ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 (M11) article - Page 2

this might answer a couple of questions -
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTg0

Truth be told I have never had a problem running at 1600x1200 with any ghosting. Nor have I experienced slow down in games. Even halo played just fine on my machine at 1280x1024 everything on.

Perhaps I am just lucky

i can't speak to that bratag as i don't presently own a laptop.
as some know, i came to these forums searching for advice on a gaming laptop to take on trips (i use a desktop for home gaming).
one of the most common 'warnings' made to me concerned ghosting on any screen larger than 15...so you've pointed to exactly what i (personally) found most interesting in the short write-up.

I think the next paragraph of that Hard|OCP article is the real eye-opener (supplied w/ the aforementioned paragraph for continuity):
An NDA on a 1920 wide LCD? Only WUXGA has that spec. And the only not-yet-released / detailed Sager is the 8790 -- a 17" LCD...

Well This should put to rest the fears that some people have about jumping the gun on their purchase of 5680, or the 8890. We wont truly know (sager laptop to sager laptop)untill the 8790 is actualy out but I don't see it being that big of a deal. Minimal preformance gains. I'm proud to think that I have the graphics chip in my laptop that change the way people look at portable gaming. People who have the mobility 9700 can't brag about that, because there card is one that let peoples hopes down. Sorry I'm obviously pro mobility 9600, no pun intended.

i'm not sure dirgle.
again, i'm not a laptop owner, so what the h%ll do i know...but it seems that i hear two very different hopes for laptop video. one is a higher framerate. the other is the ability to game on larger screens (above 15).
from what i read, hardocp seems to be clearly stating that while the framerate is no incredible jump - the ability to (finally?) play demanding games on a large screen may just be here.
that seems to address one of the prevalent issues...
certainly, if true, this amounts to a major advancement, yes?

Actually, it's enough to cause me to hold off on my purchase (which would have been an 5680 UXGA this evening). If the 8790 comes out and it's WUXGA, I'll buy it reviews-unread. And if it sucks, I'll gladly return it for the cost of shipping and get the 5680...

I don't think they ever specified which sager they got. It's possible that they are referring to the 8890 16" UXGA which as most people know have some ghosting effects.

personally im gald because my 5680 is a week old and if the m11 just destroyed all then id be very sad so im ok with incrimental growth

i have a question regarding the larger screen gaming issues: is the ghosting problem (among others) the result of the lcd screen itself, or the video card? or is it a combination?
like i said, i've heard of this problem a lot, but was never quite sure which was the creator of the performance issue.

Could be a 15.4" Sager w/ WUXGA. As far as I know (and I've looked at almost every English language TFT-LCD manufacturer site in the past week) there is _NO_ shipping or released or announced 17" WUXGA TFT-LCD screen. The only new resolution coming down the pike are the 1680x1020 (IIRC--it's on their site and I don't feel like checking ) 17" lg-phillips screens.

I would truly be suprised (pleasantly so) if the Sager has 17" WUXGA.

Ghosting is all in the screen. If the card is causing the ghosting then there is a problem with the card. I'm sure if you took the screen that they used on the 9700 and put it on the 9600 it would look exactly the same.

Pixel responce rate is the root cause of the issue (How fast it takes for the an individual pixel to change it's state), but of course if you have a video card in the machine that can't push enougth frames to beat the pixel responce time then it not really an issue.

Most likely the WUXGA machine is a dell, since the 8600 already come with that. Hopefully it is a sager though. Even though 17 inches is pretty huge, I could care less about size, it's the resolution that counts for me at least.

Also I do game on a 16 inch screen (SXGA) and do not notice any ghosting. The 9600 is fully capable of playing on larger screens with out any problem. Once again any issues are in the screen it's self. Of course if the card can't keep up but I was thinking of the mobility 9000 up and those cards can handle there screens

thanks for the ghosting explanation dirgle. it appears i mis-spoke (above) and apologize.
this forum has been a tremendous help in understanding laptops. it's a heckuva lot more involved than one might initially think! (maybe i should stick to desktop gaming!!)

If I may make a few obeservations...

1) We were told a long time ago in that massive 29 page post on the 8790, that the 9700 was not going to be revolutionary. Even so, I am still as willing to wait for the 8790 over the 4780 as I was 3 months ago.

2) Because it is not going to be a radical change, the benefits gained with the card will be small, but still noticable. Unfortunately, the reviews still lack a decent comparison. We will have to wait for a product release where they can tell us all of the details using actual machines (no blackboxes).

3) I noticed that all of the hype surrounding the Prescotts and the 9700 all started with the waiting involved for the new 8790 product release. An unknown computer product with unknown delays generating wild speculation on statistics on various components "holding it back." I have seen posts stating things like " When will it be out? It must be the Prescott they are waiting for" or "Sager must be waiting for the ATI 9700 release who are also waiting for NIVIDIA to act."

Valid points, but you have to remember that just one component doesn't make or break a machine. Just look at all of the crappy internal wireless cards entire forums are dedicated to. But as much as people complain, most just get a PCMCIA card and move on. So the 9700 doesn't have massive changes, the Prescott sucks until it reaches 4.0 GHz, we are still stuck at PC3200 memory in notebooks, etc. But put all together, the minor increases from the new video card, finally having dual channel memory support, 2x hard drives running at 7200 rpm, a large screen regardless of resolution all put together result in a bigger difference than a single change from only changing one component in a new model.

To legolas357: Dude, you gotta join the dark side(as those desktop gamers see us). Grab yourself a sager and start gaming. You can read all the numbers and figures you want and listen to all the arguments that pick the details to death. but at the end of the day you have a laptop that can woop up on most of the desktops. The components have come so far that you can effectively game on your lappy if not better than desktops. And you'll wonder how you ever strapped yourself to that uncomfortable desk for hours on end. Gaming on notebook computers is where it's headed, even ati sees this, so join the revolution.

Anandtech has a better review. Though the 9600 they test is not clocked at the same speed as the one in the 5680 etc it does appear as though about 25% (roughly 2-8 FPS) as an increase. Not surprising given the clock speed of about 450 for the 9700. I imagine if you OCed the 9600 which you can do quite high without issues you would probably notice even less of a difference. That being said its still a nice card just not a HUGELY better one.

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1957

ha!!
thanks for the invite dirgle.
no, i think i'll stick to my desktop. my system is a speed demon and the visuals on my NEC 22" are hard to beat!
i DO look forward to having something to game on for the road however!