Mobility Radeon 9800

rspektor · Post by **rspektor** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:44 pm

does anyone know any light laptops coming with it?

Post by **Apoptosis** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:06 am

ASUS M6NE (or M6000Ne)
AOpen 1557GLS
SpecTech CL56

Those are a few barebones that offer the M11... The AOpen 1557GLS looks to be the most interesting since it has 128mb of video memory while the M6NE has only 64mb.

As for your question the M11's are just hitting the market now in Q3 of 2004... The M18's that you seek aren't really out yet. Voodoo/alienware/Dell will get them first and the folks at voodoo don't have any yet.

Some FYI for you...

Here is the lineup of future ATI Mobility Chipsets..

ATi High End
M28 Pro (PCI-E) - 16 pipes
M28 (PCI-E) - 12 pipes
Mainstream
M24 (PCI-E) - X600 core, 4 pipes
M26 (PCI-E) - RV410 core, 8 pipes
Value
M22 (PCI-E) - 4 pipes

Current:
M18- (AGP8X) Current 9800
M11 - (AGP8X) Current 9700
M10 - (AGP8X) Current 9600

As you can tell ATI is going to be busy in the upcoming months... If you own an M10 or M11 chip then you might want to hold off for the M28 or M28Pro. Both are slated for Q4 of 2004.

rspektor · Post by **rspektor** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:51 am

I'm going to be buying/buildingish a laptop for college in a few weeks and i'd like to know if the m6ne is good enough for the current generation of games (doom3/half-life 2) since i know doom 3 lags my current video card (geforce 4 mx) with all settings turned down.

Also, i'd like to know if the 1557GLS is more worth the price than the m6ne since although the aopen has a better video the m6ne has better battery life/secondary battery.

Also, is it better to have a 15.1 inch sxga+ or 15.4 inch wxga, i'd like to know your experience with the wxga that you built.

umm, thanks for reading all that

Post by **Apoptosis** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 7:53 am

well... Let me go kinda in depth here...

The graphics on my ASUS M6N with the ATI M10 64mb graphics is great for many games. I am a gamer, so my standards for graphics is set very high. One of the big draw backs for mobile graphics are the drivers...

ATI does not supply mobility drivers to the public... So you must go to the manufacturer of your chassis for the driver. In my case with the ASUS M6N the newest driver is version 6.14.10.6422. Performance is great, but not good enough for my DirectX9 games.

Now here is the cool part.. There is a tweak on Driver Heaven that allows you to mod the latest Catalyst Desktop drivers so they work on your notebook. This script is called DH Mod tool V2.0b and is well worth it. I was then able to download and run the newest Catalyst 4.7 drivers (6.14.10.6458) without any problems on my system. I see no performance gains on 3dmark2001 or any of the DX7 or DX8 games to be honest, but it fixes many bugs I saw in farcry and really helped out the frame rates. I ran a quick benchmark using Aquamark3 with modded Catalyst 4.4 versus 4.7 and saw around a 20% gain in framerate.

I have not put doom3 on my notbook yet... I will do that today. As for the screen.. I wasn't sure of the 15.4 widescreen at first, but I love it. For image editing to gaming it doesn't bother me and it feels weird to use a regular "square" laptop now.

and to quote ya... "thanks for reading all that"

rspektor · Post by **rspektor** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 1:15 pm

thanks, definitely going for the wide now, could you also tell me how doom 3 runs after you install it? thanks

btw, no worries now, turns out that doom3 runs perfeclty with the updated drivers, so if my geforce4 mx440 could run it then the mobility 9700 definitely can

Post by **Apoptosis** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 3:56 pm

Doom 3 plays like this:

640 x 480 with all the eye candy on:

40.7 FPS w/ 512mb of PC-2700 memory
40.8 FPS w/ 1GB of PC-2700 memory

640 x 480 with all the eye candy OFF:

63.7 FPS w/ 512mb of PC-2700 memory
63.8 FPS w/ 1GB of PC-2700 memory

My notebook is the ASUS M6N, Pentium-M 1.7, ATI Mobility 9600 64mb w/ Cat 4.7 drivers.

Cat 4.8 drivers came out today and the Beta 4.9 drivers for DOOM 3 are out so expect more DOOM 3 performance with them...

rspektor · Post by **rspektor** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 7:17 pm

very nice, thanks

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:36 am

I would strongly suggest that if you are a serious gamer then you should NOT look to your laptop for gaming. I also don’t think its a good idea for you to have games on your laptop. I know that I try very hard to keep games off my laptop that way I actually take notes rather than game during class. Get a $500-700 desktop for gaming and a $500 laptop, you will spend around the same amount of money that you would building one almost decent gaming laptop. This will also give you more of an upgrade path for games in the long run. It will also allow you to bring you laptop to class and take notes and use the internet for research. This is basically what I did and its worked very well for me.

Wirehead · Post by **Wirehead** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 12:18 am

As long as we're talking gaming laptops, if you like Voodoo's laptops, they source their barebones from a company called (I think) Mitac. It's the same chassis, same loadout, for about half the money. I got my A64 3000+, 512mb DDR400, Toshiba 7200RPM 60gb, 15.1" for like $1600 new. I ain't saying where because I'm trying not to advertise - but it's not too hard to find. I guess if the admin doesn't mind I could post a few links or whatever to the various people selling laptops based on that chassis.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 9:11 am

Have at it man... the main point of this forum is to help people out.

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 9:47 am

dido post away thats the kind of stuff we want, your good experience with a vendor helps other people buy smart.

Wirehead · Post by **Wirehead** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 9:57 am

Thanks.

I got my particular laptop from a place called xotic PC. They advertise on Ebay and their homepage is http://www.xoticpc.com. Helluvadeal, IMHO, as I checked out what this system would've cost me from Voodoo and it came out around $3200 or so to match the specs I got from these guys for $1680 or so. I just checked and it appears they don't stock this particular laptop anymore, but do have one with the MR9700 and a 17" screen.

The actual manufacturer is Mitac: http://www.mitac.com/micweb/products/main.htm

The US retailer is Hyperdata (this is the company that XoticPC gets their stuff from - I dunno if Hyperdata sells directly to the public or not): http://www.hyperdatadirect.com/product/ ... el8350.htm

You can see that the system listed above is the same one that Voodoo is selling as the Envy 855: http://www.voodoopc.com/systems/m855.aspx

Hopefully all that helps someone. I spent a few months futzing around trying to find good deals before I finally bought something.

--edit--

I should mention that their phone habits suck, though. They don't return phone calls. You just have to call once or twice a day until you talk to a live human and then they'll answer your questions just fine.