Mobile Graphics Cards

[Xsorovan]

Hey All,
I'm possibly in the market for a desktop replacement laptop that will allow me to play 3D games as well as all the normal laptop stuff. However in looking around I haven't seen any comparisons/ benchmarks for any mobile video cards. So while I KNOW I can drop 5k on an SLI mobile video card solution, the question is do I NEED to to be able to play Oblivion on a laptop?

Any thoughts? Any links? Anyway to poke Anandtech into doing an article?

 

[secretanchitman]

AT JUST did a review on the dell e1705 vs the e1710. go on their homepage and check it out!

whatever you do, if you are planning on gaming with a laptop, stay away from the intel gma series, the ati x1300 and nvidia 7300 series...that will literally obliterate your gaming performance. i would stick with a 7600GT Go, an X1800XT mobility or a 7900GS/GTX for laptop gaming...

 

[5150Joker]

AT's review doesn't tell the whole story (not that I'd expect it to) when it comes to the E1705 and how easily you can mod it to match XPS M1710 performance. In a nutshell, you can buy an E1705 laptop with very nice parts (e.g. 100 GB HD, T2500 Duo, 1GB DDR2, 7900 Go GS) and come out with a price that costs less than 1/2 of an XPS M1710 but with 90% of the GPU performance and 100% of the CPU performance. At notebookforums, I've been tinkering with the 7900 Go GS and have created a boot iso with a bunch of roms created via nibitor that have various clock settings that you can use to flash the 7900 go gs (dell locks out any chance of OC'ing via nV panel or any other 3rd party software). The average overclock so far is easily hitting 500+/1100+ which gives ~8000 pts in 3dmark05. In comparison, a stock clocked $3500 XPS M1710 with a 7900 Go GTX scores about ~8500 so there isn't much of a performance delta. People with M1710's that OC the 7900 go gtx are getting ~8800-9500 3dmark05 points but given the headroom in the 7900 go gs thus far, it's not inconceivable that it can easily hit 600+/1200+ and get close to the 9000 3dmark05 range. Best of all, it's been confirmed that Merom works in E1705 (a user just tested it today) and the 7900 Go GTX found in the M1710 also works in the E1705; both share the same mainboard except the one in the E1705 has some features stripped out.

The 7900 Go GTX is 24pp/8vs while the 7900 Go GS is 20pp/7vs and the best part is that with the bios rom files I made through nibitor, the default voltage on the 7900 go gs has been changed from 1.0v to 1.24v which allows us 7900 go gs owners to reach the same type of clocks (or even higher) the 7900 go gtx enjoys at a fraction of the price of an XPS M1710. So if you're looking for a well priced gaming laptop wtih very good performance, the E1705 + 7900 go gs is the way to go.

 

[Xsorovan]

I'm a HUGE fan of AMD. Would the overclocking thing you made work on an AMD system as well? Or do you have it designed just on the Dell bios?

 

[5150Joker]

Originally posted by: Xsorovan
I'm a HUGE fan of AMD. Would the overclocking thing you made work on an AMD system as well? Or do you have it designed just on the Dell bios?

The bios only works for the 7900 go gs found in the Dell E1705 and M1710. BTW, Yonah processors are every bit as good as mobile AMD chips and the upcoming Meroms destroy them.