Louise Dreadlow

I've been using SL on a laptop for a few years now. It has got to the stage where the performance is far too inadequate and I have to upgrade. I need a laptop rather than a desktop for the mobility. I don't have a set price in mind but my budget is limited and the higher end machines will certainly be out of range. I've been looking at a few notebooks and have a general idea of what I want. I'm thinking of going for something with an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, 1TB of hard disk space and Windows 10. All fine so far, but when it comes to graphic cards I start to get lost. For a desktop machine I'm told something like a Nvidia GeForce GTX970 is standard, but in a laptop that would probably be way out of my price range. So I'm looking for something less powerful, and this is where my eyes start to glaze over. Much of the information I've come across is out of date. I've tried looking at comparison charts but the figures mean very little to me (Nvidia's numbering system is particularly confusing), and I don't know how to relate them to the SL system requirements. Taking into account the processor and RAM I've selected, how much difference does having a good graphic card make? What should I be looking for? Are the standard cards on notebooks good enough to handle SL, or is it possible I could end up with a notebook that has enough processing power and enough RAM, but can't handle SL because the graphic card isn't powerful enough? And how much flexibility should I allow for to accommodate future SL upgrades? I'm sorry there's rather a lot there but I'm anxious to avoid making a mistake.