GeForce Go 6800 Ultra: Powering the Dell Inspirion XPS Gen 2
by Derek Wilson on February 24, 2005 3:04 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
The performance of the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra is unprecedented in the mobile space. Of course, while the mobility of a DTR system is always debatable, there's no doubt that scaling down powerful systems to this size has its advantages and appeal (especially when there is no sacrifice in graphics performance).Without having a comparable comparison platform, we can't directly compare the Go 6800 Ultra and the desktop 6800 parts. It does seem clear that Go 6800 Ultra is at least as powerful as its desktop counterpart. Being limited by a less powerful CPU and still coming out on top in more than a couple tests is very impressive.
We would still like to setup a direct comparison between the Go and desktop 6800 parts in order to examine the part on a clock for clock level. We would like to better determine the impact of the power saving features in mobile part. The 50MHz speed bump from the desktop to the Go 6800 Ultra seems only possible due to power saving features. On the desktop NVIDIA tried the 6800 Ultra Extreme, but most vendors were only able to get their parts to about 425 (and this in a virtually thermally unlimited environment). Of course, performance is one of the tradeoffs in the balance, and a clock for clock comparison in the same platform would give us some good data on the GeForce Go line's efficiency compared to the desktop.
It's also useful to note that the new XPS Gen 2 did not get as hot to the touch. It seems Dell has done a better job of getting heat to move outside the system in spite of all the power packed into the chassis. We only had one night with the system, so we were unable to perform an in depth analysis of the system.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
48 Comments
View All Comments
dougSF30 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Different nVidia drivers? That's kinda bad, methodology-wise.JustAnAverageGuy - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
It's too bad we don't get to see pictures of the laptop :)Even if it was a video card review.
ElFenix - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#5the audigy is an external USB unit
bob661 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#5The CPU offered in this laptop is a Pentium M.
SLIM - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
I could be wrong, but I'd bet the picture would look a little different if all the cards were using the same drivers. The difference between 69.xx and 75.xx drivers for recent dx9 games could be significant.Cygni - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Its a shame Dell didnt give more time with the system, it would have been really interesting to probe the Alviso platform in all of its glory and compare against current systems... especially in the arena of the DDR2.bamacre - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#10, not sure about the cpu, but the Dell XPS notebook does offer a 7200rpm hdd, I'd bet it was used in the test.segagenesis - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
If the max output is 65W assuming you have the laptop loaded 100% the entire time the standard battery (what is it? 70W/h?) would barely last an hour. Just... ok... I imagine you can get beffier batteries or use a second one.sri2000 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Referring to a couple of differences in the test machine specs:---
Intel Pentium M 2.13GHz
1GB DDR2 533 4-4-4-10
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
1GB OCZ DDR400 3-3-3-10
---
How much of a boost are we seeing from the use of DDR2533 RAM and from the highest clocked Pentium M to date?
The PCMag review shows it with a 4200 RPM drive - the typical speed for most notebooks, but that should be slowing things down, in this test right?
This review doesn't say if the test unit had an optional 7200RPM HD
defter - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
"NVIDIA informed us that the TDP for the chassis is 65W."If we assume that Pentium M takes about 25W, this would leave 40W for system memory, chipset, hard drive, GPU and graphic memory. Wow, nVidia managed to pull miracle here. Gone are the days of 100W power consumption for high end Geforce 6800 cards.