NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 Go vs. ATI's M28: The Mobile GPU Wars Begin
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 8, 2004 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
First and foremost, kudos to NVIDIA for launching a mobile GPU and be able to promise availability of notebooks based on the GPU on the same day. This year we have seen far too many GPU launches on the desktop side met with absolutely zero availability, and to have a launch with availability on the same day is a nice change of pace. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a new era for NVIDIA, we'll just have to wait and see. With ATI's M28 launch just two weeks away, we can only hope that ATI will follow suit in having launch and availability paired with one another in the same manner as NVIDIA. With the GeForce 6800 Go, NVIDIA has effectively set the launch schedule standard that ATI must at least follow in order to avoid the scorn of AnandTech and end-users alike.
Performance-wise, the latest mobile GPUs from both ATI and NVIDIA are quite strong. Offering desktop-class performance (because they are basically desktop GPUs with some neat power management features), ATI's M28 and NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 Go make perfect LAN-party notebooks as well as excellent desktop replacement notebooks for users who happen to be gamers. The performance of both solutions was pretty impressive, with 1280 x 1024 being an extremely playable resolution on either notebook. The performance advantage does to go ATI however, the M28 performed very well across the board, only losing to NVIDIA in Doom 3 performance but offering much higher performance in most other benchmarks.
Things could get very interesting with NVIDIA's higher performance configuration of the GeForce 6800 Go running at 450/600, instead of the 300/300 configuration we tested here today. At 450/600, the performance advantage could definitely shift to NVIDIA in the areas where things are already close and ATI's performance gap could also be eaten into. ATI may have an answer to NVIDIA's higher clocked configuration of the GeForce 6800 Go; while ATI only rates the M28 at 400/400, some manufacturers are apparently running it at higher speeds, we will have to wait and see what is launched by the end of this month, but the performance verdict is far from final. All we know today is that M28 is faster than NVIDIA's baseline GeForce 6800 Go configuration, and we'll have to wait until the end of this month for a truly final verdict on the king of the DTR mobile GPU market.
What's even more exciting however is the possibility of both ATI and NVIDIA's mid-range GPUs coming down to more manageable-sized notebooks in the near future. While we just had the 6600 vs X700 battle on the desktop, don't be too surprised if we see a very similar comparison on the mobile side next year.
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bollwerk - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
bah, #13 beat me to it. I was also going to point out that the mobility 9800 was based on the X800, not the 9800. I think it was confusing of ATI to do this, but what can ya do... *shrug*MAValpha - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
For accuracy's sake, the Mobility 9800 was based on the R420 core- not the desktop R350/R360 (cite: http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=611... Granted, it was an AGP chip, but it bore more technological resemblance to an X800 than to a 9800. Even so, I think that the name "Mobility X800" does make sense, in keeping with ATI's naming convention; then again, remember the Mobility 9700.DeathByDuke - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
not a good comparision really. 8 pipeline chip vs 12 pipeline chip. ATi no doubt plan a Mobility X800. Which is no doubt the '9800' with 12-16 pipes. It'd be fun.ActuaryTm - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
Anand:Thank you for the review, and for the clarification regarding the available testing time for each machine. Especially enjoyed the clear, concise portion regarding clock gating.
It should be noted to those with negative comments that this was not a review of either machine, but rather a simple comparison of the two GPUs.
Look forward to the coming reviews, Anand. Well done.
Regards,
Michael
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
We wanted to run more tests but we only had the M28 laptop for a matter of a few hours and the Geforce 6800 Go laptop for less than a day before we had to send it back. Given more time with the solutions we would have gladly performed more tests. I'm hoping to have a shipping version of M28 by the end of this month for more thorough tests.As far as a comparison to other notebooks, the best comparison point is the Dell XPS equipped with the Mobility Radeon 9800, however Dell isn't very eager to send out review samples unless the review will benefit Dell - in this case, it definitely wouldn't, thus we could not secure a review sample in time.
The request for desktop reference scores is a good one, while we didn't have time to include them in this review I'll make sure they get in the review of the shipping M28.
Take care,
Anand
skunkbuster - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
anyone know why ati can't make better OpenGL drivers? they really need to work on those more.thats the only thing i see lacking with their offerings.
also #7 and #8? i think a person who buys this sort of laptop isnt really concerned about battery life. its more of a 'desktop replacement' than a 'portable'.
i agree on the point of reference thing though. it would have been nice to have something to compare them to other than each other.
LoneWolf15 - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
I am greatly disappointed by the lack of battery life tests. Unlike desktops, where fastest with good image quality is important, if the numbers are relatively close (say, within 5-10%) performance-wise, a laptop-buyer will almost always go for the setup with battery life. I understand like others that the notebooks aren't identical, but there has got to be a way to test this. Also, there were no tests regarding CPU usage during DVD playback, something I consider a big deal. Numbers are nice, but this review is like a cake without the icing --it's kind of bland.Guspaz - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
I'm very disapointed with this article for a few reasons:1) There is no point of reference. Where are the benchmarks for a radeon 9700 Mobility or Radeon 9800 Mobility? We have no idea how much faster these things are than existing mobility parts
2) There are no dekstop points of reference either. Users want to know how these compare to desktop processors.
3) The configs were not identical. These are desktop CPUs in the laptops, why didn't you take out the 3.4 and put in a 3.2?
4) Why was the lower clocked 6800 Go used to test? Was the 450/600 not available?
5) Why are there no battery runtime comparisons? I understand they are different notebooks that can't be directly compared, but if they have similar hardware with similar rated batteries, the results would be ballpark at least. Even so, there could have been runtime benchmarks comparing having the power saving features on and off.
I'm sure there's some other missing things I just haven't noticed. Because Anandtech has grown into such a well respected site, there is an expectation of quality and quantity that we readers have come to expect. I feel this article just isn't up to the Anandtech snuff.
gordon151 - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
Damn, now my 9800xt is getting whooped by laptop graphics cards *sigh*. Wonder if there is gonna be an M28 XT or 6800 Go Ultra?dextrous - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
Where's the battery life numbers Anand?