Which graphics card is better?

Several reasons for this.
A: Nvidia's got massive thermal issues, you can look up BumpGate if you are bored one day.
B: Intel's mobile systems require you buy both an I5, the junk GPU the I5 has inside, and then you need yet another graphics chip to handle performance if you are selling to the non-ultra-lite market
C: Nvidia's pretty much abandoned the AMD market.

Check again deary. AMD's the current graphics partner.

*points at the Radeon logo at the bottom of the City of Heroes home page*

I, personally, have gotten CoH with the Ultra Mode engine update working across:
Radeon 9600
Radeon x1950 Pro
RadeonHD 2600 Mobile
RadeonHD 3870
RadeonHD 4850
RadeonHD 5770

GeforceFX 5600
Geforce 6800 Mobile
Geforce 7900 GT KO*
Geforce GTS 250

*(the GT KO died during the beta test)

Well, a quick look at my posts will tell you what I think on this.

Right now, there's no way around it. If you buy an Nvidia card for a desktop, you are getting ripped off.

However... there's a slight problem that actually would lead me to buy an Nvidia card in a laptop.

It's found on TechArp's Mobile GPU comparison. They only list shader values, no texture values... so it isn't a fair comparison.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=98

ATI performance: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=98&pgno=3
Nvidia Performance: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=98&pgno=7

The most powerful ATi mobile chip, the HD 5870, only pushes 28,000 megatexels.
The most Powerful Nvidia mobile chip, the GTX 285, pushes 38,400 megatexels.

In fact, all of Nvidia's Mobile GTX chips absolutely crush the AMD opposition in terms of raw shader power. The GTX 260 pushes 30,800 megatexels.

Okay, yes, the AMD Radeon 5x00 chips will do DX11 / OpenGL 4.0.

And yes, AMD did do a Crossfire Edition of the Mobility 4850, which actually uses less power and puts off less heat than the mobile GTX 285. Which is great, if Crossfire supports the game you play.

Right now... Crossfire does nothing to City of Heroes.

Basically... if it was my money on the line, and I didn't care about things like heat, power consumption, or battery life... I would buy one of the Nvidia Mobile GTX 2xx chips over a Radeon Mobile.

The big question for you is: will these chips still be on the market when August / September rolls around and you actually get around to buying.

Given that Nvidia has End-of-Lifed the entire GTX series, it's doubtful that the GTX 200 mobile series will be available in quantities that won't make your wallet scream.

Given that Nvidia can't get the run-away thermals of Fermi under control either, it's not likely we'll see a Fermi based solution hit either. That may take another Die-Shrink to the Fermi chip that TMSC and UMC won't have ready till 2011 at the earliest.

Basically then, if you wind up buying in August or September, your only performance option at that point might only be the Radeon laptops.

Again. CoX currently says AMD is best for the game.

Not any longer than the Nvidia issues. Drop by the Tech support forum sometime.

I lurk here all the time. I just stating my thoughts (which do not add up to much lately). I just know changing builders during a building of a house can lead to problems. I 'm just saying.

Well.

I'm not going to tell you no...

The quad-core is only clocked at 1.6ghz... and well... take a look at some of the more recent other computer games that have come out, such as Just Cause 2, Alpha Protocol, Aliens Versus Predator, BioShock 2, or Resident Evil 5.

Most of these games require processor clock speeds over 2ghz.

However, the 720q does have a Turbo Boost mode that cranks dual-core clock speed to around 2.8ghz: http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43122

Now, I don't actually have one of these newer I7's on hand, so I don't know how well this turbo boost actually... works. I'm not entirely sure that's going to still be viable 3, 4 years down the line. I also can't tell you what the battery life is like. I also don't know if the mobile HD 5870 is really going to be able to push DX11 / OpenGL 4.0 content in 1920*1080 which is the laptops resolution.

On paper, the Mobile 5870 is weaker than the Desktop 5770, but more powerful than the Desktop 5750. It's still powerful... ... I'm just not confident in telling you it's powerful enough for 3 to 4 years.

****

I can tell you that Asus makes good laptops. I'm using one of their F3Ka notebooks myself. I'm actually tempted to point you to Asus's Nvidia versions of this laptop:

Okay, the only one CDW have listed are a GTX 260 with the aging Core 2 Duo mobile processor...

and a 15" I7-720qm with the GTX 260 and a 1366 x 768 screen, the ASUS G51J

I can tell you that an I7 coupled with a GTX 260 at that resolution is pretty much going to drive every single game you'd want to play for a long time. DX10 / OpenGL 3.x support won't be going away anytime soon as there are loads of pre-existing Geforce 8000 series, 9000 series, and GT / GTS series cards from Nvidia on the market, never minding the number of RadeonHD 2000, 3000, and 4000 series cards from AMD.

Would I actually turn down a larger screen size for a better garentee of being able to run the games in the native resolution with all details maxed out?

Probably not... I did buy a Clevo D900T...

The only issue encountered is how antialiasing and occlusion don't work well together on 5000 cards. Other than that, it's gravy.

well, 10.2 and 10.3 had other issues. During the beta process some of the copied threads indicated that the developers were asking Ultra Mode testers to use Catalyst 10.1 for RadeonHD Cards, and Catalyst 9-3 / 9-3-1 for previous Radeon Cards. Catalyst 10.4 largely works with Ultra Mode under all circumstances other than the AA + AO.

Catalyst 10.5 brought some regressions across certain cards and certain operating systems (e.g. the most game breaking so far is Just Cause 2 on the 5970). The 10.5 regressions are reportedly fixed in the upcoming 10.6 release.

AA and AO do work properly together across one of the OpenGL 4.0 preview drivers that AMD floated, so there is an upstream fix for this conflict. I don't know why that fix hasn't propagated down to the release driver, but the preview build that I'm aware of has some other issues, mostly related to stability. I don't know if the fix that enables AA and AO to work also causes X-servers to lock up, but it's certainly possible.

Basically, I can see where the sentiment comes from AMD drivers have issues with Ultra Mode. Still, the list of problems and bugged drivers is no worse than the Nvidia side, where the older 173 release driver that supports GeforceFX will cause the skybox to disappear... the overheating laptops... the lack of Ultra Mode atop Linux... the crashes caused by the 256 beta driver... the crashes caused by an older 195 and 197 driver builds... or the broken OpenGL 3.3 preview driver and the botched OpenGL 4.0 driver...

Actually. Looking over it, Nvidia's had far more botched drivers than AMD for this game.

What crashes? I have it running, and the only problems I get are basically graphics card applications like MSI afterburner or GPU-Z while running. Otherwise, it's more than fine.

Link please? Not arguing, just want to see it.

Thanks.

Storm