Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1085



Intel created quite a buzz in the computer world yesterday with the launch of its latest processor and chipset solution for the mobile market. Unlike other Intel mobile solutions, the Pentium M processor, 855PM chipset, and PRO/Wireless 2100 network card are pieces of hardware designed from the ground up to be mobile-only solutions. The products run at a fraction of the power required to run their desktop equivalents and provide additional speed to boot.

Intel's new mobile technology was quickly adopted by major OEMs to produce notebooks with form factors and battery life previously not possible. Yesterday we examined new notebook solutions from Dell, IBM, and FIC, each of which brings to the table at least three hours and forty five minutes of battery life in systems that weigh, at the most, 7 pounds and go down in weight to 4.5 pounds. The Pentium M processor is ushering in a new era in mobile computing and Intel is to thank.

The rest of the mobile market did not sit quiet and let Intel receive all the praise given to the direction mobile computing is headed. Leveraging off the launch of the Intel Pentium M processor and the attention that the mobile market has gotten because of it, both ATI and NVIDIA are announcing new mobile graphics processors today. The solutions that the companies are offering range from a new integrated chipset solution for the Pentium 4 and Pentium 4-M processor to ultra high performance DX9 mobile parts.

Today, only one day after Intel's Centrino/Pentium M launch, we will be taking a brief look at 4 new mobile solutions from ATI and 2 new solutions from NVIDIA. This review is more of a technology preview than a full mobile chip review due to the fact that no notebook solutions available currently use any of these products. You may notice that some other sites are supplying benchmark numbers for the ATI and NVIDIA products. These numbers were recorded off a desktop system with a desktop version of the mobile graphics chip at the helm and are thus not necessarily representative of final notebook performance. Expect to see full reviews of these 6 chips in a month or two as production scales up and vendors begin incorporating the new solutions.



ATI - Radeon IGP 7000M and Mobility Radeon 9200

The first chip that ATI is announcing today is the successor to the Radeon IGP 340 chipset announced a little less than a year ago. The Radeon IGP 340 served as an integrated graphics solution for Pentium 4 and Pentium 4-M processors and was met with some success in the market. Although not nearly as prevalent as Intel chipset solutions with discrete graphics parts, the Radeon IGP 340 did manage to find its way into a number of computers from large OEMs such as Compaq and Sony.

The Radeon IGP 7000M chipset hopes to further accelerate the adoption rate of the ATI integrated graphics solutions. The chipset has been revamped some increasing performance in both 2D and 3D situations. Aiding performance in 2D mode is DDR333 support (up from DDR266 support in the Radeon IGP 340); the first to be offered in a mobile IGP solution. The memory controller otherwise remains unchanged, meaning it is still a single channel 64-bit controller.

On the 3D side the Radeon IGP 7000M gets a big speed boost thanks to a new graphics core. Whereas the older Radeon IGP 340 included a Radeon VE (aka Radeon 7000) based integrated graphics solution, the Radeon IGP 7000M includes a Radeon 7500 (aka Mobility Radeon 7500, aka M7) based integrated graphics solutions. This raises the bar for integrated video 3D performance up a notch and is a welcome addition to the Radeon IGP line; the upgrade was desperately needed to keep integrated graphics performance somewhat respectable. The use of the M7 graphics core in the Radeon IGP 7000M also means that the chipset gets POWERPLAY support.

We have heard rumors of a second Radeon IGP chipset to be launched later this year, closer to summer time. From what we have been hearing the chipset will serve as a high performance integrated graphics chipset including a higher performing integrated video solution and a faster memory controller. This unannounced product has the potential to make the integrated graphics chipset market all the more exciting but for now the Radeon IGP 7000M will have to do. Note that the Radeon IGP 7000M is pin compatible with the IGP 340, making the transition from the old chipset to the newer one less painful for manufacturers.

The second product that ATI is releasing today is being marketed as a mainstream 3D graphics solution which makes sense being that it is based on the last generation high end ATI mobile chip, the Mobility Radeon 9000. The new chip is the Mobility Radeon 9200, code named the M9+. The Mobility Radeon 9200 is essentially the mobile equivalent of the desktop Radeon 9200, making the chip more or less that same as a desktop Radeon 9000 with AGP 8x support.

The improvements of the Mobility Radeon 9200 over the Mobility Radeon 9000 extend a bit further than those offered by the Radeon 9200 in comparison to the Radeon 9000 Pro. On top of the AGP 8x support, the Mobility Radeon 9200 now comes clocked at a 270MHz core clock speed and a 270MHz DDR memory clock speed (540MHz effective). The Mobility Radeon 9000 that it replaces ran at a 250MHz core clock speed and a 230MHz DDR memory clock speed. Note that in our review of the Mobility Radeon 9000 we were told that a 270/270MHz Mobility Radeon 9000 solution would be offered and sold as a desknote variant of the chip but that product never founds its way to market. It looks like the marketing team decided against creating a desknote version of the M9 (Mobility Radeon 9000) and instead turned the chip into the M9+ (Mobility Radeon 9200).

Although the AGP 8x support on the chip will not result in any performance improvements, the boost in core and memory speed should help make the Mobility Radeon 9200 more competitive in the mobile world by improving upon an already wonderful chip. The chip offers the same POWERPLAY functionality present in the Mobility Radeon 9000 as well.



ATI - Mobility Radeon 9600 and Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro

The final products that ATI is talking about today are the Mobility Radeon 9600 and Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro, two high-end DX9 mobile parts. The two Mobility Radeon 9600 solutions are mobile versions of the desktop Radeon 9600 (RV350). Because of this, we will not be going into detail on the hardware behind the Mobility Radeon 9600. Instead you should read up on the chip here. Briefly, a few important things to remember about the Radeon 9600 (and thus the Mobility Radeon 9600 chips) are the facts that it is produced on a 0.13 micron process, incorporates some serious memory controller optimizations over the RV300 (Radeon 9500) that it replaces, and has a new version of Hyper-Z compression technology.

Both Mobility Radeon 9600s incorporatePOWERPLAY technology and are well gated to allow portions of the chip to remain unpowered while not in use. ATI's technical details indicate that the chips actually consumes only 0.5W while in Windows idle. No information on the maximum power consumption of the chip were given.

Being based on the R300 graphics core does have its advantages. Thanks to the base that the R300 set up for the RV350 core, the Mobility Radeon 9600 chips have a number of advanced features. For example, the Mobility Radeon 9600 chips offer component output support. This is a nice addition for those driving HDTVs or high quality projectors with their notebook during presentations. Also present is video-input support and MPEG-2 hardware encode acceleration which we investigated in our All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro review.

The process shrink that the Mobility Radeon 9600 underwent helps keep power consumption of the chip low. Compared with the Mobility Radeon 9000, the Mobility Radeon 9600 consumes the same amount of power and actually runs at 0.5V less (the chip runs at 1.0V). This is done even with the high 350MHz core clock speed and 300MHz DDR memory clock (600MHz effective) speed that the chip is clocked at. The clock speeds of the Mobility Radeon 9600 place the chip between the desktop Radeon 9600 Pro's 400/300MHz DDR speed and the desktop Radeon 9600's 325/200MHz DDR speed. The chip should be one fast mobile graphics processor.

The Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro one ups the base Mobility Radeon 9600 by offering higher core clock speeds and GDDR2-M memory support for higher memory clock speeds. Contrary to what its name may suggest, GDDR2-M memory is not DDR2 memory. Like the "DDR2" memory used by the GeForce FX, the GDDR2-M memory that the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro supports does not transmit four times per clock. Instead the memory is optimized and therefore able to run at higher frequencies than before.

The GDDR2-M memory support that the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro offers allows the memory chips used on the processor to operate somewhere between "DDR600 and DDR900 or above" speeds, indicating that 900+MHz effective operating frequencies are possible. Just how fast the memory will go ATI is not yet saying, probably due to the fact that GDDR2-M memory is not readily available or in mass production quite yet. As a side note, the GDDR2-M memory offers power saving features over both GDDR-2 and regular DDR memory chips and does not require external termination (saving precious space).

Another feature that the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro offers is what ATI calls OVERDRIVE. OVERDRIVE is an automatic overclocking utility that is available for use in the drivers. The utility makes use of an on chip thermal diode to monitor temperature and overclock until a specific temperature or clock speed limit is reached. The OVERDRIVE feature is interesting on paper but we will have to wait until we get our hands on a notebook using the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro before we can judge its effectiveness. It does sound like a good solution for desktop replacement and high performance gaming notebooks but will undoubtedly effect battery life while enabled.

The Mobility Radeon 9600 is available in four configurations: a discrete package, a 32MB integrated memory package, a 64MB integrated memory package, and a 128MB integrated package. The Mobility Radeon 9600 is the first mobile chip to be offered with 128MB of on package. We noticed the move in graphics memory from 64MB to 128MB on the desktop side about five months ago and the notebook market seems to be quickly following. As the IBM T40p notebook examined in our Centrino/Pentium M roundup reveals, people out there are using memory on package solutions to bring mobile 3D to new places.

Details on the package solutions available for the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro were not available but we suspect that the chip will begin production in a discrete only design.



NVIDIA - GeForce FX Go5200, GeForce FX Go5600, and EA

Like the ATI products announced today, the discrete graphics solutions being announced today by NVIDIA are mobile versions of desktop parts. The first chip is the GeForce FX Go5200, aka NV34M. The GeForce FX Go5200 shares more than just a name with the desktop GeForce FX 5200 unveiled earlier this week. Again, as opposed to going into detail on the NV34 architecture here we ask that you turn back to our discussion of the chip in our GeForce FX 5600/5200 Ultra Performance review. Some key items to keep in mind: that the NV34M is produced on a 0.15 micron process and is a full DX9 part.

The GeForce FX Go5200 graphics processor operates at a 300MHz core clock speed and a 300MHz DDR memory clock speed (600MHz effective). This is slightly less than the 325/325MHz DDR speed which the desktop GeForce FX 5200 Ultra runs at.

The high end solution that NVIDIA is bringing to market today is the GeForce FX Go5600. Based off the desktop GeForce FX 5600 (NV31), the specifications of the Go part are identical to those of the desktop one (which can be seen here). Key features of the NV31M: it is produced on a 0.13 micron process, is a full DX9 part, and shares a number of similarities with the NV30.

The GeForce FX Go5600 comes clocked at a 350MHz core speed and 350MHz DDR memory clock speed (700MHz effective). This is the same clock speed as the desktop GeForce FX 5600 Ultra ships at.

Both the GeForce FX Go5200 and the FX Go5600 incorporate NVIDIA's PowerMizer technology, up to version 3.0 in this incarnation of mobile NVIDIA GPUs. The new PowerMizer shares many similarities with previous generations of the technology; driver implementation of the feature looks almost identical. NVIDIA was able to further gate the GeForce FX Go series processors to reduce power consumption. As a result of this and the smaller manufacturing process, the GeForce FX Go5600 now runs at 1V like the ATI Mobility Radeon 9600.

As derivatives of the NV30 chip, the GeForce FX Go5200 and Go5600 chips include a feature set similar to that offered by the Mobility Radeon 9600 chips. These include component-out support and an MPEG2 encode assist engine. We have not gotten a chance to test either of these features on the GeForce FX line of chips so it remains up in the air how the chips perform in each task.

NVIDIA is also announcing mobile support for a variety of EA games, the first time EA has extended support privileges to a mobile chip. This is is more of a marketing ploy if anything, as the whole line of ATI mobile products should be just as effective at running games produced by EA. The motivating factor behind EA making their support announcement is almost undoubtedly due to the fact that NVIDIA has bought the exclusive distribution rights to some of the existing top EA titles. This means that we should start seeing good games reappear in video card bundles, a welcome addition to any video card purchase.

With the release of two new NVIDIA mobile graphics processors we were left wondering what would become of the GeForce4 4200 Go chip. Initially announced in November of last year it was not until yesterday that we actually saw the GeForce4 4200 Go in a laptop (the Dell Latitude D800), some 4 months later than NVIDIA indicated notebooks would be shipping. It seems that the current plans call for phasing the GeForce4 4200 Go out pretty quickly, with the GeForce FX Go5600 taking over thanks to its superior thermal characteristics and significantly lower power consumption. It is possible that a few more design wins for the GeForce4 4200 Go may pop up in the next week or two, but do not count on it. It seems that the chip was more of a knee jerk reaction to the Mobility Radeon 9000 than a realistic product.



Conclusion

What do we think about the next generation of mobile graphics processors? We are excited about them. Which one will you want in your future notebook? No way to tell yet. We can hypothesize and stipulate performance all we want but until the solutions find themselves in notebooks we cannot know what chip will take the performance crown (especially considering that we still do not know how the Radeon 9600 Pro will perform).

To be honest we are a bit irritated at both ATI and NVIDIA's mobile plan of attack. After proclaiming how wonderful it was to find the Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics chip shipping the week after the chip's announcement, we now find ourselves having to wait at least a month and perhaps two before the new line of Mobility Radeon 9600 chips end up in notebooks (it is possible we will see the Mobility Radeon 9200 in notebooks before this since it is essentially the Mobility Radeon 9000 chip at a higher clock speed). ATI went out of their way at the Mobility Radeon 9000 launch to point out that the launch was the first time a mobile graphics chip was announced and shipping with a week's timeframe. Are they no longer practicing what they preach?

As for NVIDIA, we are irked at the way the GeForce4 4200 Go product panned out. Not only did the chip not arrive on time and only find its way into one system to date, the chip looks destined to be replaced soon by the new GeForce FX Go5600. Now we cannot be sure when to expect GeForce FX based notebook solutions ("sooner rather than later" we are told) nor can be sure of the product's longevity once it arrives on the scene (in all fairness it is unlikely that either the Go5200 or Go5600 will be gone as quickly as the GeForce4 4200 Go).

There does seem to be an excuse for the rush to announce the next generation graphics solutions. That excuse is the Pentium M. Thanks to Intel's latest processor, mobile computing performance is all the buzz around technology circles. It is only natural for both ATI and NVIDIA to want to take as much advantage of the buzz as possible. The tactic may be good for the companies marketing strategy but it is not so good for the consumers who are left waiting and wondering.

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