ATI Mobility Radeon 9800: Notebooks Get Next Generation Graphics

The Test

All of our MR9800 tests were performed in a retail version of Dell's newest XPS desktop replacement notebook, and are compared against desktop graphics cards that were run in our standard GPU test platform.

Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s):	AMD Athlon 64 3400+
RAM:	2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 (2:2:3:6)
Hard Drives:	Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB PATA
Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers:	VIA Hyperion 4in1 4.51
Video Card(s):	ATI Mobility Radeon 9800 ATI Radeon X800 Pro ATI Radeon 9800 XT ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Video Drivers:	ATI Catalyst Beta (MR 9800) ATI Catalyst 4.6 (x800) ATI Catalyst 4.4 (9800/9700)
Operating System(s):	Windows XP Professional SP1
Power Supply:	PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 510
Motherboards:	FIC K8T800 (754 pin)

The specifications for the notebook in which we tested the MR9800 are as follows:

Mobility Radeon 9800 (256MB)
3.4GHz Pentium-4 (Northwood)
2GB DDR400 RAM
80GB HD

The clock speeds of the MR9800 in this notebook are set to ATI default spec: 350MHz core, 300MHz mem. As the memory is DDR, we see a 600MHz effective data rate on the memory for this part.

Unfortunately, our desktop system is generally faster than the laptop. In order to really see the relative performance of the MR9800 to the X800 (or any other part for that matter), we would need to test those graphics cards in a slower Intel desktop platform. If there is demand for this, we may look into doing so in the future. For now, the comparison of this DTR to our desktop test system serves to show the relative performance of the system to an actual desktop computer targeted at gaming. In order to help alleviate this comparison problem, we refrain from including anything other than ATI parts in our graphs. The differences in performance between the MR9800 and desktop ATI parts will not be as big as it appears when compared in comparable systems.