface to a Discrete Graphics chip to provide the best video performance.

Users will notice the performance difference between Discrete and Integrated chips when running graphics-intensive tasks. For example – video game, graphic design, photo viewing/processing, video editing and online/offline movie/DVD playing.

Lenovo T61 comes with three options of Graphics chips –

Inter X3100 – Integrated Graphics chip
nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M - Discrete Graphic chip with 128 MB dedicated memory
nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M - Discrete Graphic chip with 256 MB dedicated memory

Among all three options, nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M absolutely provides the best performance and is the most expensive one. That’s why T61P are all configured using nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M.