Compaq Presario 900 1500+: The Radeon IGP Goes Mobile

Performance - Jedi Knight 2

Let's preface our Jedi Knight 2 scores by saying that there appears to be something wrong with our Compaq Presario 900 1500+ system when running Jedi Knight 2. We initially attempted to test the system in Jedi Knight 2 using the extreme quality settings but the system choked each time the texture detail levels were set to "very high." As a result we dropped the quality down to "normal," which actually makes more sense in a integrated graphics solutions. That didn't solve all our problems, it seems.

Even with the "normal" settings, the Radeon IGP 320M performed unexpectedly slow in Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast. ATI has tried time and time again to reproduce the problem on their end, to no avail. It appears that the problem is isolated to our particular pre-production unit. Whatever the cause, we thought it was interesting to see the issue that arose and that shipping versions of the notebook do not experience the same problems.

Jedi Knight 2 'demo jk2ffa' 640x480x32 - Normal Settings ECS i-Buddie XP 1500+ Compaq Presario 900 1500+ 41.2 23.5 | 0 | 8 | 16 | 25 | 33 | 41 | 5

We already saw the Radeon IGP 320M perform on par or better than the desktop SiS 740 chipset solution (remember, the mobile version should be somewhat slower). It is for this reason that we were surprised by the i-Buddie XP's commanding lead over the Presario 900 in Jedi Knight 2. The performance of the Presario 900 was 75% off the performance of the i-Buddie XP. We feel that we can attribute this problem to our preproduction model of the notebook, as ATI has assured us that the slowdown seems to only occur on our system. For comparison's sake, ATI's internal numbers show the same system running at 48.5 FPS.

Jedi Knight 2 'demo jk2ffa' 800x600x32 - Normal Settings ECS i-Buddie XP 1500+ Compaq Presario 900 1500+ 32.9 20.5 | 0 | 7 | 13 | 20 | 26 | 33 | 39

The odd trend continued at 800x600x32. Here the performance delta has shrunk somewhat, now down to a 60% difference. Still way to large for our liking and way to large to be explained by almost any other manner.

Jedi Knight 2 'demo jk2ffa' 1024x768x32 - Normal Settings ECS i-Buddie XP 1500+ Compaq Presario 900 1500+ 22.8 15.5 | 0 | 5 | 9 | 14 | 18 | 23 | 27

The story is the same at 1024x768x32. This time the performance delta is 47% in favor of the i-Buddie XP.