Toshiba Satellite L645D: Mobile AMD at 3GHz

Still Not Enough to Game

At this point you should be expecting these results: the HD 4200/4250 just isn't powerful enough to run modern games at 768p. That said, reviewing the L645D gives us an opportunity to at least gauge how much CPU power can affect gaming performance with the HD 4200/4250 as well as pad out our results for two recent bench inductees: Mafia II and Metro 2033.

At 768p the GPU is too heavily taxed for any improvement in CPU performance to pick up slack; the only game that shows any improvement is the notoriously CPU-limited StarCraft II; everything else performs basically on par. Notice how NVIDIA's dismal GeForce 310M, the subject of endless ire among AnandTech staff, still offers a substantial improvement. I've said it before and I'll say it again (many times no doubt): Llano can't get here soon enough.

These are all recent titles, of course, and if you go back several years you can certainly find older games that will run fine on HD 4250. Jarred is working on a roundup of sorts to pit AMD's Brazos, HD 4225, and HD 4250 against Intel's GMA 4500MHD, HD Graphics, and HD Graphics 3000 with a suite of older/less demanding games. Generally speaking, you'll need low to medium detail with titles from around 2006, or if you want high details you'll need to go back to circa 2003. Stay tuned for that article....