ATI Mobility Radeon 9800 Review [Archive]

View Full Version : ATI Mobility Radeon 9800 Review

Dave Baumann

09-Dec-2004, 00:10

http://www.beyond3d.com/siteimages/b3dsmall.gif (http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/ati/m18/)ATI’s Mobility Radeon 9800 platform was announced late July, and since then Dell have been shipping them in their high end mobile gaming platform. Mobility Radeon 9800, for the first time, offered an 8 rendering pipeline, 256-bit memory bussed DirectX9 graphics capabilities to the “mobile” platform, which was basically similar to last years high end desktop configuration. Whilst ATI and NVIDIA have announced their latest generation high end mobile graphics, with X800 and 6800 Go, presently the Mobility Radeon 9800 is still the highest performance option available to actually purchase.

Here we take a look at the performance of the Mobility Radeon 9800, comparing it against a selection of ATI desktop products, to gauge if one of these solutions can really begin to offer desktop gaming performance. Read the full review here (http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/ati/m18/).

Tokelil

09-Dec-2004, 11:20

On the top of the Splinter Cell benchmark, there's a copy/paste error...
Also seems like an extra ATI word is in the first line of the conclusion.

Not a bad mobile product it seems. Some idle, video playback, gaming battery lifetime figures would have been nice.

Dave Baumann

09-Dec-2004, 11:27

Some idle, video playback, gaming battery lifetime figures would have been nice.

Not for Dell! ;)

The review wasn't so much about the system, but pruely the graphics performance that you can get - battery life will vary dependant on the battery and mobile configuration the video processor is in, so that would be more system level test. When you are getting to these types of solutions I think, realistically, you shouldn't be thinking of battery life as an overiding factor as they are very much intented to be desktop replacements and have a power socket nearby!

Tokelil

09-Dec-2004, 12:13

Well with a P4 EE + R420 core I guess you are right. :) And since it wasn't a product/system review, I understand why you left out the power tests. (My curiosity is touched though, so I hope some one else has the numbers...)

Anonymous

09-Dec-2004, 16:54

Whilst ATI and NVIDIA have announced their latest generation high end mobile graphics, with X800 and 6800 Go, presently the Mobility Radeon 9800 is still the highest performance option available to actually purchase.

This isn't true. The Nvidia 6800 Go is available now in Sager-built notebooks, like the Alienware 51-m 7700, the Falcon NW Fragbook and the Sager 9860, which is distributed by half a dozen online vendors.

Dave Baumann

09-Dec-2004, 17:08

Alienware have their listed for availability in Jan '05. And, as far as I've seen so far, nothing is available over here.

Anonymous

09-Dec-2004, 18:06

Great article!

I own a XPS with a Mobility 9800. Dell clocks these things very conservatively. I use DNA drivers which allows you to run the latest cat's on any mobile product. I am able to run the card at 450GPU and 443Mem without any issues. The special drivers and overclocking gave me an extra 20fps in HL2 @ 1680 x 1050 with 4x AF.

btw: Battery life on these are piss poor. I get just over an hour of non gaming use. Then again this is meant as a DTR, nothing more.

Any other questions let me know.

Anonymous

09-Dec-2004, 18:37

Alienware have their listed for availability in Jan '05. And, as far as I've seen so far, nothing is available over here.

My appologies then. :oops:

I didn't realize that it wasn't out in the UK yet. Looks like the ones I've seen are in the US.

Anonymous

09-Dec-2004, 20:50

Seems that Sager have adopted the newer x800 as well, look:

http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=49132

http://www.rockdirect.com/notebooks/xtremeti_2.htm#

Richard

10-Dec-2004, 02:21

Dave, great review as always; nice insight on the actual number of vertex shaders. It was also interesting how it all played out against a desktop R9800 Pro.

Two small typos (I think): In the test setup page you have FC v1.1 while in the actual page for that game you mention the 1.3 patch. Also, in D3 you have the "regular" benchmark and the 4xAA/8xAF. I'm assuming your regular one is also running with 8xAF (since you describe it's using High Quality) and you haven't artificially lowered AF for High Quality settings.

Anonymous

14-Dec-2004, 20:36

Greetings from Notebookforums.com and Kudos for the killer review! I have researched and am heading up a few of us that are ready to attempt to unlock the MR9800 to 12 pipes. We need a bit of help! And no, im not a psycho noob... lol.

What I know:
1. Everything but programming/coding
2. Everything in the article for months now.
I have been running my card at Mobile X800 speeds (400/400) for months now and my heat is unchanged. I have done the arctic silver mod on cpu and am willing to do copper heat mod on gpu if necessary.
3. The truth ati is hiding about the MR9800. It could even be a superior quality core than the MRX800 if you think of the testing strategy.

What we need:
1. To know if flashing with a mobile x800 bios will work.
-If so I am having a really hard time finding one and could use a link
-How about flashing a 12 pipe desktop bios.. tho I think it changes the clocks way too high and that would be baaaaaaad... real bad. scratch that. I could handle a 400/400 12 pipe bios and underclock if necessary with radlinker and set to boot.
2. If we can perform the hardware bridging unlock on the chip itself (if necessary)
3. What X800 unlock strategy would be optimal.

please help us!!! You can PM me at notebookforums - i am whackamac

but ill settle for a link on the bios tho' ... :D

And we welcome you to visit notebookforums.com. We have a excellent XPS/9100 thread and faq!

Anonymous

16-Dec-2004, 01:05