Hi  
 Basically the wife is nagging me for a laptop and TGGA has been helping out with graphics issues but i thought i would throw this one out to the forum.
 So I think I know that a  X2500 will eat a HD 2400XT as far as FPS goes based on 3dm scores from a comparison site, so it could be wrong.
 But I was wondering if the other features the HD card have make it worth considering (or does it not have the decoder like the desktop one does) also are DX10.1 and the tessilation unit worth taking into consideration.
 We are only be talking the Sims 2 so nothing too taxing. Well Sims 3 i guess when that comes out  .
 I was going to settle for a lesser GPU but have seen some laptops that are not badly priced with the above mentioned chips in and wanted to be sure before i went and got it wrong again.  
 
    Thanks in advance
            Mactronix

get the best graphics your budget allows in your size desired.  
everything else (memory, HDD, CPU) can be upgraded later. even if you graphics card is MXM, and therefor upgradeable, I hear its a royal pain to do so quite often.
 
as far as x2500 vs. HD 2400XT, I'm guessing the X2500 is a slowed 2600, and I'd guess have all the bell and whistles of the 2400
 
I manages to play NWN2 and Witcher on a 2300HD laptop (I think a slowed 2400HD, it was DX10), so the sim series should be safe with either of them.

 Thanks for that. The x2500 is basically a 1600/1700 card according to a comparison site i was looking at. Also it dosent list DX10 etc as a spec when comparing them so I still have the same problem really although thanks to your reply i do now know that the HD 2400XT  would game ok if i went that route.
 Thanks  
    Mactronix
 

Looks like the HD2400 would be the better option, especially if you want DX10 support. What's your price range for the laptop? I'll see what I can scrounge up.

X2500 is essentially an X1600/1700, and that's OK, so it depends on the application as to which will perform better. The mobile HD2400Xt is memory castrated and texture weak (much less texel processing power than the X1600), but it does have significantly more shader processors, and has twice the ROPs. So it will play differently to different games and settings of course, and while the HD2400XT has the UVD, it's utility is still currently a bit limited under the current driver implementation where the HD2400 series misses out on alot of additional features.
 
Overall I'd say for the settings you're going to be using (DX9) the X2500 will likely outperform the HD2400XT more often than not, with only a very few pixel/vertex shader heavy exceptions.
 
If the HD2400XT only had 128bit memory I'd be more inclined to give it the nod, but texture and memory limited I'm favouring the X2500.

 Thanks for clearing that up for me, I was a bit concerned that maybe the 2400 was going to be cut down somehow.
   Mactronix

a good chart of mobile gpus ---> http://mycomputerlaptops.com/VideoCard.html

It's a decent chart, but it's a bit dated

Yeah it's also missing items and wrong in places.