9600 Pro mobility 128mb VS the 9700 mobility...? - Page 2

yes much as Dirgle said, when i purchased my 9800 pro (128mb) for my desktop a while ago, i researched onto whether the extra $100 was worth it for the 256mb version. every review site i read between the two versions had at most 7 or 8 FPS difference only at resolutions of 1600x1200 or higher. to me it was definetly not worth for a few fps. maybe in future games, when we have super high res textures,etc -but by that time an even newer card will already be out.

I boost will be seen from higher clock/mem speeds and new core revisions/instructions, but i wouldn't expect it to be too much different than the likes of the 9800pro and 9800XT, just an incremental step along the way with a small boost in performance.

I also find it odd how the M10 came out only a couple of months ago at most (i believe) and they are already coming out with a new card, i wouldn't expect performance to jump by a huge margin

~Fizz

I think the point you are missing here is that adding 64MB of memory or upping the clock speed is one thing - creating a brand new mobile core from scratch is, i would suggest, a bit beyond the means of Clevo. Of course they could just be using a desktop chipset without ATI's support, but I doubt it.

256mb vs. 128mb

I think most of the reviews between 128 and 256mb of VRAM are not entirely accurate since these tests were done with DX8 games and so forth. The true benefit of 256mb will not be truly known until some next gen games come out (HL2, D3, STALKER, ETC) which would utilize the additional memory. It may be overkill, or it may be required to run with high settings. And will not just be running the game in a higher res, it will also include having features enabled such as AA and AF. But either way, it is still too early to tell the impact the additional memory will have. A true test for these DX9 cards requires DX9 games. Unfortunately, all the games that were supposed to stretch these cards got pushed into 2004 (exception being DXIW which sounds like it has perf. issues beyond any card).

Barley

As far as what the M11 9700 is, I think everybody is getting a little too worked up over this. Even if it is only a small evolutionary step (which I would bet the farm that is what it is), it is still going to be the best lappy card on the market.

A remember a month or so ago when the hot rumor then was that Dell was going to get the 9600 turbo whatever it was, everybody was crying that Sager should have the same.

As for the debate on the number of pipelines between the 9700 and 9600, yeah it would be great to have the old core, but unlikely. The current tests on the hardware sites have the desktop 9600XT at the same performance levels as the 9700 non PRO. So ATI has proven that they can skin the cat in different ways and still get comparable results. If having the 350 core with 2 pipelines but clocked higher will produce less heat and/or power drain, I am all for it. Those technical reasons alone could snuff a mobile version of the old core. And even if it were technically feasible, why would ATI cut themselves at the knees 6 months after the debut of the M10 when that card is dominating Nvidia Geforce Go products. It just doesn't make any sense to spend the R&D on something without financial reward. The M11 will be nothing more than a slightly modified best of yield 9600's that are able to be clocked slightly higher than a typ. M10.

Bottom line, if ATI named M11 the 9600XT w/ 256mb of RAM, everyone on this board would still be excited. It will surely be the fastest mobile card on the market and will have 256mb of RAM for all of 2004's DX9 games. For all of you out there with a 9600 M10, I would wait for the M12 before upgrading since the delta between the M10 and 11 will probably be small. As for people that are gamers and are looking to buy now, the 9700 M11 sounds like the best (depending on price).

When the radeon 9700pro was released, i read that it was using some 54 watts of power (see how the card don't get enough power from the AGP slot, but need extra power...). Thats twice as much as the pentium M, and more than half of the fastest pentium 4... so putting another hot, batterydraining part inside those sagers seems like maybe 30 minutes of battery to me....

Yes and no. Sager's 9600 Pros are the same as the Pro Turbo. But usually everyone else's Pros (not Sagers) are just Pro and not Pro Turbo...

About those dang graphs

Return to Castle Wolfenstein
MaxQuality 1024x768x32 ohne AA/AF

1) this says "ohne" which means without. I would not expect to see that much difference here anyway because RTCW is really not the biggest resource user

2. the second graph, also "ohne AA/AF" shows that, at the next resolution level, the card noticably drops from the leaders of the pack.

Randy