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News and Reviews About Notebook Graphics Chips
~~ William Warren, Emmanuel Computer Consulting

Notebook graphics chips finally coming of age

Many who have notebooks and want to play games either know or are rudely awakened to find that their on-board graphics can barely show Microsoft Word much less do gaming. That is changing as the two graphics behemoths Nvidia and ATI have released several new mobile chips. They perform on the lines of each company’s mainstream desktop parts so now gaming is not an issue of "Can I run PacMan?" but a whole new swath of games is now available to those with the new generation notebooks. Here are a few links:

ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 reviewed: (this test also includes some desktop cards and the comparable NVIDIA mobile part)

A Quick Summary:

With the launch of its new flagship mobile GPU, the Mobility Radeon 9700, ATi has closed the 3D performance gap between notebooks and comparably desktop systems even further. The results make one thing unmistakably clear: A desktop PC with a year old graphics card such as the Radeon 9600 can't hold a candle to notebooks built around the Mobility Radeon 9700.

(Toms Hardware.com)

So, the bottom line is: "does the M11 deserve the Mobility Radeon 9700 name, which ATI has given it?" Based on our results and experience with the M11 GPU, we would say that the Mobility Radeon 9700 name is backed up well enough. Though, we certainly won't disagree that ATI was not helping itself with the Mobility Radeon 9600's three-tier naming system.

On the performance end, we should make it clear that the Mobility Radeon 9700 will provide performance increases in basically all scenarios over the Mobility Radeon 9600 trio. This is a benefit from the low-k process of the R360 core that the Mobility Radeon 9700 is based upon.

In AA and AF settings, the Mobility Radeon 9700 will perform better than the Mobility Radeon 9600 trio (in our case, an average of about 25%), but it will not increase its performance margin or shorten its performance degradation when resolutions are increased. For example, if you are playing Jedi Academy with a Mobility Radeon 9600 GPU (in any of its derivatives) and you turn on AA and AF or increase the resolution, the degrade margin you get from the higher settings will basically be the same for the Mobility Radeon 9700 GPU (assuming the platform is the same). This is because the number of pipes and architecture between M10 and M11 is very similar.

(anandtech.com, author: Andrew Ku)

Not everyone cares or wants the latest in graphics hardware. There are "older" versions of both ATI and NVIDIA’s parts, as well as the Mobility Radeon 9000 and NVIDIA’s GeForce4 440 Go, which are previous generation parts:

Anandtech’s Mobility Radeon 900 and Nvidia GeForce4 440 Go Review:

Summary:

ATI is really pushing the envelope on video cards with the announcement of the Mobility Radeon 9000. Not only does the chip bring to market some needed speed and features, it is also available in notebook systems as of today. Both of these aspects of the Mobility Radeon 9000 make it the mobile graphics chip of choice today as well as the foreseeable future. Let's go over a bit of what we learned.

First off, in many gaming situations the Mobility Radeon 9000 is able to offer substantial performance increases over the GeForce4 440 Go, on the order of around 20-25%. In others benchmarks, like two specific levels in Unreal Tournament 2002 and in at least one level of Serious Sam 2, the performance increase is not so pronounced (5-10%). The times that the performance difference is pronounced can mean the difference between playing a game smooth or choppy at a high resolution. The times when the performance difference is not as large, you are still left with the highest performing mobile GPU available, although by a fairly trivial amount.

Secondly, the largest advantage that the Mobility Radeon 9000 has over its competitors is its DirectX 8.1 compatibility. The introduction of pixel and vertex shaders is a huge step forward for the mobile community and further closes the gap between desktops and notebooks. DirectX 8 compatibility is necessary if you wish to play the games of tomorrow and since a laptop video chip can't just be swapped out for a new one, getting the best mobile GPU on the market at the time of purchase is very important if you like your 3D games.

(Anandtech.com, author: Matthew.Witheiler)

What does this come down to? When buying a notebook make sure to find out exactly which graphics chip is in the machine. There is no reason to accept sub-standard graphics performance when buying a notebook anymore; especially considering that there are even "older" versions of everything mentioned here, namely the Mobility Radeon 7500. So if the graphics do not say GeForce Go or Mobility Radeon, I would seriously re-evaluate your purchase if you plan to do anything other than office applications on your notebook.

William Warren is a 20-year veteran of the computer industry. He is completely self-taught, having no formal training, but taught himself through reading and hands-on experience. His main focus is computer/networking hardware, installation, and repair, as well as network and computer security. He is also the owner of a soon-to-be-live startup computer consulting firm, Emmanuel Computer Consulting, http://www.emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com, which does computer/network/security consulting for residences and businesses in the Frederick/Brunswick, Maryland area. 
email: hescominsoon@emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com