Test systems

System Setup

Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz (Prescott)

DFI Infinity 865PE

1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 SDRAM

ATI RADEON 9600 XT
ATI RADEON 9600 PRO
Driver version CATALYST 4.7

Dell Inspiron XPS

ASUS L5000GA

250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache

Windows XP Professional SP1

DirectX 9.0b

Benchmarks

Lock On: Modern Air Combat (Mig-29 custom demo)
Unreal Tournament 2004 (T3 custom demo)
IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles (The Black Death track)
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (Beyond3D custom demo)
Halo: Combat Evolved (stock benchmark)
Far Cry 1.1 (monkey bay custom demo)

Test Notes

The MOBILITY 9700 system was Dell’s high performance Inspiron XPS. This is Dell’s flagship notebook, that’s been designed to appeal to gamers. It ships with high-end hardware, our system was outfitted with a Pentium 4 3.4GHz, sitting on an 865PE motherboard with 2GB of DDR400 memory. Dell doesn’t skimp on the graphics either as they’ve decided to clock the MOBILITY 9700 up to ATI’s top specifications.

In order to see how the MOBILITY 9700 compared to its predecessor, we’ve included benchmarks from the ASUS L5000GA we tested in May. If you recall, this system was outfitted with a MOBILITY 9600 PRO, Pentium 4 3.2GHz, and 1GB of DDR400 RAM. Since the CPU is a little slower we decided to limit our results with this system to 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, where system performance is limited by the graphics subsystem and not the CPU. We’ve also thrown in a RADEON 9600 XT and 9600 PRO for comparison with a desktop system.