[Laptop] How large a difference does integrated/dedicated gpu make?

[Zhere]

So, title. The two laptops I am looking at are mostly the same, but one got an integrated intel hd 620 and one got a dedicated geforce 940MX. CPU is i7 7500u, 8gb ram LPDDR3, 256gb SSD. Basically the difference is in size, design, price etc. How well will an intel hd 620 run wow at medium settings and how well will a 940MX run wow at medium settings? Will 20man raids be realistic on medium settings with an intel hd 620?

[Denpepe]

The difference is huge, if you get a good dedicated GPU like a GTX 1050, the 940 mx you mentioned will not be that much better as it is a multimedia GPU not gaming.

You might be able to do 20 man raids on an integrated GPU though on low would be more advisable I think also keep in mind that wow likes a strong CPU which i would not call the 7500u which is a 2 core 15w CPU

[Zhere]

The difference is huge, if you get a good dedicated GPU like a GTX 1050, the 940 mx you mentioned will not be that much better as it is a multimedia GPU not gaming.

So in the specific case of 940mx vs. hd620, just staying with a hd620 is not going to be a huge step down from a 940mx?

I have another desktop which will be used for anything heavier than what this laptop can handle, so it won't be a large issue going for a HD 620, the 940mx is only worth it to me if it's a considerable step up, which it does not seem to be from what I've heard and won't really enable a lot more options for use of the computer.

[chazus]

I would definitely go with the 940mx. There are certain things a dedicated video card has that an integrated simply does not. Some games require these features to run (this is hit and miss, so its hard to name any one game that may or may not work).

The other part is that on CPU heavy games (Like wow), having an integrated GPU also means that the cpu and gpu are sharing in some places, so one or the other can't run at full steam.

[Svisalith]

That laptop can't run games well from integrated graphics because the CPU and the iGPU share the same power budget and that power budget is way too small on the ultra-low-power laptop CPU's like the one that you have selected.

The guaranteed speed on the integrated graphics for these models is one third of the maximum speed and they spend a lot of time down there due to power throttling.

A regular class laptop CPU has 2-3x as much power to work with (35, 45w instead of 15w) which is used to avoid massive throttling - they're usually labeled HQ nowadays like the 7300hq or better / similar from last gen. If you don't have one of those then even a pretty low tier dedicated card can outperform the cpu and iGPU because it will have its own power budget and it won't get choked to death or choke the CPU when it tries to do anything.