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ATI MOBILITY RADEON X700 Perfomance Preview January 19, 2005 |
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Summary: Does the idea of a thin and light notebook with DX9 graphics and better-than-9700 PRO performance appeal to you? If so, then you may want to check out ATI's MOBILITY RADEON X700. In this article we've compared ATI's latest mobile wonder to a variety of desktop graphics cards, including the venerable RADEON 9700 PRO. See how this 8-pipe chip performs in this article!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 16 ) |
ATI’s 4-pixel pipeline MOBILITY RADEON 9600 family was the king of the hill, MOBILTY RADEON 9700 wasn’t launched until Spring and even though it was branded as a “9700” part, it only featured what was essentially RADEON 9600 XT-level technology.
Things heated up over the summer though, as ATI announced their MOBILITY RADEON 9800, the mobile graphics world’s first 8-pixel pipeline chip. MOBILITY RADEON 9800 was also the first mobile part with a 256-bit memory interface and featured ATI’s 3Dc normal map compression technology as well as SMARTSHADER HD, which introduced 2.0b pixel shaders: the technology first introduced in desktop RADEON X800 just a few months earlier had found its way into mobile, albeit with fewer pixel pipelines. That didn’t last long though, as last November ATI introduced the MOBILITY RADEON X800, which increased the number of pixel pipelines to 12.
The really scary part is these weren’t even all of the mobile releases for ATI. 2004 also saw the introduction of AXIOM, MOBILITY RADEON X300, and MOBILITY RADEON X600!
Now ATI is off to a quick start to begin the new year, as they’ve decided to use today’s next generation Intel Centrino mobile launch as the coming out party for their latest mobile part, MOBILITY RADEON X700. The MOBILITY RADEON X700 aims to bring X700 technology down to the thin and light notebook segment Centrino/Pentium-M currently dominate in.
ATI endows MOBILITY RADEON X700 with an impressive feature list:
| M26 graphics core | Page:: ( 2 / 16 ) |
As its name implies, MOBILITY RADEON X700 is based on ATI’s desktop RADEON X700 part, you’ve got the same 8 pixel pipeline core architecture with one texture unit per pixel pipeline (8x1). MOBILITY RADEON X700 also retains the X700’s six vertex units, which is the same number found in ATI’s high-end RADEON X800s.
ATI clocks the graphics core at 350MHz, this is only 70MHz slower than ATI’s RADEON X700 PRO on the desktop. Paired alongside this is 128MB of memory, also running at 350MHz (700MHz effective).
The interesting part about this is that at 350MHz core/350MHz memory and with an 8-pipeline core, the fill rate of MOBILITY RADEON X700 is actually greater than ATI’s RADEON 9700 PRO on the desktop. The chip lacks the RADEON 9700 PRO’s 256-bit memory interface, but features a more powerful vertex processing engine. In testing with the desktop RADEON X700 PRO, we’ve found the chip is capable of dusting the RADEON 9800 PRO in some cases, and, in the right conditions, can even challenge the RADEON 9800 XT. In theory, since the MOBILITY RADEON X700 is fairly similar to the RADEON X700 PRO, it should be capable of giving RADEON 9700 PRO a run for its money.
This is pretty impressive when you consider how diminutive thin and light notebooks are: a six pound notebook PC could potentially spank a high-end desktop PC from a few years ago!
But big performance from a small package isn’t all that MOBILITY RADEON X700 brings to the table. Like MOBILITY RADEON X800, MRX700 features ATI’s POWERPLAY 5.0 technology, including clock gating and dynamic lane count switching (DLCS). This new feature in particular reduces the number of PCI Express lanes used by the graphics core from 16 to just 1, conserving battery power. Once the graphics core is being taxed, it kicks back into gear running in x16 mode.
ATI also expects some notebook manufacturers will pair MOBILITY RADEON X700 with their THEATER 550 chip via the AXIOM-TV module. This combo adds TV tuning capability, making it perfect for use with Microsoft’s Windows Media Center Edition.
Our testing
In order to see how the MOBILITY RADEON X700 compares to similar solutions on the desktop, we specifically requested ATI send us an MRX700 reference card, rather than showcasing a notebook featuring the technology. This way we can do direct comparisons with today’s desktop graphics solutions. We also included a RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB. Not only is the 9700 PRO a popular solution, we’ve found in our testing last summer that it performs similarly to a MOBILTY RADEON 9800, so we can draw comparisons to the MRX700 versus previous ATI mobile solutions from 2004.
Also we definitively wanted to know if a thin and light MRX700 notebook PC could keep up with a high-end rig from a few years ago; by including the RADEON 9700 PRO in our tests we get a firm answer!
| Test systems | Page:: ( 3 / 16 ) |
System Setup
Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz
ASUS P5AD2 Premium
ABIT IC7-G MAX 2 Advance
1GB OCZ EL DDR400 Platinum Edition Rev 2
ATI MOBILITY RADEON X700
ATI RADEON 9700 PRO
ATI RADEON X700 PRO
Driver version CAT 5.1
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT reference card PCI-E
Driver version 67.03 (obtained off nZone website)
250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0c
Benchmarks
Lock On: Modern Air Combat (Mig-29 custom demo)
IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles (The Black Death track)
Splinter Cell (FS custom demo)
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (Beyond3D custom demo)
Halo: Combat Evolved (stock benchmark)
Far Cry 1.2 (custom demo for mp_jungle, SM2.0b and SM3.0 paths used)
DOOM 3 (gameplay custom demo)
Call of Duty
| Call of Duty | Page:: ( 4 / 16 ) |
Call of Duty – OpenGL
| Tomb Raider 4xAF | Page:: ( 5 / 16 ) |
Tomb Raider – Direct3D
| Lock On: Modern Air Combat | Page:: ( 6 / 16 ) |
Lock On: Modern Air Combat – Direct3D
| IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles | Page:: ( 7 / 16 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB - OpenGL
| Halo 4xAA/4xAF | Page:: ( 8 / 16 ) |
Halo – Direct3D
| Far Cry Volcano 2xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 9 / 16 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
Notes
We ran into an interesting performance problem in Far Cry 1.3, the MOBILITY RADEON X700 slowed to a crawl! Based on performance with other titles we've tested, it's pretty safe to assume that we ran into a driver issue that prevented MRX700 from reaching its full potential in Far Cry 1.3, at least in our testing.| Far Cry Volcano 4xAA/4xAF | Page:: ( 10 / 16 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Far Cry Training 2xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 11 / 16 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Far Cry Training 4xAA/4xAF | Page:: ( 12 / 16 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| DOOM 3 Medium Quality | Page:: ( 13 / 16 ) |
DOOM 3 – OpenGL
| DOOM 3 Medium Quality 4xAA/4xAF | Page:: ( 14 / 16 ) |
DOOM 3 – OpenGL
| Splinter Cell | Page:: ( 15 / 16 ) |
Splinter Cell – Direct3D
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 16 / 16 ) |
Even today, the RADEON 9700 PRO is no slouch, offering 8 pixel pipelines and a 256-bit memory interface. With MOBILTIY RADEON X700, ATI not only trumps the RADEON 9700 PRO, they do it in a package that’s intended for use in notebooks that can easily fit on your lap.
This has huge ramifications for mobile gaming. Gamers with an eye for performance no longer have to purchase a bulky ten or twelve pound notebook like the Dell Inspiron XPS to get playable gaming performance. Adequate performance can now be had from a notebook that is half as large.
If you travel a lot, and find yourself spending a lot of time on airplanes, this is an important development, as you’ll have all the best features from Pentium-M (Centrino technology, small form factor, plus long battery life) merged with the best from ATI (DX9 support and good game performance, even with a little bit of AA/AF applied).
Right now NVIDIA is hard at work preparing a GeForce 6600-based reply to the MOBILITY RADEON X700, but in the meantime ATI enjoys the performance thin and light segment all to themselves. And with only a 350MHz clock speed, who’s to say ATI won’t release an even faster mobile chip in the coming months!