ATI Mobility Radeon Preview

More Than Just Performance

Although the Mobility Radeon is clearly able to match mobile graphics performance with the best of them, ATI is not solely committed to serving the needs of power craving gamers. Although the Mobility Radeon is able to serve these users rather ready handedly by offering support of up to 64MB of DDR memory, it is also able to find its way into ultraportable market with the help of up to 16MB of on-die memory.

Contrary to popular belief, use of on-die memory does not increase performance over external memory; all that it does is save space, and in the ultraportable market, space is more valuable than gold. Currently ATI is in a unique position to provide a video solution for the ultraportable market, as they currently have one of the lowest voltage, high performing processors out there currently: the Rage Mobility 128.

With the introduction of the Mobility Radeon, ATI is poised to take even more of the ultraportable market. For example, the ultraportable Sony Picturebook, which uses a Transmeta Crusoe processor, uses the Rage Mobility for its graphics chip due to its integrated memory solution. It is only a matter of time before the more powerful Mobility Radeon, clocked at a low clock speed, finds its way into this ultraportable and more. Plus, with the ability to run at different speeds when plagued in and not, 3D gaming may finally find its way into the ultraportable market, as long as you are plugged in.

The Packaged Deal

ATI has more plans for the Mobility Radeon than just those of high end 3D graphics. ATI is going to many venders with a new idea: a mobile All-in-Wonder of sorts. Rather than be forced to create an integrated All-in-Wonder solution, ATI seems to be suggesting that venders package Mobility Radeon computers with USB TV Wonder. By doing so, ATI can produce an All-in-Wonder type product for use on laptops. Included is the ability to "time shift" live TV and record shows for later playback. For more details regarding the All-in-Wonder idea and what it can do, check out our Radeon All-in-Wonder review.

From the looks of it, ATI has an interesting idea on their hands by coupling the Mobility Radeon with the TV Wonder. Since the product is USB based, it can easily be used in any laptop out there today. This does result in a problem, however, as nothing is stopping a manufacturer from using the NVIDIA GeForce2 Go product along with the TV Wonder. One advantage to using both the Mobility Radeon and the TV Wonder together is that it simplifies things for manufacturers by allowing them to work with only one vender. Then again, the end user can just as easily purchase a TV Wonder for use with another graphics chip if desired.