ASUS W90Vp: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870... with CrossFire
by Jarred Walton on May 29, 2009 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Test Setup
We've removed many of the previously tested notebooks, in particular many of the lower end notebooks that aren't designed to compete with a high-end gaming system. We did keep a few midrange systems and some of the charts as a reference point, but even then we have to caution that driver updates may have changed performance. You want to focus more on the Clevo D901C results if you're interested in seeing a comparable notebook.
| ASUS W90Vp-A1 Test System | |
| Processor | Core 2 Quad Q9000 (2.00GHz 1066FSB 2x3MB L2) Overclocking to 2.29GHz (1221FSB) |
| Memory | 3x2048MB Transcend PC2-6400 @ DDR2-667 5-5-5-15 (Hyundai Electronics HYMP125S64CP8-S6) |
| Graphics | 2 x ATI Mobility Radeon 4870 (CrossFire) 512MB GPU/RAM Clocks: 550/1700 MHz (256-bit), 350/400 MHz Low Power Driver version 8.055.1.2 Beta ATI Drivers 8.612 |
| Display | 18.4" Glossy Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) Samsung 184HT01-A01 |
| Hard Drive | 2 x Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320GB 7200RPM 16MB (ST9320421AS) |
| Optical Drive | 8x SATA DVDR/BDROM (Optiarc BC-5500S) |
| Battery | 12-Cell 97.7Whr |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit |
| Price | Starting at ~$2500 online |
As mentioned earlier, we received a beta driver from ATI that affected the results in numerous titles. We will include results from both drivers so that you can see what you're missing if you have to wait for new drivers. Even if ASUS/ATI updates the drivers on their website to offer this beta driver, that's only a short-term solution. What happens in six months when there are many more new titles launching? We shall see shortly that CrossFire support is still MIA in a few titles, and that will be the case with every new release between now and the next driver update.
Since we only have one competitive gaming laptop available for testing right now, we also wanted to look at how performance compares to a desktop 4870X2. There are a few noteworthy differences between the desktop and notebook systems, starting with the CPU. This is my own personal gaming machine, with an overclocked 3.30GHz Q6600 (yup, it's still chugging along nicely). The desktop HD 4870X2 runs at higher clock speeds than the Mobility Radeon HD 4870, and it comes with 2GB of RAM (1GB per GPU). Furthermore, the desktop parts utilize GDDR5, which is quad-pumped so the 900MHz memory results in an effective clock speed of 3600MHz. Here's a quick rundown of the desktop system specifications.
| Desktop Test System | |
| Processor | Core 2 Quad Q6600 Overclocked (3.30GHz 1468FSB 2x4MB L2) |
| Memory | 2x2048MB OCZ PC2-6400 @ DDR2-734 4-4-4-12 |
| Graphics | ATI Radeon 4870X2 2GB GPU/RAM Clocks: 750/3600 MHz (256-bit) 9.5 Catalyst Drivers |
| Hard Drive | Samsung F1 750GB 7200RPM 32MB |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit |
Having a faster CPU means that there's less potential for a CPU bottleneck, so CPU limited benchmarks will be up to 43% faster than the overclocked W90Vp. Some benchmarks will also be limited by GPU memory bandwidth, where the HD 4870X2 is potentially 112% faster than the Mobility 4870 -- please note that very few titles are actually memory bandwidth constrained. Finally, the clock speed of the desktop card is 36% higher than the mobile part. In short, whether we are CPU or GPU limited, we expect the desktop system to be up to 40% faster than the W90Vp, unless there's some other problem (i.e. drivers). In order to help remove the CPU bottleneck as much as possible, we will focus on performance at 1080p and maximum quality settings for comparing the two systems.
Notebook configurations for the other laptops are at the following pages:
Acer 6920G
Alienware m15x
ASUS G50V
ASUS U6V
AVADirect FL-92
Clevo D901C (Note: upgraded to 2x2GB DDR2-667)
Dell Studio XPS 16
Gateway P-7808u FX
Gateway P-7811 FX
HP dv5t
MSI GT627
Toshiba X305-Q725
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buzznut - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
Looky there, I went and missed "bash AMD day"Damn, they're prolly still reeling.
Johnmcl7 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
In the specs for this machine it lists an 8x DVDR drive initially, then refers to it as a blu-ray drive just further down - I assume the first entry should read bd-rom/dvd-r combo.I have to say the pictures are extremely disappointing as the main shots of the laptop are badly underexposed concealing most of the details. I do realise these machines are not easy to get a picture of but normally the pictures in reviews are pretty decent. It would be good to see some pictures with some standard items (DVD cases or something) when the laptop is open to get a better idea of the scale, I think the sleek look makes it look smaller than it is especially given it makes the D901C look small which I didn't think possible.
As for the laptop itself I did consider one of these mainly because the price was good but decided against it due to the size/weight. I had a Dell XPS 2 then M1710 and I think that's really the upper limit to carry around with me. I have an XPS M1730 at the moment and it never leaves the house as combined with its huge powerpack makes it quite a bit bigger and heavier than the M1710, there's no way I would go bigger again.
It's a shame to see the driver situation is so poor when the performance is clearly there, it's not very encouraging for other companies to pick up mobile ATI parts either.
mrbios - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Jarred (or anyone who may purchase this notebook), I have a different Asus laptop that has the same multimedia touchpad, and I did find a way to disable it. Go into the Mouse control panel, go to Device Settings, expand tapping, click on tap zones, and uncheck "enable tap zones".garydale - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Why is it so difficult to get good display drivers for games? The OpenGL interface is well defined so what's the problem with writing a driver for it that game developers can have confidence it will work according to spec.?Is this a case of the hardware manufacturers screwing up with the driver or the game developers trying to get around the API to work directly with the hardware or a bit of both? Frankly, I don't care. If I want to play a game on a computer, it should install and work just like any other piece of software or hardware.
Hopefully AMD/ATI's release of details of their API will help bring stability and performance, at least for Linux games. Now will NVidia follow suit and allow the open source community to build their own drivers to end this proprietary "buggy driver" lunacy?
JarredWalton - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
I believe most of the driver updates are to optimize the way the GPU executes certain code. In theory, the drivers should run all code properly but not optimally. The reality, sadly, is that the "properly" part is only correct about 80% of the time with new titles. Add CrossFire into the mix and that seems to drop down to 50%. If you have a regular dual card CrossFire setup, disabling CrossFire in the CCC often solves compatibility issues, but that's not an option on the drivers I've received for the W90Vp.In the case of Empire: Total War it looked like the drivers were rendering properly on one card but not on the other. If I grabbed a screenshot via the PrintScreen button, everything looked correct, but looking at the screen only the landscaping and sky were always visible and correct. The units, trees, buildings, etc. were only visible about 10% of the frames, which pretty much means you can't play the game.
mbaroud - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
I own one the W90VP-A1.I have been dyingto update the drivers, it sucks running on OUTDATED drivers :(
nubie - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
If these are simply mobile desktop replacements why doesn't somebody get on making a desktop built into the screen already?And I don't mean the hideous monstrosity that is the Dell XP1.
I am all for laptops, but this form factor is silly above 15.4" in my opinion.
(that said, I love the tech, it is very cool.)
Jackattak - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Dunno if you've been asleep for the past two years but just about every major PC manufacturer offers a desktop built-in to the screen nowadays, none of which are "hideous" (strictly my opinion, but I find it hard to find a screen "hideous", and that's essentially all these offerings are is a screen).garydale - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
It's generally cheaper and faster to run multiple desktops in the locations you need than to lug a "desktop replacement" around. Just keep your documents (and other settings) on a USB key or implement an Internet synchronization scheme.The simple fact is that you cannot get anything that can be reasonably called a laptop to match the performance of a desktop. Laptops don't have the space for multiple drives, they can't dissipate heat as well, and they certainly can't accommodate expansion.
To get the same performance of a desktop in a mobile platform, you have to wait for the technology to become available then pay a premium for the privilege. People have been saying laptops are getting near desktop performance for decades. What is actually happening however is the price of admission for an application platform has been decreasing.
You can get a resonable desktop today for what a hard drive would have cost you twenty years ago. However, if you want cutting edge power, you need a desktop or larger.
frozentundra123456 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
The charts are technically labelled incorrectly. I believe for instance the first chart, black bar, means the ratio of nVidia performance to ATI, not percent improvement as it is labelled. Saying "102 percent improvement" actually means that the nVidia solution is twice as fast as the ATI, which from reading the rest of the article appears not to be what the author meant. The rest of the charts are labelled in this way also.