Intel Extreme Graphics vs Any Video Card

Hi,

I wanted to buy a laptop, thin and light. But these laptops usually come with a built in Intel(R) Extreme Graphics chipset and do not allow a option to insert a separate video card like ATI Radeon or Nvidia.

My question is:
What is this Intel Extreme Graphics. Is it like just another card or is it just a chipset? Does it have its own memory?

How important is a graphics card for me? I nearly never play games but sure would like to watch movies on my laptop.

Thanks,
Vishal

I have a Dell Inspiron 500m with Intel Extreme Graphics 2.

I love it. It does everything very smoothly, and it's still powerful enough to play some of the previous generation 3D games (Quake 3). Even then, it consumes very little power so it won't heat up your laptop like a stove when doing some graphically intense stuff and gives you long battery life.

For a thin & light laptop, there's hardly anything better.

If extreme grahpics was a car, it would be a ford festiva. But unless your in a rush, itll get you to where you have to go.

Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT

Yeh, that's why I can't understand people buying an old Honda rather than a new KIA.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

Yeh, but if you get behind the truck and put it in nuetral, you can turn the engine off and get a free ride off the draft!

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

Like a Festiva leaching power from the draft of a truck, integrated graphics leach power off the system. But whereas you're using wasted energy from the truck, the only time that happens in the computer is if you had far more computer than you needed for the task to begin with (such as a P4 3.0GHz running MS Office).

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>