Making the rounds on mobile...

After our first round of M10 notebooks, we seemed to have stumbled across more Mobility Radeon 9600 based notebooks. Actually, our Day 1 coverage only turned up one Mobility Radeon 9600 notebook, since the rest of them were Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro based.  Mobility Radeon 9600 is going to be the mainstream choice for many system designers, while the Pro version will be left for the higher performance market. As far as we have been informed, the Pro version is the same thing as the non-Pro version, expect that it has higher core clock speeds and higher memory clock speed since it uses GDDR2-M. (Read more about Mobility Radeon 9600 and Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro.)

The first Mobility Radeon 9600 we stumbled on is Asus' A2000, which overall is a slick system. However, this is a desktop replacement notebook because of its use of a 800FSB Pentium 4. Coincidentally, two other tier 1 motherboard manufacturers are producing Mobility Radeon 9600 based notebooks: Gigabyte and ECS. Gigabyte is revamping their notebook line, and has come out with three notebooks: N201, N501, and N601. The N601 uses the Mobility Radeon 9600, while the other two use integrated graphics from Intel.

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ECS, meanwhile, is showcasing their G736 and their G900, both of which use Mobility Radeon 9600. G900, which we were not able to get a picture of due to timing, is another notebook to use the elusive modular graphic system. ECS still seems to be debated on how to market this feature, since it definitely has the upgrade advantage over embedded graphics.

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While it isn’t based on a Mobility Radeon 9600, Chaintech is showcasing their desktop replacement notebook, which really redefines the weight limitations for the term “desktop replacement.” Adding to the weight is the use of an desktop version of an LCD screen (not mobile one, which is on virtually all notebooks). Chaintech told us they will manufacturer this product, and they said they plan to ODM this design out to mobile system vendors. Certainly, this is a heavy system, and we are curious how the market will accept it.

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  • Anonymous User - Sunday, September 28, 2003 - link

    It would seem obvious that the growth of the computing market over the past years, would have a influence on graphic card designs.

    Manufacturers where in touch with consumers a few years ago, but in this market the average PC user had more technicle knowledge.

    Today the average joe public is caught up in the usual beat the joneses scenario wanting the lastest fad, now a computer.

    Its no wonder that many hardware manufacturers are getting into problems expecially with support as the feedback they are getting from end users will reflect from a user base with less knowledge of computing.

    I believe that once again the Nerds will triumph and stuff joe public if you can,t set it up don,t use it.

  • Anonymous User - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link

    "...Adding to the weight is the use of an LCD screen (not a TFT screen, which is on virtually all notebooks)."

    "...Certainly, this is a heavy system, and we are curious how the market will accept it."

    Okay, maybe I'm stupid, but this makes little sense to me. When you say something has a TFT screen, it means that it has an LCD screen using TFT technology. AFAIK there is no magical weight saving between the active and passive LCD technologies, so what is Mr Andrew Ku really saying?

    Perhaps he's saying that Anand or a Minion of Anand needs to sight these articles before they are viewed by the masses.
  • Anonymous User - Friday, September 26, 2003 - link

    Some of you spend too much time potting the brown, sheesh...
  • Anonymous User - Thursday, September 25, 2003 - link

    Hey just as well SARS came along... imagine if they had held this sleepfest 3 months ago? what would they have had to show then?
  • Anonymous User - Thursday, September 25, 2003 - link

    #2 and #4...why dont the both of you STFU
  • Anonymous User - Thursday, September 25, 2003 - link

    yeah. *Yawn*
  • Anonymous User - Thursday, September 25, 2003 - link

    Who the hell cares, XT will add 3% performance. Get a life.
  • Anonymous User - Thursday, September 25, 2003 - link

    Yeah, yeah - where is the 9800XT? - I want to see some reviews/benchmarks...
  • Anonymous User - Thursday, September 25, 2003 - link

    You're an idiot
  • Anonymous User - Thursday, September 25, 2003 - link

    damn this Computex is boring.... I've seen nothing Video card wise, to get excited about

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