Mobility Radeon Vs. GeForce M: The CrossFire Advantage

[czarmurphy]

Put 2 x 460's in there instead of the 480 and see what happens. GF100 FTL

Still wouldn't match Xfired 5870's of course, but this matchup as it currently stands is at the very least unsurprising, and borderline unfair.

 

[scook9]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]According to Eurocom, the X8100 can't support two GTX 480M due to the additional cooling requirements. They do have a thicker notebook with a smaller screen and more room internally, that supports two GTX 480M and a desktop Core i7 CPU. I was really surprised to see how small this 18.4" notebook is internally.[/citation]

More than cooling, the problem is power supply. The 17" you mention is that x7200 I referred to. And it comes with a 300W PSU lol. My point however, was look at a picture of the x7200 opened up (several can be found in the forums of notebookreview.com), it takes 2 GTX 480m cards each with a single space cooler (same one used on the 5870s in the x8100 in this article). So it looks like Clevo just made a better cooler for the GTX 480m to utilize the space since you can only run one of them anyways given the power budget

The x8100 is about as much room internally as the rest of the desktop cpu notebooks made by Clevo (clevo did the engineering here.....Eurocom is just a reseller). The cooling on the CPU is pretty poor though in the x8100 compared to what they have done for cooling the desktop cpus in their other notebooks

 

[warezme]

Don't see the purpose in this article, it seems pretty common sense two is better than one? Even then seems like the ATI should scale better in Xfire than it does.

 

[wolfram23]

Well, I guess it's not surprising that two 5870Ms beat a single 480M. I guess NV will need to pick it up and release maybe a 460x2M or something to be able to compete in this market. On a token note, I like the comparison to a single desktop 5850. Interesting to see how massively worse mobile cards are.

 

[jecastej]

[citation][nom]warezme[/nom]Don't see the purpose in this article, it seems pretty common sense two is better than one? Even then seems like the ATI should scale better in Xfire than it does.[/citation]

The price (less than 2X of Nvidia's GTX 480m) and size of 2 5870 ATI cards together on the same chassis makes the article totally valid and fair.

 

[warezme]

[citation][nom]jecastej[/nom]The price (less than 2X of Nvidia's GTX 480m) and size of 2 5870 ATI cards together on the same chassis makes the article totally valid and fair.[/citation]
This is true but either way both of those laptop setups are going to be way expensive and they are huge machines not really all that mobile. For a niche market.

 

[CptTripps]

[citation][nom]czarmurphy[/nom]Put 2 x 460's in there instead of the 480 and see what happens. GF100 FTLStill wouldn't match Xfired 5870's of course, but this matchup as it currently stands is at the very least unsurprising, and borderline unfair.[/citation]

Since the 480m is basically a 465 and the 5870m is just a 5770 I think if they created a true 460m it would have no problem matching the ati setup.

last but not least, I love STALKER games and was suprised that at high resolution with AA that the single 480m was right up there.

I own a 5870 at home and love it but... nvidia is very strong when a combo of dx11+aa+highres comes into play (looking at you stalker and metro 2033). The ATI is a better deal right now but I think future nvidia products based off this tech will be amazingly powerfull.

 

[wiinippongamer]

and that just reinforces how superior desktops are, xfire 5870 < 5850

 

[RazberyBandit]

Since we just mentioned our middle test resolution for the first time, we might also want to mention that its 16:10 aspect ratio doesn’t match the monitor. Though 1600x900 is an option for both the flat panel display and the competing GeForce GTX 480M, AMD's Radeon (Catalyst) drivers don’t support it.

Since when? I've had two desktop systems, one using an HD4850 and the other an HD4670, both hooked up to 20" 1600x900 monitors for almost a year.

 

[theoutbound]

Nothing we really didn't expect here. I'm still a fan of Fermi on the desktop but in the mobile space the GF100 just isn't cut out to compete with AMD's line. There isn't nearly enough performance increase to justify the increase in temperatures and size.

 

[bombat1994]

at higher resolutions the sclaing from 2 of the radeons was quite impressive.

a 5870m is like a 5750, except lower power consumption. and smaller size, if using this you could put 2 of these on one die. then if the catylst allowed it you could see octfire

 

[bombat1994]

my i5 540, and 5650 offer fine performance for gaming on the move, its plently enough power for the screen 1366 x 768, it can play modern warfare 2 at full detail with no aa, but considering i only really play css so its perfect for me and it only cost 800

 

[miloo]

hardly believe that two hd5870M only equal to a HD5850
but it does cost so much more then a HD5850 & i7 920 setup ~

4Gs ~~~~

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]RazberyBandit[/nom]Since when? I've had two desktop systems, one using an HD4850 and the other an HD4670, both hooked up to 20" 1600x900 monitors for almost a year.[/citation]
The driver probably reads that from your monitor as the default resolution and sets it as a custom resolution in the driver itself. If you were to connect it to a 16:10 monitor, the 1600x900 option would disappear. Been there, done that a dozen times with 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 monitors. On 16:10 monitors, 1080p is supported by ATI but 1600x900 is not.

Edit: I've rechecked this after being questioned several times, and it's 100% true on a Dell 30007WFPHC (2560x1600) and an L2410NM (1920x1200). That means whoever keeps punching the thumbs-down button is someone who can't handle the truth.

 

[Darkv1]

The GeForce GTX 480M does have lower idle power, which makes it a slightly better choice for non-gaming on-the-go tasks like checking email.

I can't think of any reason that someone would choose a notebook of this caliber if gaming wasn't a primary concern...

 

[scook9]

[citation][nom]Darkv1[/nom]I can't think of any reason that someone would choose a notebook of this caliber if gaming wasn't a primary concern...[/citation]

You can primarily game on a machine but still use it for things other than gaming....

 

[RazberyBandit]

The driver probably reads that from your monitor as the default resolution and sets it as a custom resolution in the driver itself. If you were to connect it to a 16:10 monitor, the 1600x900 option would disappear. Been there, done that a dozen times with 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 monitors. On 16:10 monitors, 1080p is supported by ATI but 1600x900 is not.

First, I didn't vote you down... Too much respect for you to do that. But just so I understand...

You're saying Catalyst drivers don't officially support 1600x900 at all, but will force 1600x900 when the card senses it as the native resolution via the monitor's EDID, correct? And man... Before buying these monitors, I knew it was a bit of an oddball resolution. I had no idea it wasn't officially supported. It makes me wonder if there might be any performance side-effects to using AMD/ATI cards with 1600x900 monitors as opposed to 1680x1050. Something like the card is still calculating based on the closest supported resolution, then filtering it down. Are you aware of any such problem?

Personally, I don't expect 16:10 monitors to support 16:9 resolutions, and vice versa. With LCD, any time you're not using the native res, things get at least slightly distorted anyway. The fact that you would also have to either stretch or squish to fit would just add more insult to injury.

 

[Crashman]

First, I didn't vote you down... Too much respect for you to do that. But just so I understand...

You're saying Catalyst drivers don't officially support 1600x900 at all, but will force 1600x900 when the card senses it as the native resolution via the monitor's EDID, correct? And man... Before buying these monitors, I knew it was a bit of an oddball resolution. I had no idea it wasn't officially supported. It makes me wonder if there might be any performance side-effects to using AMD/ATI cards with 1600x900 monitors as opposed to 1680x1050. Something like the card is still calculating based on the closest supported resolution, then filtering it down. Are you aware of any such problem?

Personally, I don't expect 16:10 monitors to support 16:9 resolutions, and vice versa. With LCD, any time you're not using the native res, things get at least slightly distorted anyway. The fact that you would also have to either stretch or squish to fit would just add more insult to injury.

Edit: The problems I had with running 1600x900 on 1080p monitors were limited to ATI's notebook solutions. NVidia supported the resolution and ATI didn't. The only reason this resolution was important was for benchmarking, other resolutions work perfectly well for other purposes. Tested on a Dell Dell P3210H as well as the notebook's panel.

The closest ATI notebooks will come to 1600x900 on any of my monitors is to use 1680x1050. As far as desktop ATI graphics goes, 1600x900 does not work on any of my 16:10 monitors, even though 1920x1080 works on the same monitors in letterbox mode. End Edit.

But, graphics drivers have been able to set "oddball" resolutions for a long time, to match the monitor's native mode. I think the real "oddball" thing here isn't the resolution, but the probability that ATI has overlooked the fact that 1600x900 is now a standard.

 

[Crashman]

First, I didn't vote you down... Too much respect for you to do that. But just so I understand...

I hope I cleared things up. As for people who vote you down for reporting observations in an honest and unbiased manner, we have a name for people who prefer to remain uninformed...

 

[hixbot]

Meh, I got thumbed down for pointing out that microstuttering is still an issue. If those people who voted me down could prove me wrong I'd be very pleased.

 

[youssef 2010]

[citation][nom]article[/nom]The GeForce GTX 480M does have lower idle power, which makes it a slightly better choice for non-gaming on-the-go tasks like checking email.[/citation]

Are you suggesting that someone will buy a laptop with dual mobility 5870s to check his mail????????

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]youssef 2010[/nom]Are you suggesting that someone will buy a laptop with dual mobility 5870s to check his mail????????[/citation]Are you suggesting that someone carrying around a notebook would deny himself email because his notebook has dual Mobility 5870's?

 

[JonnyDough]

For the price, I'll get a regular cheapo notebook for the road and build myself a nice little compact PC for my occasional LAN party gaming. I'd rather not put all my eggs in one little expensive basket that's a pain to lug around.

 

[RazberyBandit]

The closest ATI will come to 1600x900 on any of these monitors is to use 1680x1050, even when I connect a 16:9 monitor. Nvidia will do 1600x900, regardless of whether it's 16:9 or 16:10. Personally, I think it's just an oversight on ATI's part, where they didn't include 1600x900 in the list.

Odd... I get 1600x900 on my systems when using 1600x900 monitors, yet you can't? But, as you pointed out, the only time I can select 1600x900 is when using one of the 1600x900 monitors. It's only there when using a 1600x900 monitor, apparently...

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]RazberyBandit[/nom]Odd... I get 1600x900 on my systems when using 1600x900 monitors, yet you can't? But, as you pointed out, the only time I can select 1600x900 is when using one of the 1600x900 monitors. It's only there when using a 1600x900 monitor, apparently...[/citation]
The full description says it doesn't work on my 1920x1080 monitor [Edit: Applies to notebooks only]. I don't own a 1600x900 monitor, but 720p and 1080p are also 16:9 ratio.

So yes, apparently you only get the option to select 1600x900 when the driver detects that your monitor is a 1600x900 monitor and adds the 1600x900 setting as a custom resolution.

I'm going to make this easy for the next person:

ATI Notebook Graphics: With 1920x1200, 1920x1080, and 1680x1050 display panels, I cannot set 1600x900 through display properties, and 1600x900 is not on the configuration list in games.
ATI Desktop Graphics: Using a 2560x1600 or 1920x1200 monitor, I cannot set 1600x900 through display properties, and 1600x900 is not on the configuration list in games. [Edit: 1600x900 works with desktop cards/drivers on a 1920x1080 but not the 1920x1200 or 2650x1600, not even in letterbox form]
Nvidia: 1600x900 works on all of the above monitors/flat panel displays [Edit: Regardless of whether the card/driver is mobile or desktop], and is on the configuration list in games.

And finally, the only reason I even noticed that is because I was trying to find a 16:9 resolution between 720p and 1080p for benchmarks.

Thanks!