ATI's Mobility Radeon 9700 - What's in a name?

Final Words

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.

The problem with the Mobility Radeon 9600 GPU series is that it has clock limitations in part to its R350 heritage, which is where the Mobility Radeon 9700 comes in. Its design upon a R360 core means that the Mobility Radeon 9700 acts more like its predecessor with an extremely supped clock speeds. The high clock speeds are actually what gives the Mobility Radeon 9700 the"oomph" it needed. With 8 pipelines, the M11 would no doubt have shortened its performance degradation in AA and AF scenarios.

In terms of the performance delta of the desktop Radeon 9600 XT and Radeon 9700, the Mobility Radeon 9700 hits somewhere between the two in the context of the mobile segment, which is why the name is, no doubt, going to be debated. The fact that OverDrive isn't included only adds to the confusion (remember that GDDR2-M has been scrubbed).

The only cases where the Mobility Radeon 9700 does not perform like a ramped up version of the Mobility Radeon 9600 is in non-shader heavy titles without AA and AF, which is why the performance degradation between the two GPUs was scaled differently in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne and Call of Duty. The Mobility Radeon 9700 takes a much smaller percent dive as the resolutions are increased. You can thank the differences that ATI gave M11 when they went to work with the R360 architecture.

So how is ATI shaping up in the mobile market? The Mobility Radeon 9600 trio (code named M10) seems like it will enjoy a very long life cycle similar to the Mobility Radeon 7500. Because the Mobility Radeon 9700 doesn't outright provide large benefits over the Mobility Radeon 9600, we suspect that the Mobility Radeon 9700 will fare much better in the mobile refresh cycles and desktop replacement design wins.

For an OEM or ODM to revamp their production for a GPU and re-qualify the thermal specs, there is a fairly large amount of effort and money that needs to be invested. If a thin and light design is still cool with the use of the Mobility Radeon 9600 GPU, then by all means, the Mobility Radeon 9700 should be something to consider in that refresh cycle. The fact that a sub 4-pound notebook can run Half Life 2 with AA and AF would be very tempting for a prospective notebook owner. So, while the Mobility Radeon 9700 can't benefit from more rendering pipelines, the clock speed increase seems to indicate that the Mobility Radeon 9700 can run HL2 smoothly under the full DX9 path with AA and AF. We don't have results quite yet, but we may soon and will update as necessary.

ATI is more or less painting the notebook market red and white. The most recent report puts ATI at over two-thirds of this market, which puts them in the dominant position.

NVIDIA definitely has its work cut out, and perhaps the NV36 architecture will give it the edge it needs in the mobile market. We will return to the topic when we get our hands on NV36M.