ATI Mobility Radeon 9800: Notebooks Get Next Generation Graphics

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• DerekWilson - Thursday, August 19, 2004 - link

  Thanks Dave, I've tweaked the conclusion a little to reflect this fact.
  
  As for the comparison systems, the only way to have a true and fair comparison would have been to grab an AGP version of the mr9800 and dropped it in our desktop system. Since we couldn't do that (or shove other GPUs in the notebook) we went with our standard graphics testbed.
  
  This isn't a direct comparison, and we mentioned that we only used other ATI cards because of that fact. Numbers other than the MR9800 are just for reference.

• DaveBaumann - Thursday, August 19, 2004 - link

  Derek,
  
  Its up to the notebook vendors to qualify the drivers, not ATI. ATI can supply the drivers to the vendors, but its up to the vendors to qualify and release them.

• plewis00 - Thursday, August 19, 2004 - link

  If the graphics drivers are lagging behind, can't you use a driver which works with all cards - like the Omega ones? The same driver works with the Mobility series and the desktop ones, would that help out? I don't think it disables Powerplay either.
  
  Does anyone know what the power drain of the laptop is during a heavy gaming session? Or how long it lasts on batteries?

• devonz - Thursday, August 19, 2004 - link

  I have to reiterate what #13 said. Why did you compare a P4 notebook against an Athlon 64 desktop!?!?!? And why the differing memory configurations!?!?!? Since you are comparing the video cards, it would SEEM like a good idea to get the configurations as close as possible. Certainly you could get closer to parity than THIS choice!
  
  My $.02

• Johnmcl7 - Thursday, August 19, 2004 - link

  I agree, I keep my laptop graphics cards at stock, it's not worth overclocking for a small performance increase, especially when it is usually difficult to replace the graphics card.
  
  John

• nserra - Thursday, August 19, 2004 - link

  #14 Maybe Powerstrip will do, but not recommended....
  
  Besides overclock just to get from 200 to 220, 100 to 110, 50 to 55, 25 to 27 in some games.....
  Just to say that when you already have a lot of fps you will get even more (not needed) and when you have low fps, you will continue to have low fps….
  
  In very resuming words OVERCLOCK does not compensate.

• Johnmcl7 - Thursday, August 19, 2004 - link

  Usually it's just the same as overclocking a desktop graphics card although obviously you have far less headroom.
  
  John

• skunkbuster - Thursday, August 19, 2004 - link

  just out of curiosity, anyone know if it's possible to overclock a video card in a laptop?

• reboos - Thursday, August 19, 2004 - link

  comparing a Athlon64 3200+ w/ 1 gig of RAM to a Northwood 3.2 with 2gb of RAM. I don't get it. :\

• Shalmanese - Thursday, August 19, 2004 - link

  No Doom 3 benchmarks? :o :(