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ATI MOBILITY 9700 Performance Preview July 22, 2004 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: ATI's first generation DX9 mobile chip, M10, introduced the gaming world on-the-go to 2.0 pixel and vertex shaders, earning rave reviews in the process. Now ATI is back with M11, better known as MOBILITY 9700. With MOBILITY 9700 ATI boasts better performance and excellent visuals, but how does it compare to M10 and ATI's desktop offerings? Find out in this article!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 14 ) |
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Last week’s DeltaChrome S4 Pro preview was a perfect example of the growing pains a hardware manufacturer must go through in order to ultimately bring their product to market. Even if a prospective graphics manufacturer was able to successfully design and manufacture the hardware (which is a difficult task by itself), you must also develop a solid display driver that provides compatibility with a wide range of applications, while at the same time you can’t forget to overlook performance in Direct3D as well as OpenGL titles.
Once the hardware is complete and the software is polished, you’ve then got to get board partners with extensive worldwide distribution channels onboard, who will hopefully get your product in the hands of consumers. And don’t forget, all this effort could be wasted if your product isn’t compelling or your timing is a little off, as high-end parts are replaced every few months.
But as difficult as producing a successful desktop 3D graphics product is, the mobile space is even more complicated. Heat and power must be kept in check, as a mobile system doesn’t necessarily have the luxury of an infinite power source, or the space for a huge graphics cooler. In fact, the footprint requirements for a mobile graphics core can be a huge design constraint that must be overcome.
Mobile graphics manufacturers have come up with all kinds of clever ways to get around these issues, but the end result is that mobile graphics solutions tend to take more time to develop and fine tune, oftentimes the final product doesn’t have what it takes for an enjoyable gaming experience.
All this changed last year with the launch of ATI’s MOBILITY 9600. Its debut dramatically reduced the lag time between the introduction of a new technology on the desktop, to its arrival in laptops. In fact, MOBILITY 9600 arrived around the same time as the first DX9 games like Tomb Raider and Halo began to appear on the market. As a result, the MOBILITY 9600 firmly established ATI’s superiority in the add-in mobile graphics market, where they’ve enjoyed a market share lead over rival NVIDIA.
We took a look at a high-end mobile system from ASUS that was equipped with ATI’s MOBILITY 9600 PRO and found it to be competitive with a similarly configured desktop system with RADEON 9600 graphics inside. In other words, performance wasn’t bad, but not quite up to the same level of ATI’s faster desktop VPUs such as the RADEON 9600 PRO and RADEON 9600 XT. To address gamers on the go looking for a little bit more performance, ATI has prepared an enhanced alternative: MOBILITY 9700!
| Core specifications | Page:: ( 2 / 14 ) |
Enhanced manufacturing process
Unlike MOBILITY 9600, whose M10 graphics core was centered around the desktop RADEON 9600, MOBILITY 9700 is based on ATI’s follow-up chip, RADEON 9600 XT.
If you recall the design of RADEON 9600 XT, the key difference between it and RADEON 9600 is its 0.13-micron manufacturing process with low-k dielectric material. The addition of low-k reduces the 9600 XT’s power draw, as less power is wasted from crosstalk, especially when higher clock speeds are reached. Another added benefit ATI has gained from the introduction of low-k is that the chip generates less heat.
These two benefits are especially important in mobile systems, where heat and power are two important obstacles that must be overcome in any graphics chip design, so when ATI saw their RADEON 9600 XT core pay off so well they were eager to move the technology into the mobile space. Hence, MOBILITY 9700 was born.
New clocks
ATI starts the MOBILITY 9700 off with their M11 graphics core, which is fundamentally quite similar to ATI’s RADEON 9600 XT on the desktop. Image quality is the same from both chips because of this. However, due to the stringent power and thermal requirements found in a laptop system, core and memory clocks aren’t up to the same level as the RADEON 9600 XT on the desktop. ATI has specified a clock frequency range of 390MHz-450MHz on the M11 core. This is an improvement of at least 40MHz on the MOBILITY 9600 PRO, as most notebook manufacturers clock their MOBILITY 9600 PRO’s at 350MHz.
For memory, MOBILITY 9700 can be configured with up to 256MB of DDR memory operating between 200-260MHz (400MHz-520MHz effective). Memory clock frequency for MOBILITY 9700’s predecessor, MOBILITY 9600 PRO, topped out at 200MHz.
Thanks to these increased clock frequencies, MOBILITY 9700 offers improved performance in games, making it a better match for the high-end displays used on most desktop replacement notebooks, which run natively at higher screen resolutions. Also keep in mind that each notebook manufacturer will determine the final clocks for their specific mobile system depending on the market they’re targeting and the power and thermal output they’re willing to live with inside their system.
In comparison to ATI’s desktop offerings, on paper MOBILITY 9700 falls somewhere between the RADEON 9600 PRO and RADEON 9600 XT. At up to 450MHz, MOBILITY 9700 has a very fast core, ATI’s RADEON 9600 PRO is clocked at 400MHz while RADEON 9600 XT runs at 500MHz. MOBILITY 9700’s memory subsystem does fall a little short of RADEON 9600 PRO/XT though, both operate at 300MHz (600MHz effective).
| Test systems | Page:: ( 3 / 14 ) |
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.
| IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles | Page:: ( 4 / 14 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB - OpenGL
| Lock On: Modern Air Combat | Page:: ( 5 / 14 ) |
Lock On: Modern Air Combat – Direct3D
| UT 2004 | Page:: ( 6 / 14 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2004
| UT w/AA | Page:: ( 7 / 14 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2004
| UT 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 8 / 14 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2004
| Halo | Page:: ( 9 / 14 ) |
Halo – Direct3D
| Halo (cont’d) | Page:: ( 10 / 14 ) |
Halo – Direct3D
| Far Cry | Page:: ( 11 / 14 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Far Cry 4xAA | Page:: ( 12 / 14 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Far Cry 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 13 / 14 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Final thoughts | Page:: ( 14 / 14 ) |
For years the thought of gaming on a laptop was an oxymoron, unless you were willing to settle for Solitaire or Hearts, you just couldn’t combine the two and have an enjoyable experience. But fortunately for gamers on the go, this is no longer the case. In fact, in more recent generations, the mobile graphics world has more closely followed the desktop graphics scene: DX9 hardware trickled down from the desktop to mobiles in just under 12 months.
This remarkable success can be directly attributed to ATI’s MOBILITY 9600. Its M10 graphics core established new levels of performance in the mobile world, while at the same time satisfying the strict requirements system vendors require in their notebook designs.
Now building on this solid foundation is ATI’s MOBILITY 9700. ATI starts with TSMC’s 0.13-micron manufacturing process, but spices the formula up with the addition of low-k dielectric. This allows ATI to hit higher clocks without the excessive heat or power that would have been associated with just relying on 0.13 – in its highest configuration, MOBILITY 9700’s M11 core is within 50MHz of RADEON 9600 XT!
Thanks to these higher clock speeds, performance is increased, blurring the fine line between gaming on the notebook and gaming on the desktop. In our testing, we saw a performance improvement of up to 26% over MOBILITY 9600 PRO, with the MOBILITY 9700 performing similarly to a RADEON 9600 PRO. (Keep in mind that MOBILITY 9700 is limited to a memory frequency of up to 520MHz, which falls 80MHz short of the RADEON 9600 XT/PRO’s 600MHz.) We witnessed playable frame rates in next generation titles such as Far Cry, where we ran all our tests in the game’s “Very High” quality mode.
Sure, the name is a little misleading at first, as the MOBILITY 9700 doesn’t sport the eight pixel pipelines or 256-bit memory configuration of ATI’s RADEON 9700 on the desktop, but keep in mind that ATI’s MOBILITY and RADEON lines are two distinct entities in the company. And you certainly won’t miss the improved performance.
With most gaming notebooks coming with upgradeable graphics as an option, some gamers may be tempted to go portable. ATI’s MOBILITY 9700 would make an excellent foundation for this scenario, especially if you find yourself playing mainly DX8 titles. Unreal Tournament 2004 is a good example, the Dell Inspiron XPS system finished within a few frames of a similar desktop system configured with RADEON 9600 XT. If you're a gamer with a need for a new laptop, ATI's MOBILITY 9700 would make for a tempting solution.