ATI's Mobility Radeon 9700 - What's in a name?
by Andrew Ku on February 3, 2004 12:50 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
The Test
This time around, we weren't able to arrange an ATI and NVIDIA head-to-head because of the timeline of the two products. Secondly, we would be highly sensitive to pitting the NV36M/NV36M Ultra against M11, unless we found a notebook that implements both in a modular graphics format.Considering many of the games that we use are at least partially CPU bound, there would be no other way to render a judgment without leaving a shred of questionability. The other option for this would be to use a reference mobile card in a desktop system. This is basically a mobile GPU slapped on an AGP card for QA testing purposes, which would be duplicating the scenario for testing desktop cards where the GPU itself can be isolated for testing. This is the only way that we could compare the Mobility Radeon 9700 against the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro to show if there is a performance increase.
As we have noted in the past, the problem with using reference cards have been two-fold: first, we have almost no idea what to run the clocks of the reference card at; and the second, the reference cards are, in many cases, pre-fabricated prototypes. Our benchmarks setup, therefore, is designed to be reflective of one of the upcoming Mobility Radeon 9700 based desktop replacement notebooks by using a desktop platform with reference cards (M10 and M11). We ran the Mobility Radeon 9700 at clock speeds that are identical to the unannounced design win, which will be introduced into the market within a week and a half.
| Windows XP Professional Desktop Test System | |||||||
| CPU(s) | 2.8GHz Pentium 4 (Prescott) | ||||||
| Motherboard(s) | Asus P4P800-VM | ||||||
| Memory | 1GB DDR400 | ||||||
| Hard Drive | 80GB Seagate 8MB 7200RPM (SATA) | ||||||
| Video Card(s) | ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB 128-bit DDR ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB 128-bit DDR |
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| Ethernet | Onboard Ethernet Adapter | ||||||
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional SP1 | ||||||
| Video Drivers | ATI Catalyst 4.1 build | ||||||
For those curious readers, we ran several benchmarks on this unannounced notebook to verify its performance in comparison with our desktop configuration and Mobility Radeon 9700 reference card. There was no notable margin of difference between the two. Due to the NDAs, we can't say the exact clocks that we ran the Mobility Radeon 9700, but they are of high-end spectrum at which ATI is mandating the GPU to be run. As for the M10, we ran it at the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro requirements, which made it slightly slower in the memory clock department compared to our Mobility Radeon 9600 and GeForce FX Go5650 head to head.
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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.