64MB NVIDIA GeForce 4 4200 Go vs. 32MB Mobility Radeon 9000

coolred

Diamond Member
Nov 12, 2001
4,911
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Which is the better option? Faster, battery life, etc. I searched for reviews, but couldn't find any comparing the 2.
 

Wah

Golden Member
Oct 16, 1999
1,799
1
71
for gaming the gf4 is better... but probably eats up more power. Buying an inspiron 8500?
 

fs5

Lifer
Jun 10, 2000
11,774
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I just bought a 8500 (it's on it's way), I heard you can upgrade the video card because it's not integrated into the MB. Is this true? I opted for the 9000 btw, the extra $99 they were charging for the 4200 was a little too much for me.
 

OldSpooky

Senior member
Nov 28, 2002
356
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The GF4 4200 will toast the Radeon 9000 in games, but it will also eat battery life like crazy. The Radeon 9000 provides an excellent balance between performance and power consumption.

Not sure where you can find reviews comparing the two though. Tom's did a review on the 9000, and there's a review of the 4200 here at Anand's. :)
 

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
27,730
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The 4200 will toast the M9, as said previously, but the M9 will last much longer and still provides a decent battery life. I know its possible to upgrae the I8200s to a Mobile Quadro chip, the workstation version f the 4200. And, don't quote me on this, but I think the 8500s may be able to take an M10 chip. You are correct when you say they are not integrated onto the mb, its stored on a modified AGP card that is actually resting just below the keyboard. The shape of that board determines its upgradeability. The 8200s cannot take an M10 or the Mobile FX chips because Dell changed the board design with the 8500s.
 

cpkim

Banned
Jun 9, 2003
6
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My friend has the new Toshiba Tecra S1 with the Radeon 9000. My 4200 is faster in games, but the most noticable difference is when you run the windows desktop in scaled mode or play any games that are below the LCD's standard resolution. The Radeon looks like crap and more pixelated. The 4200 looks a lot more smoother and natural.
 

mocca

Senior member
May 3, 2003
203
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The M9200 is just M9000 with AGP8x. BTW, you should not compare 64MB GF4 4200 Go with 32MB M9 because the 32MB M9 is 64bit version while another is 128bit. If you compare 64MB M9 (such as those in the IBM T40p, Dell 600m, etc.), then the differences will be smaller. The GF4 4200 Go will be faster than 64MB M9 about 15-25% depending on applications. The problem with desktop scaling in WinXP is a well known problem with every ATI chip. For some reason, ATI gfx always display the scaling (for the free desktop manager in WindowsXP) slow and a little bit pixelated. But this problem doesn't exist in other applications AFAIK (most likely crappy implementation of desktop scaling by M$). Below is the average 3dm2k1SE for each gfx

ATI M9 32MB: ~4700-5000
ATI M9 64MB: ~7400-8000
nVidia GF4 440 Go: ~4700-5000
nVidia GF4 4200 Go 64MB: ~8500-9500

The scores assume good cpu power such as P-M 1.6GHz, P4m 2.5GHz, or P4 3GHz from IBM, Dell, and Alienware systems.

Mocca