ATI's Mobility Radeon 9700 - What's in a name?
by Andrew Ku on February 3, 2004 12:50 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne is the only other title where we hit a sub 10% margin in difference between the two ATI mobile GPUs. As we ramp up from 1024x768 to 1280x1024, the Mobility Radeon 9700 doubles its margin (7% to 14%). Both GPUs can handle this game very well, and we are still talking about reasonable frame rates for both GPUs even at 1600x1200. The fact that the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro hits just under 50fps in 1280x1024 is telling of that.
Note that the Mobility Radeon 9700 handled performance degradation better here, similar to our Call of Duty benchmark scores. As the resolution was increased, the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro dropped 17% in comparison to the Mobility Radeon 9700's 11% decline.
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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.