![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , April 18, 2005
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 with GeForce Go 6800 Ultra
Mobile gaming has never looked so good. Read inside to see what Dell is bringing to the table with the new Inspiron XPS Gen 2 using the new NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 Ultra GPU. Could this be the best gaming notebook ever?
NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 Ultra:
The graphics chipset that drives this laptop is the 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 Ultra PCI-Express GPU. The GeForce Go 6800 Ultra is exactly the same as the GeForce Go 6800 we previewed here. The technology and the features are the same. The only difference is that NVIDIA has massively increased the clock speed on it and given it the “Ultra” name to differentiate it from the regular GeForce Go 6800.
The core features of the GeForce Go 6800 include an architecture that is familiar to its desktop GeForce 6800 series counterpart. The GeForce Go 6800 has 12 pixel-pipelines and 5 vertex units, which are the most of currently any notebook GPU. The features are based on NVIDIA’s CineFX 3.0 technology, which includes support for Shader Model 3.0 (Pixel and Vertex Shader 3.0), as well as Shader Model 2.0 and below. You will also find support for Floating Point Blending with OpenEXR support, UltraShadow II, and PureVideo. This is currently the only notebook GPU to allow Shader Model 3.0 and Floating Point Blending, which can be used for effects like realistic HDR.
The only difference between the GeForce Go 6800 and GeForce Go 6800 Ultra are the clock speeds, which do provide a large performance increase. The specification for the GeForce Go 6800 calls for 300MHz GPU frequency; this gives the GeForce Go 6800 a fillrate of 3.6 gigapixels per second. The GeForce Go 6800 Ultra runs at a much higher 450MHz frequency, which gives it 5.4 gigapixels per second of fillrate. The memory specification allows a clock speed up to 1.1GHz with GDDR3.
As you can see above, in 2D mode, the frequency of the GPU runs at 100MHz and the memory at 658MHz to conserve power. When you start playing a 3D game, and if you are running in “Maximum Performance” mode, the frequency will increase to 450MHz GPU and on our notebook, the memory was set to 1.06GHz. You can see above that RivaTuner confirms that it is indeed 12 pixel-pipelines and 5 vertex units.
PowerMizer 5.0
Part of the GeForce Go 6800 and the latest ForceWare drivers is PowerMizer 5.0.
PowerMizer 5.0, the latest version of PowerMizer and a key NVIDIA mobile technology, was developed as a tightly integrated element of the NVIDIA GeForce Go 6 Series of mobile GPUs. PowerMizer combines many techniques: maximum CPU offload, maximum usage of ACPI low -power-states, revolutionary GPU performance-per-watt design, fully programmable on-chip video processor, leading edge semiconductor manufacturing technologies, and MXM (Mobile PCI Express Module) support. PowerMizer 5.0 is key to enabling the GeForce Go 6 Series GPUs to deliver their award-winning features and performance benefits within the stringent constraints of a notebook PC.
In the PowerMizer dialog box, you can configure different settings depending on your power requirements. If you are running from the AC outlet, as we are for our testing, the automatic setting is “Maximum Performance.” You can change this if you wish to “Balanced” or “Maximum Power Savings,” but when you are connected via the AC outlet, you really don’t need to. If you want to play games with the maximum performance the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra can provide, you need to plug the notebook into an outlet and play at “Maximum Performance.”
When you are operating off the battery, there are only two options to choose from, “Balanced” and “Maximum Power Savings.” Both of these levels offer a dynamic hardware clock and feature gating to save power.
Above is a list of all the advantages of PowerMizer 5.0.