ATI Mobility Radeon 9800: Notebooks Get Next Generation Graphics
by Derek Wilson on August 19, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Test
All of our MR9800 tests were performed in a retail version of Dell's newest XPS desktop replacement notebook, and are compared against desktop graphics cards that were run in our standard GPU test platform.| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon 64 3400+ |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 (2:2:3:6) |
| Hard Drives: | Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB PATA |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | VIA Hyperion 4in1 4.51 |
| Video Card(s): | ATI Mobility Radeon 9800 ATI Radeon X800 Pro ATI Radeon 9800 XT ATI Radeon 9700 Pro |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst Beta (MR 9800) ATI Catalyst 4.6 (x800) ATI Catalyst 4.4 (9800/9700) |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Power Supply: | PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 510 |
| Motherboards: | FIC K8T800 (754 pin) |
The specifications for the notebook in which we tested the MR9800 are as follows:
Mobility Radeon 9800 (256MB)
3.4GHz Pentium-4 (Northwood)
2GB DDR400 RAM
80GB HD
The clock speeds of the MR9800 in this notebook are set to ATI default spec: 350MHz core, 300MHz mem. As the memory is DDR, we see a 600MHz effective data rate on the memory for this part.
Unfortunately, our desktop system is generally faster than the laptop. In order to really see the relative performance of the MR9800 to the X800 (or any other part for that matter), we would need to test those graphics cards in a slower Intel desktop platform. If there is demand for this, we may look into doing so in the future. For now, the comparison of this DTR to our desktop test system serves to show the relative performance of the system to an actual desktop computer targeted at gaming. In order to help alleviate this comparison problem, we refrain from including anything other than ATI parts in our graphs. The differences in performance between the MR9800 and desktop ATI parts will not be as big as it appears when compared in comparable systems.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
31 Comments
View All Comments
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 :(