Mobility Radeon X800 and X300 Launch to Low Availability
by Derek Wilson on November 23, 2004 5:57 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Introduction
Just two weeks ago, NVIDIA launched their Geforce 6800 Go mobile solution. Today, ATI is announcing their competing Mobility Radeon X800 and more wallet friendly Mobility Radeon X300. Formerly codenamed M28 and M22, respectively, the introduction of these GPUs mark ATI's push towards top to bottom mobile PCI Express graphics.We were able to benchmark the Mobility Radeon X800 earlier this month with the launch of the 6800 Go. We weren't sure of the shipping clocks of the then M28, but we can confirm that the part we tested is the part that ATI is announcing today. Running at a 400/400 core and memory clock speeds, the MR X800 bests the Geforce 6800 Go which can be found shipping right now in notebooks at the 300/300 clocks we tested.
NVIDIA has stated that a higher clocked version of the 6800 Go will be paired with GDDR 3 memory at 450/600 clocks, in which case the performance battle could get much more interesting. Of course, the availability of a 450/600 6800 Go notebook is exactly the same as the MR X800 right now. We will try our best to get our hands on some parts for testing as soon as possible, but getting a hold of a shipping notebook will take some time.
We will be counting in weeks, but ATI is saying we will definitely see the MR X800 before Christmas, with the MR X300 following in early January. While the history of mobile graphics has gotten us quite used to waiting months between a GPU launch and it's inclusion in a shipping notebook, the advent of AXIOM, MXM, and custom modular components has really helped to decrease the time it takes to get silicon into a laptop. Weeks down from months for the MR X800 should not go unnoted, but the achievement is quite overshadowed by the fact that NVIDIA pulled off immediate availability of its 6800 Go two weeks before this announcement. We would definitely like to see ATI match this in the future. The blessing and curse for ATI is that they ship a much higher volume of mobile parts than NVIDIA. This may make the logistics of a launch harder, but if anything it only increases the responsibility ATI has to maintain a leadership position in minimizing the time between an announcement and high availability of shipping product. To top that off, NVIDIA has a good jump on the holiday/spring semester season by getting product out in the market place before Thanksgiving.
Just to clarify, this isn't the first time we've seen X800 based tech go mobile. The MR 9800 was based on the desktop R420 chip, but configured with 4 vertex and 8 pixel pipelines (more like a desktop 9800). There are a few differences here: PCI Express, GDDR3, higher clocks, and ... well, let's wrap it all up in a nice package.
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skunkbuster - Saturday, November 27, 2004 - link
would it be possible (in the future) to test the mobility x800 and the 6800 go at the same clock speeds?400/400 for the MR X800 and 300/300 for the 6800 Go...
i just wonder what (if any) performance advantage ati has because of that.
it might be interesting to see how they compare to each other if they are clocked the same.
nserra - Wednesday, November 24, 2004 - link
There are a lot of Mobility 9700 notebooks in my country and cheap ones.Is the mobility 9800 already available?
I don’t understand how ati can make so many different chips? I mean Mobility 9800 looks like an X700 chip but in reality due to the number of vertex (4 vs 6) and memory interface (128 vs 256) is not?
So many product lines, isn’t more complicated? Nvidia is faster in bringing the product to market because of this and because of the lower market share. One card is easier to sell over five, especially if you don’t have five….
onix - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
"DerekCan you post a comparison of power consumption between the 6800go X800 X300 and older chips like the 9800, 9700 and 9600 mobility? "
I agree. I would like to know what I'm passing up before buying a top of the line ThinkPad.
Sputt - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Is it worth waiting for the x800 if im getting a laptop very soon with 6800 ?DerekWilson - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Historically, we cover prodcut launches when the technology is announced. We have never talked about features like DLCS, and we hadn't put a name to hypermemory.The important thing to remember is that this isn't an update, its a launch. And the fact that we've got no product in our hands (we would love to bring you a power comparison #1, but we can't yet) is a problem for ATI to deal with when NVIDIA has shown that it is very doable to move product immediately.
That's big enough news for us to talk about. It's important for companies not to paper launch products, and we don't like seeing it happen.
LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Wee...why did you even bother posting this second "update"? Was it that slow of a news day?Anandtech should take a stand and say "If you won't give us sufficient testing time to give our readers valuable data, then we're not testing your hardware". You wasted your readers' time when you could have said "We'll post a review when there's a product you can actually buy, and when we're given enough review time to give you battery life specs, and video playback performance". You're an "industry leading site"...I encourage you to actually lead.
trikster2 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Derek
Can you post a comparison of power consumption between the 6800go X800 X300 and older chips like the 9800, 9700 and 9600 mobility?
Also it would be useful to include in the comparisons the older AGP based mobil chips, so we that are about to buy a laptop can decide if these new chips are worth waiting for.
Great review!
Thanks!