ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 and NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5650: Taking on DX9
by Andrew Ku on September 14, 2003 11:04 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Conclusion
With what turned out to be not one, not two, but almost a six-month wait, we finally got the head-to-head we were looking for. And with the scores in mind, we are extremely pleased with the way Mobility Radeon 9600 turned out. It seems definitely ready for the next generation games and benchmarks. In our various benchmark runs, we were even able to roughly gauge the heat emission between the Mobility Radeon 9600 and the GeForce FX Go5650. While we can’t release full results, we can state that in our Half-Life 2 benchmark runs, the Mobility Radeon 9600 was able to noticeably generate less heat. We are still waiting for all battery consumption benchmarks to finish, and we will report back as soon as that is completed.Results aside, it was a bit frustrating to see NVIDIA and ATI take so long to get the chips to market. After all, we reported back in March on these two solutions, and it took us quite some time (albeit almost 6 months) before we started to see real tangible retail systems. Granted, they were in other overseas markets, but the main technology market is still North America.
ATI isn’t completely without fault, as their product announcement comes after their tradition of the Mobility Radeon 9000, which was touted as the first mobile graphics chip to be announced and shipped within a week. Hopefully, we will see the next generation of mobile graphics processors (M11 and NV36M) with an announcement much closer to their full market release. (Of the two, we have only been able to see M11, which is definitely something to keep your eyes peeled for as we near official announcement.) Ideally, each company’s marketing should hold off until the date nears, and not jump the gun to respond to the other.
With the GeForce4 4200 Go ultimately replaced by the Go56xx, NVIDIA is starting to head in the right direction. Power consumption and heat emissions for the GeForce FX Go based notebooks have succeeded in many things for which the GeForce4 4200 Go did not. However, NVIDIA has fair way to go to take their mobility graphics processors up to the same speed as Mobility Radeon 9600 in many of the next-generation games on the horizon.
The developer of Half-Life 2, Valve, is the first developer to voice their displeasure for the NV3x architecture with such intensity, because it has forced them to write additional codepaths particularly for NVIDIA hardware; thus, costing them time, money, and extra resources. This was something not needed to run on ATI hardware, which is why they entered into an agreement with ATI. The order of the agreement was based on already existing hardware benchmark scores to a marketing agreement, not the other way around as some have speculated.
Now, the only way for NVIDIA hardware to run reasonably well in full DX9 games such as Half-Life 2, AquaMark 3, among others, is to lower several image quality related settings: no fog, 32-bit dropped to 16-bit, low dynamic range, etc. The current selection of older DX8 games may suit the GeForce FX based systems (desktop and notebook) just fine, but we are on the heels of a software change to DX9, which is why we are in the process of revising our graphics benchmark suite. The result of GeForce FX benchmarking in DX8 is that consumers are getting use to the higher fps rates in UT2003 and Jedi Knight 2. If Valve didn’t program a special codepath for NVIDIA hardware, customers would be calling up their technical support, and ultimately sending back the software title (RMA issues), which would result in Valve's loss of money. This ends up leaving both the programmer and the NVIDIA consumer dissatisfied because neither side gets to see the full DX9 experience appreciated. Don’t forget that programmers are also artists, and on a separate level, it is frustrating for them to see their hard work go to waste, as those high level settings get turned off. We can’t even begin to hypothesize or speculate the performance results for Go5200, which is a full DX9 part, had we sought to include it in this review.
Update 9/17: We are finished with the battery consumption runs, and we can report back that there is no noticible difference between the two mobile graphic parts, in this respect. We ran both under the highest battery conservation settings (PowerPlay and PowerMizer) and the standard MobileMark settings. Due to NDA reasons, we cannot release the numbers, but the margin between the two result were negligible.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
47 Comments
View All Comments
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
The Mobility Radeon 9600 with 128MB is available from Compaq/HP.MR9600 Pro:
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/3219...
Mobility FireGL T2:
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/3219...
So go get yourself one today! Coz I am!
-Ad
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
There are some people around that are developers. I personally use OpenGL for all my CG projects and there is no comparison for OpenGL. Traditionally nvidia used to have the upper hand in OpenGL (my Golden Sample Ti4200 runs better than Radeon 9700). I'm not favouring nvidia or ati. What I need is something that performs under OpenGL and not DX9...Dell inspiron 8600 is a great choice, but it comes with 5650 Go. It is reasonably cheap and extremely powerfull. Easy to get (online) or via a university (my case). Although ATI is faster under DX9, it is not supported by the big names (Dell, Toshiba, Compaq...). So if 5650 is even 80% as fast as 9600 under OpenGL, it IS a choice for me... If it is yet again 400% slower... NO
Please give us some OpenGL numbers!!!
Even Quake 3 will do, GLExcess, whatever...
Thanks
Yannis
Norwich, UK
Andrew Ku - Monday, September 29, 2003 - link
#43 Well the different results aren't unexpected. You used a different resolution. :)Anonymous User - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
I'd like to see a couple openGL tests included in the comparison.Thanks.
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
I get different results!I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 with the NVidia 5650 running AquaMark3. I'm using the driver that Dell ships with the 8600 (version 4.4.8.2). I get VASTLY better results on than what's posted in this article. Below, I'm taking my results vs. the article's Radeon numbers:
Frames per second (FPS)
My results Results from article
Chapter Go5650 Go5650 Radeon9600 fps
1 22.30 11.64 25.97
2 9.38 4.23 6.68
3 16.15 8.87 15.00
4 6.52 5.15 11.27
5 14.72 9.31 19.93
6 14.28 8.47 17.96
7 18.27 9.92 17.08
8 13.00 6.63 12.56
9 9.47 4.67 7.93
I submitted my results to Aquatech's results board under my user name "RonSchaaf" I ran the test multiple times with the same results, running with the Aquatech defaults.
Big Note: I just double-checked everything and I ran my tests at 1024x768x32, No FSAA, 4x Anisotropy, Maximum Details, with the Driver set to Maximum Quality. But I can't run at 1280x1024 like was done for the article because the Aquatech program won't let me change setting without springing for the "Professional" version.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 17, 2003 - link
Nice review.It is a good idea you tested the DX9 power of the cards and not some driver or game "optimisations"
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 16, 2003 - link
#34 Said: "Download 51.75 and run the test. Then tell us what you see. What a bunch of CRAP."Your right... with Det 51.75 they'd see a bunch of CRAP. Take a look at these image quality results: http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware/video_cards/at...
btw, the accoding to nVidia, the det 51.75 isn't ready to be installed on any machine yet. Kind of funny how that didn't stop them from saying it was the only valid version for benching hl 2...
http://www.techconnect.ws/modules.php?name=News&am...
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 16, 2003 - link
I agree with shalmanese)
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 16, 2003 - link
I didn't see a mention of the speed of the CPU used.Anyone know? (I might have missed it, but it wasn't on the benchmark setup page)
I know it's a P-M, but at what speed?
Shalmanese - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
Eh, I thought all in all ,it was a pretty ordinary review, lots of mistakes throughout.First of all, your graph numbers are up to 6 significant figures, round them down to even fps or 1 decimal place at the very least.
While theoretical comparisons laughing at how much the ATI card beat the nVidia card are all very pleasant, some indication for people who may have wanted to BUY these cards, what sort of performance they were in for might be nice as well. This means adding the NV3X and the DX8 codepath figures for HL2 etc. Also, a Go4200 and a Mobility 9000 thrown in might have been good as well but I understand that time may have not been adequate.
I also noticed that the CPU wasn't listed for the laptop. Is this part of the NDA info? Seems unusual as this is normally given.
pg1:
"Mobility Radeon 9600 in North America" should be "THE Mobility..."
"...between Mobility Radeon 9600..." again, missed a THE ... infact, its all throughout the article.
" You may have seen other media report benchmark scores that have been called into question. In our time spent benchmarking the two mobile graphics processors, we have yet to be able to recreate a similar scenario."
huh? you've yet to create a benchmark that has been called into question? What are you trying to say?
pg2:
"specifies that the Mobility Radeon 9600 consumes 1.0V while running, and 0.5W in Windows idle." Is that V or W? theres no point telling us what voltage the chip is running at when working. Give us wattage figures.
pg3: again, you give a V figure.
Shalmanese