ATI's Mobility Radeon 9700 - What's in a name?
by Andrew Ku on February 3, 2004 12:50 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5700 - And so the tumbleweed rolled...
While NVIDIA announced their product back in November, we have yet to find a shipping notebook with that design. According to our previous talks, we should have expected to see at least one shipping notebook by the end of January. For whatever reason, the shipping timeline for that specific launch partner of NVIDIA's GeForce FX Go5700 has been delayed a bit, as no specific design wins have been announced. We still expect to see something from Alienware, Compal, FIC, Toshiba's Digital Products Division, Quanta, or Uniwill sometime within a few weeks. Alienware already confirmed that they will be using the Go5700 in their upgradeable graphics module, which depending on how you look at it, it can be considered a design win. However, Alienware is not taking orders or shipping it quite yet.The only thing that is new to the mobile GPU scene (other than ATI's Mobility Radeon 9700) is NV36M Ultra. We don't have many details on this, but it is logical to assume that the official clock speeds of the NV36M Ultra should be higher than NV36M. Because the higher clocks, the NV36M Ultra should be like the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra in the sense of requiring an additional power bridge or operating at the lower disconnected power clocks.
(Click to enlarge.)
The naming of the NV36M may likely be the Go5700 Ultra, similar to the tiering of the desktop family. However, it is interesting that in the release notes of the Forceware 52.16 drivers, there is something called, "GeForce FX Go5750". We aren't quite sure if it is a fluke, but NVIDIA has already abandoned the wire bond package for post-NV35 architectures, which was the basis to name the Go5650.
With this line up, NV36M (Go5700) would then be pitted against the M10 family (Mobility Radeon 9600) while the NV36M Ultra faces off against M11 (Mobility Radeon 9700). Because notebook manufacturers are concerned traditionally with power consumption and thermal emissions over performance, NVIDIA is already at a disadvantage, since the NV36M and NV36M Ultra GPUs are based on NV36 architecture, which was designed to implement an auxiliary power source. This would seem to suggest that NVIDIA will likely compete more aggressively with ATI for desktop replacement design wins, while ATI has an advantage in the traditional and thin and light notebook form factors. The question for desktop replacement notebook manufacturers would then be the benefits of NVIDIA in the context of performance as a trade off for power consumption. The verdict is out and perhaps NVIDIA will have surprises for us. We will touch more on this later.
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Platter - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link
Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the recent official announcement from IBM regarding the 970FX has something to do with ATI's 'Big One™'?PowerBook G5, anyone?
Andrew Ku - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Ok, so to answer some of the inquires posed to me - if you currently own a Mobility Radeon 9600 (one of the three) based notebook, you are more or less set to go. The Mobility Radeon 9700 in the majority of cases behaves like an OC'ed version of its predecessor. However, the M10 is still a very hardy chip seems like it is going to have a long life cycle.As for waiting time, it looks like the bulk of the design wins won't start to be announced until the end of Feb. So go with a M10 based notebook if you plan to buy within the next few months or if you are just looking for the "traditional notebook." It's going to take some time before mainstream sees M11 in their mobile systems. And when it does, M11 will be in DTR notebooks for the most part.
Serp86 - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link
i think that the performance difference is quite enoght to justify calling it a 9700.yomer - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link
So Andrew, Dell is supposed to be one of the bunch in adopting the M9700. Might Dell be called BIG? I wanted to buy an IBM t41p with a mobility firegl T2(based on the 9600) with 128MB. Should I wait and buy a notebook with the new M9700? Is it worth it? How much should we wait in oder to be able to buy one of thoes notebooks here in the US?TrogdorJW - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
#9, it's all marketing. There will be enough people out there that don't know hardware who will just assume the 9700M is the same as the desktop 9700. Too bad for them. The important thing is that the M11 *is* quite a bit faster than the R9600 Mobility Pro, right? Or maybe they should have called the part the Mobility Radeon 9800 SE? ;)CaptainSpectacular - Tuesday, February 3, 2004 - link
ok ATI, what's with the naming scheme. this is absolutely awful! This part has nothing to do with the desktop 9700. I understand the dilema as presented, but what's wrong with 9650? or some other similar variation? the name 9700 is flat out misleading, regardless of how you justify it. This is almost as bad as nvidia calling the NV17 a GeForce4 series card (ok, not nearly that bad, but same idea...)Slappi - Tuesday, February 3, 2004 - link
Well if it is BIG I would think the biggest notebook maker is Toshiba and they are all Nvidia now so....... that would be huge.Do I get a cookie?
Andrew Ku - Tuesday, February 3, 2004 - link
#6 - Sorry, no hints. You can count all the big guys on a single hand, and so there isn't much point in the old'e guess and check.yomer - Tuesday, February 3, 2004 - link
Andrew please! Tell me that the big name is not IBM!!Andrew Ku - Tuesday, February 3, 2004 - link
#2 - From our talks with the OEMs and ODMs, we understand that the pricing between the two chips is basically pocket change for prospective notebooks owners.