With the increased demand for 3D acceleration in notebooks, many notebook are coming out with discrete 3D GPUs like the NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5650. Like NVIDIA, ATI also has a slew of mobile 3D GPUs that cater specifically to the notebook market. Today, we will take a look at the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 GPU. Let's see how it fares against its contemporaries in the mobile 3D GPU market! Link : ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 Mobile GPU Review!
not bad, a good solution for ati lovers in notebooks any chance you might be able to obtain scores for the xx00 series?
seems like laptop graphic is catching up nicely. Good to see more review done on it. If only if we can put together of a laptop the way we cna with desktop, then it would be much nicer configuration.
As an owner of a similarly spec'd notebook (Acer TM3200) I'd like to say that the review's numbers seemed pretty accurate to what I have observed over the last few months of use. I rarely use my desktop for anything anymore. I can sit on the couch with the tv on, while gaming on the notebook. I was wondering tho... Were you able to actually install ATi's Catalyst drivers to do the tests, or did you have to use 3rd party drivers? I've had no probs with Omegadrive's versions of the catalyst drivers, as they have been hacked to include the mobile r9700 as a valid install option. However the ATi Cat's don't recognise the mobile chipset during install.
nope. ATI's cat drivers are made not to recognize the mobile chips. Reasons are because the mobile platform are often very customised because of the interface to the LCD are different from notebooks to notebooks. Thus, the safest drivers to install are really the ones from the manufacturers. For example, the hacked Omega drivers would install on the BenQ Joybook's R9700M chip, BUT when running 3D apps, it'll crash. Only the BenQ supplied drivers works fine. Luckily, they are based on ATI's latest non-beta drivers. However, if the hacked drivers can be installed on your machine.. than kudos! that's very good for you!
yea.. haev to use back the original drivers.. i've tried using different drivers .. even for the same laptop brand .. but different model.. it even crashed in Adobe Photoshop ..
Yes, I was glad I didn't have to stick with the crummy drivers provided by Acer. They were remarkably old and offered fewer tweaks than I was used to with Cats. The TM3200 uses a rather plain-jane LCD (1024x768native) so perhaps that is the difference. Anyhoo, good review keep it up.
Well, monitor support SHOULD not be a problem. Since the GPUs are based on the same cores, the Catalysts should have no problem running on the mobile GPUs. I think the reason why NVIDIA and ATI don't provide generic drivers for mobile GPUs is that some notebooks may use proprietary interfaces that MAY not work properly with the Catalyst. But I think the trend now is for manufacturers to use the mobile GPU's own LCD interface. Cheaper for one thing.
hi im new here and i wish to share my knowledge yes i agree that the reason why nvidia and ati dont provide generic drivers is because firstly, each manufacturer will set a certain standards towards thier machine. i have an acer aspire 2012 notebook powered by the 9700 series gpu and one thing i realised is, having one in a notebook is draining my battery off. and its much hotter whenever i play games. i tried a friends dell machine which was a 9600pro powered machine and the performance delivered was almost the same. albiet his processor was a 1.6 ghz and mine was 1.5ghz. but his was much cooler and it lasted way ahead of mine. i dont know wether its the right way to see things but i have certain regrets in getting this. but nevertheless, games run preety smooth on it so its a plus point and secondly, the look on people's face when im gaming in library is PRICELESS
Although you also have to consider the build of the system. I read somewhere that even if 2 exactly spec of the system, the battery life can vary drastically. I think these graphic card do drain a lot of batterires but havin them on laptop is great as you can do much more with it than the old integrated laptop
shuld i get it i'm gettin a notebook with the mobility radeon 9700 64MB. the review seemed 2 show that doom 3 is playable even at 1024 x 768 .Do u ppl think that this is truu even though the card is just 64MB. How long do u reckon that the card will last-i mean it is already kinda outdated but how long will it be able to play the latest games at acceptable FPS. will i be able 2 play halo ,far cry n stuff with a smooth FPS on my lappy.the reeview seems to tell so but i'd like to hear experiences from ppl who have actually used it. system- 1.6 dothan 2MB cache ati mobility radeon 9700 64MB 60 GB 5400 rpm 15.4" wXGA
upgrade wanted to ask another thing.graphics cards r not upgradable.but can i upgrade my mobility 9700 64 MB to 256MB.i mean how much of a difference could there be in the same card with different memory.Is it possibble to do this without screwing up u r comp. has nebody heard of he nvidia geforce go6600(64MB).Is this card better than mobility 9700(64MB).lastly how big of a difference does memory make in the same card -like mobility 9700 with 64MB and 256MB.
Fairly interesting but somewhat "stumped" review, IMO. Some questions arise: 1) What hardware and drivers were used for the other GPUs in the test? (The very same computer with other graphics circuits?) 2) What's the performance compared to stationary computers? To anwer #2 I made a comparison search at Futuremark to see what other setups that gave the same 3DMark03 score. Seems most of them were made with Radeon Mobility 9600, but also the standard Radeon 9600, 9700 and GeForceFX 5600 Ultra. It doesn't seem to matter wether it's a standard P4 or the M version. With an Athlon XP at the same clock speed only 512MB RAM is required to get the same performance. Cheers Olle
Well, to be frank, you should not consider it to be a real powerful workhorse when it comes to 3D games. It's more or less comparable to a desktop Radeon 9600 Pro. Doom 3 is really playable at 800x600. But of course, it all depends on what graphics settings you choose, etc.
Nope, not upgradable. UNLESS the notebook manufacturer has specifically designed the notebook to accept memory upgrades for the GPU. Even then, you can expect only slight improvements in performance unless it's really heavy on textures.
Hello Olle P, The comparisons were made with notebooks using the same processor - Pentium M, running at the same clock speed. Stationary computers?? You mean desktop computers? Well, that would be hard, wouldn't it? I mean, we don't have a desktop Pentium M system...
