GeForce Go 6800 Ultra: Powering the Dell Inspirion XPS Gen 2
by Derek Wilson on February 24, 2005 3:04 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Test
Unfortunately, we are somewhat limited in our ability to compare this solution to comparable notebook or desktop systems.We don't have an Alviso based desktop solution (and we haven't seen many Alviso based notebooks yet either). This means we won't be able to compare cards running on the same platform with the Go 6800 Ultra. We also haven't gotten our hands on a Mobility Radeon X800 systems with Alviso in them.
So, what we are going to look at today is the highest end notebook we've yet seen (in terms of graphics speed) compared against the high end desktop configuration we used when testing SLI graphics. This will serve to give us a good picture of where ultra high end notebook performance falls with respect to ultra high end desktop performance. As the core clock on the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra is higher than most desktop GeForce 6800 Ultras (400 to 425 depending on the vendor), it's very possible we could see some interesting numbers come out of this. Of course, the notebook's Pentium M 2.13GHz processor will limit the performance of the system compared to our Athlon 64 4000+ desktop. We aren't likely to see the Go 6800 Ultra paired with anything but a Pentium M due to the TDP requirements of vendors. Mobile Pentium 4 and Mobile Athlon 64 parts are still too hot to be able to economically run a Go 6800 Ultra as well.
The test setup for the Dell Inspirion XPS we tested was as follows:
Intel Pentium M 2.13GHz
Intel Alviso based motherboard
1GB DDR2 533 4-4-4-12
NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 Ultra (clocked at 450/1100)
Windows XP Service Pack 2 with DirectX 9.0c
NVIDIA ForceWare 75 series Drivers
Our desktop nForce 4 system was configured thusly:
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4 SLI) Motherboard
1GB OCZ DDR400 3-3-3-10
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra PCI Express (clocked at 400/1100)
NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT PCI Express (clocked at 350/1000)
Windows XP Service Pack 2 with DirectX 9.0c
NVIDIA ForceWare 69.33 Drivers
The only unknown factor here is the performance difference beween the 69.xx and 75.xx ForceWare revisions. The Dell is the only notebook we've tested with a 75 series driver.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
48 Comments
View All Comments
sbuckler - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
How much memory has it got - from the drop off at high res I suspect 128mb, it might have been nice to mention that in the article.#16 - you can get a audigy 2 card for laptops now.
whooosh - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
how about comparing to other Geforce GO chipsets?ZoZo - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
Why does does this review leave the impression that the Pentium M 2.13Ghz is weak?From benchmarks I've seen here and there, it's actually out there with the top lot in performance, sometimes beating the most powerful Pentium 4 EE!
mickyb - Friday, February 25, 2005 - link
First off...you could have put the previous M28 benchies with this article from November along with the original GeForce 6800 Go. Looks like this new nVidia card might be competitive. If I were nVidia, I would have been worried after the November article. Second, I would like to see the Star Wars and BattleField: Vietnam benchies. It looks to be the one that shows ATI dominating.This will look messed up with prop fonts.
Game ATI M28 6800Go 6800GoUltra
Doom3 47.6 51.4 83.2
HL-2 88.4 77.8 101.9
UT2004 48 45.8 57.5
Halo 52.9 46.8 55.6
Wolf 74.1 76.5 N/A
FarCry 87.4 65.3 88.5
Sims2 41 39 N/A
Battle:Viet 152 127 N/A
StarWars 63 33 N/A
DerekWilson - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
deathwalker --We haven't had any comparable gaming laptops in our labs.
Also, the review is of the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra, not of the Dell Inspirion XPS Gen 2.
...
I'm sure the notebook was using the higher speed HD, but that generally doesn't make a difference in the gaming experience except in load times.
The Pentium M should be more resilient to DDR2 than the P4. The low latency cache is what counts.
deathwalker - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Oh ya..if forgot to mention in my previous post..Tom's Hardware has just posted a reiview on this system also...they did it right. Compared it to other high end gaming laptops.deathwalker - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Dissapointing review...if i want a Gaming Laptop I want a review to compare it to other Gaming Latop's. Comparing it to desktops sure doesnt answer any questions of mine!! I think you missed the boat.bobsmith1492 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Wow, that's an amazing sounding machine; pics???Since when did they make DDR2 for the P-M? I would think its high latency would rather offset the M's best strength - low latency; although, it does retain its cache I suppose.
So is the mobile 6800 ultra a 12 or 16 pipe card? By the looks of it it must be 16, or else that extra 50MHz is doing a lot of work.
kmmatney - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Tom's Hardware showed the system running Forceware 75.80. You can get 75.90 from here:http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=999
I can't find 75.80 anywhere...
kmmatney - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#18, I doubt they much choice - they had to use whatever drivers came with the laptop 9and those would obviously be optimized for the new moobile GPU). It would be interesting to see if the drivers help out desktop cpu's, though.