ATI's Mobility Radeon 9700 - What's in a name?
by Andrew Ku on February 3, 2004 12:50 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 - Where can I get one?
So, with all the hubbub, you're probably wondering where you can get a notebook with ATI's Mobility Radeon 9700. There are several notebook partners with whom ATI has launched today. We should clarify that, just because ATI or NVIDIA "launches" with a system vendor that doesn't mean a design win. You should expect a design win from the launching partners, but most often, system manufacturers hold off announcing the actual notebook model until they are ready to ship, which means ATI and NVIDIA need to hold off claiming that design win.
(Click to enlarge.)
Today, ATI is launching with Acer, Gericom, Alienware, Voodoo PC, Medion, RockDirect, Packard-Bell, Fujitsu-Siemens, Samsung, LG, Targa, Wistron, Clevo (the guys who make the notebooks that were pre-announcing the Mobility Radeon 9700 in the US), ECS, FIC, Quanta, Compal, Uniwill, and Asus. The first shipping notebooks will not be in the US market; instead, they will be in Europe. ATI and a few launching partners are announcing design wins, since the European market will experience the availability of Mobility Radeon 9700 based notebooks as of today. These notebooks will start to ship immediately, but we should make this clear: do not expect to get one of these unless you are actually located in Europe.
Interestingly enough, it seems that there is somewhat of a shortage of M11 chips for a few of the OEMs and ODMs. This has led to the inability for many of them to ship out notebooks on their original timeline or in the large quantities originally intended. So basically, several of them have delayed their product announcement and shipment by a little over two weeks, or have cut down on the initial quantity. ATI has already responded to the large demand for its chips, so this is a very temporary issue that will only affect some of the launch partners for a few weeks.
There is one BIG notebook manufacturer that has not announced along side with ATI, but will do so and ship in approximately a week. We can't say more than that for the moment, but it is definitely a design win that ATI will be touting. We will cover more on it when the time comes.
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 – All the details
NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5700 – And so the tumbleweed rolled...
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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.