System Setup
Hardware
- Time Platina Athlon 64 Laptop, Model 3200+ A64, 2000MHz, 1GB, MR9600
- ASUS K8V Deluxe, Socket 754, VIA K8T800 Athlon 64, 1005.011 BIOS
- AMD Athlon 64 Model 3200+, 1MB L2, 10 x 200MHz
- Corsair XMS3200LLPT, 2 x 256MB, 2-2-2-6
- Western Digital WD360 Raptor, SATA, 36.2GB (ASUS K8V, ASUS P4S800D-E)
- ATI Radeon 9800XT (412/730)
Software
- Windows XP Professional w/SP1
- ATI CATALYST 4.1 and Control Panel (both)
- VIA Hyperion 4.51v (ASUS K8V)
- HEXUS Pifast v41
- Simplisoft HDTach 2.61
- Kribi Bench 1.19
- Sciencemark 2.0
- 3DMark 2001SE v330
- Quake3 v1.30 HQ (four demo)
- LAME 3.92MMX MP3 Encoding(192CBR, U2's Pop album)
- Realstorm Ray Tracing
- X2: The Threat - Rolling Demo
The Time goes up against my K8V base box. The vaguaries of laptop testing means their fixed spec nature makes comparative testing quite hard. Without a regular desktop Radeon 9600 for the K8V box, the Time will look a little silly up against the 9800XT-equipped K8V initially, but look twice at the graphs and interpret them differently. Look how close the Time actually gets, rather than how far away it apparently is. The K8V has more than 2x the graphics horsepower, keep that in mind.
The MR9600 in the Time was clocked as follows.
350MHz core means 1.4Gpixel/sec pixel fillrate and 1.4Gtexel/sec multitexture fillrate, paired with a slightly anorexic 6.4GB/sec of possible memory bandwidth (16-byte wide bus, 400MHz effective clock). Mobile packaging and the actual GPU restrict the bus width and heat considerations stop high clocked memory being used. ~24GB/sec from the 9800XT makes the MR9600 look a little sheepish and it has more than 2x the pixel and texturing prowess. But the MR9600 only seeks to give mobile users playable DX9 punch, not £350 desktop accelerator DX9 punch.
With both machines featuring Model 3200+ A64, the difference in the subsystem results will be down to the memory configuration. Can 1GB of high(ish) latency DDR333 keep pace with 512MB of low latency DDR400? Here's the CPU-Z info for everything on the Time.
