Thoughts
It's pretty clear that mobile graphics are in the ascendancy. Current top end mobile GPUs enable excellent DX8-level performance and DX9 titles are certainly playable.The advent of swappable graphics modules from large scale OEMs and specialist vendors like Dell and Alienware enables the end user to swap out his or her graphics with the same ease as a PC graphics card.
Both tested modules have strong performance, the NVIDIA GPU edging out its MR9600 counterpart by a decent margin. With M10 some six months older than Go5700, it's to be expected, but MR9600 certainly isn't slow. ATI's MR9700 part closes the gap. Buy any laptop with MR9600, MR9700 or Go5700 and be confident of high performance, high image quality gaming on the move. Here's hoping more laptop ODMs go down the swappable module route.
We await the next generation of mobile products to truly enable mobile DX9-class gaming at high speed, the current generation just a tiny bit short of that particular mark. Far Cry on the move is a tall order.
The trickle down of desktop GPU hardware into the mobile space is a good one. With more and more desktop GPUs designed to have low heat output, low power draw and lower voltage memory modules from the outset, the transition into a mobile product becomes somewhat easier.
Many thanks to Alienware for the sample laptop, it was the easy enabler for the article and made things simple.
