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- Date:
- Tuesday , February 03, 2004
- Author:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Mobility Radeon 9700 First Look
Today ATI is launching yet another Mobility branded part, and yet again it builds on an already solid reputation. We take a brief look at the technology.
Introduction
This preview is a bit different from others we've done in the past. While we don't have a lot of benchmarks to share with you, we do have some impressions based on our actual gaming experiences with the Mobility Radeon 9700. Here we're going to take a look at what the Mobility Radeon 9700 is all about.
Press Release Details
We want to share with you some of the slides from the official Mobility Radeon 9700 presentation that we were given when we were delivered a sample to play with for the duration of an afternoon.
This slide summarizes the major features of the Mobility Radeon 9700. A full DirectX 9 VPU is probably what most expected. ATI continues to build on 130nm technology which exhibits very low power consumption. This was apparent by the low heat exhibited by the sample laptop we used for gaming.
ATI was widely credited for successfully building the world's first VPU using Low-K technology. This process is now being applied to their Mobility part as well. You can read here about Low-K and what it brings to the table. It's worth mentioning that Intel is now utilizing this process as well.
While we don't usually post manufacturer benchmarks, we're going to make an exception this time. What I think is important in this slide is the way the Mobility Radeon 9700 stacks up against ATI's own Mobility Radeon 9600. As you can see, the higher clock speeds of the MR9700 allow it to post some very considerable gains according to ATI's data. Of course, raw framerate would have been nice to see instead of just percentage increases.
More specific features are shown in the above slide. Do take note that buying a notebook with a MR9700 badge on it does not guarantee that you will get all of the above features. Different notebook builders will pick and choose what features their notebooks will have. Certainly though the MR9700 incorporates almost all the features you will find on any PVR or HTPC at the midrange level.
POWERPLAY 4.0 highlights what's at the heart of the MR9700 with power consumption. ATI's software can interact with the VPU and effectively "clock gate" the video chipset. Basically what this does is "turn off" the areas of the VPU that are not being utilized. ATI's solution works hand in hand with the screen and DVD drive, if being used.
Also on the above slide is a quick trip down memory lane with a brief outline of the last five major mobile technologies produced by ATI.
VPU RECOVER comes to the mobile arena. With the 1000s of games that are out today, there are going to be compatibility problems from time to time with any manufacturer's hardware. VPU RECOVER is an attempt to help the computer user out of a bind. Instead of your computer hardlocking and requiring a reboot, VPU RECOVER makes an attempt to drop you back to the desktop if the crash is video related. It also attempts to formulate a reason for the crash and notify ATI via email if the user chooses. I have seen VPU RECOVER in action, and it does work very well.
The above is a catchall summary slide in case you're worried about failing that pop quiz on the way out.
Subjective Observations
So, why are we taking the time to talk about all of this? Well, last week we got to use a Mobility Radeon 9700 to play some games for a few hours, and it simply kicked ass. Yes, I know it's an overused term from the unimaginative, but "kicking ass" pretty much sums up our MR9700 experience.
We can't go into detail about the notebook we were using, but you will be able to purchase this unit in North America very soon.
Our test notebook had the Mobility Radeon 9700 with a core clock of 446MHz and a memory clock of 263MHz, or 526MHz effectively because of the DDR interface. The memory bus was 128-bits wide. The laptop itself was sporting 1GB of RAM and a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor and came to us in a desktop replacement form factor.
Before we get to the gaming outline, I'd like to describe the LCD display. We were recently supplied with a Sager notebook by PowerNotebooks. It was a very fine machine that had a native 1600 pixel wide display that allowed you to work with two full-size pages open. However, the Achilles' heel of the machine was the LCD response rate. In the past, ghosting in games on laptops, a condition caused by a slow LCD response rate, was not that much of an issue, for one reason. The reason was that games were not running at high enough framerates to really make the issue apparent. With our PowerNotebooks unit, the CPU and VPU power (Mobility Radeon 9600) was enough to make you realize that the LCD display response time needed to be lower for gaming to look the way it should.
The LCD display we used had a native 1920 pixel wide resolution, and it was simply one of the finest displays I have ever seen...on anything, not just notebooks. Sadly, at this time we're not able to share any more specs or information with you, but let's just say that it was fully "up to snuff" whether working in Word or killing Nazis. This is the first notebook we've seen that had enough LCD display horsepower to keep up with ATI's speedy Mobility Radeon technology.
I had enough time to load up four of our own games and get acquainted with the MR9700. The first game I loaded was Ubi's Splinter Cell. Quite frankly I knew that if it could deliver this game with any level of playability that we had a winner on our hands. At 1024x768 and high IQ levels, the MR9700 performed beautifully. The Mobility Radeon actually exceeded my expectations. It ran Splinter Cell solidly in the 25 to 35 frames per second range. Although you could put it in situations that would make it chug, it's the same experience I've had on a desktop at that resolution.
Unreal Tournament was the next game up and I breezed through two successful botmatches without issue at 1024x768 and all the IQ features set to high or better where it would allow. Solid frame rates in the 40 to 60 range were the norm. The bottom line is that the Mobility Radeon 9700 when paired with this LCD display is acceptable for online deathmatch play at high quality settings.
I had a copy of Tron that I've never played before, and I knew some of the glowing effects in the game were supposed to be intense. I don't know if I ever found the intensive effects, as the frame rates never dropped much below 60FPS.
Last up was Call of Duty. We had some issues with this game, the same as many users have had with their desktop ATI cards. With a quick driver reinstall we were up and running with playable Call of Duty at 1024x768. This game did get a bit intense for the card, but it still allowed solidly playable first person gameplay. We should have backed down to 8006x00 and pushed up the antialiasing, but we really didn't have time.
Bottom Line
We're certainly looking forward to getting a retail sample of the Mobility Radeon 9700 in our hands for a serious round of testing. The MR9700 without a doubt looks to be the best mobile gaming VPU we have ever experienced. ATI is pushing gamers towards the all-notebook LAN party much faster than I would have guessed.
And what would another ATI product be without its very own shielded logo?
