Graphic Card

nanga

Which would b a good graphic card for a laptop

1.83 ghz, 3 gb ram

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT

use would be basic home purpose...music.movies web surfing and casual games

JDMurray

The 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT is the best of that bunch. I stay away form Intel's integrated graphics chip sets because they tend to be more of a drag on the CPU and RAM than nVidia and ATI solutions.

Schluep

To provide an adequate answer you will need to define good. If you need a simple laptop for e-mail and web browsing the integrated chip would be sufficient if you have enough RAM and a decent processor.

Being that you are on these forums however you may be doing things such as:

Virtualization
Using graphic intensive software such as GIS or Survey/Design software
Running many programs at once over multiple monitors for Administration
Gaming

For any of the above you would benefit greatly from one of the other video cards. Personally I have a GeForce 8600M GT in my laptop and am very glad that I do. As JDMurray mentioned it is clearly the best out of the ones listed if those are your only choices based on the manufacturer you are going there. There are other ATI models that are competitive with the NVIDIA ones so you don't neccessarily need to be locked in with those options alone.

Keep in mind that laptops do not have as much space for fans and airflow so they will run hotter as a result. If you are taxing your system or need giving it room to vent you will run into heat issues which can be damaging to your video card and other hardware. Also, the 8600M GT (the M is for mobile) in your laptop will not be as powerful as a a GeForce 8600 GT that you would put in a desktop computer.