What are the differences between the ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 and the ATI Mobility FireGL V5250?

Question

I'm considering getting a new laptop soon (probably once Windows 7 comes out), and I'm looking at the Lenovo T400 series, which has the ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 graphics card. Everything else is a direct upgrade, however my current laptop has the ATI Mobility FireGL V5250.

I know that my current card has 512MB of RAM built into it, while the Radeon that I'd get only has 256MB, but I don't do a lot of hard-core gaming or graphics work. However, I do occassionally game and watch videos on my laptop, along with using my laptop as a TV through an external TV tuner. What should I know about the ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 before I purchase a laptop with one?

Answer 1

The FireGL is made for CAD (Computer Aided Design) and DCC (Digital Content Creation). The Radeon is made for typical computer use such as gaming and multimedia.

They both can do what the other does maybe not quite as good, but you probably won't notice a difference.

Answer 2

For gaming you'll want the Radeon it's primarily a 3D accelerator (designed for gaming/multimedia).

The FireGL series is primarily a 2D accelerator (designed as the previous poster mentioned for CAD/CAM etc).

In NVIDIA terms these are the GeForce and Quadro series respectively.