GeForce Go 6800 Ultra: Powering the Dell Inspirion XPS Gen 2
by Derek Wilson on February 24, 2005 3:04 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Test
Unfortunately, we are somewhat limited in our ability to compare this solution to comparable notebook or desktop systems.We don't have an Alviso based desktop solution (and we haven't seen many Alviso based notebooks yet either). This means we won't be able to compare cards running on the same platform with the Go 6800 Ultra. We also haven't gotten our hands on a Mobility Radeon X800 systems with Alviso in them.
So, what we are going to look at today is the highest end notebook we've yet seen (in terms of graphics speed) compared against the high end desktop configuration we used when testing SLI graphics. This will serve to give us a good picture of where ultra high end notebook performance falls with respect to ultra high end desktop performance. As the core clock on the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra is higher than most desktop GeForce 6800 Ultras (400 to 425 depending on the vendor), it's very possible we could see some interesting numbers come out of this. Of course, the notebook's Pentium M 2.13GHz processor will limit the performance of the system compared to our Athlon 64 4000+ desktop. We aren't likely to see the Go 6800 Ultra paired with anything but a Pentium M due to the TDP requirements of vendors. Mobile Pentium 4 and Mobile Athlon 64 parts are still too hot to be able to economically run a Go 6800 Ultra as well.
The test setup for the Dell Inspirion XPS we tested was as follows:
Intel Pentium M 2.13GHz
Intel Alviso based motherboard
1GB DDR2 533 4-4-4-12
NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 Ultra (clocked at 450/1100)
Windows XP Service Pack 2 with DirectX 9.0c
NVIDIA ForceWare 75 series Drivers
Our desktop nForce 4 system was configured thusly:
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4 SLI) Motherboard
1GB OCZ DDR400 3-3-3-10
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra PCI Express (clocked at 400/1100)
NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT PCI Express (clocked at 350/1000)
Windows XP Service Pack 2 with DirectX 9.0c
NVIDIA ForceWare 69.33 Drivers
The only unknown factor here is the performance difference beween the 69.xx and 75.xx ForceWare revisions. The Dell is the only notebook we've tested with a 75 series driver.
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dougSF30 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Different nVidia drivers? That's kinda bad, methodology-wise.JustAnAverageGuy - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
It's too bad we don't get to see pictures of the laptop :)Even if it was a video card review.
ElFenix - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#5the audigy is an external USB unit
bob661 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#5The CPU offered in this laptop is a Pentium M.
SLIM - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
I could be wrong, but I'd bet the picture would look a little different if all the cards were using the same drivers. The difference between 69.xx and 75.xx drivers for recent dx9 games could be significant.Cygni - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Its a shame Dell didnt give more time with the system, it would have been really interesting to probe the Alviso platform in all of its glory and compare against current systems... especially in the arena of the DDR2.bamacre - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
#10, not sure about the cpu, but the Dell XPS notebook does offer a 7200rpm hdd, I'd bet it was used in the test.segagenesis - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
If the max output is 65W assuming you have the laptop loaded 100% the entire time the standard battery (what is it? 70W/h?) would barely last an hour. Just... ok... I imagine you can get beffier batteries or use a second one.sri2000 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
Referring to a couple of differences in the test machine specs:---
Intel Pentium M 2.13GHz
1GB DDR2 533 4-4-4-10
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
1GB OCZ DDR400 3-3-3-10
---
How much of a boost are we seeing from the use of DDR2533 RAM and from the highest clocked Pentium M to date?
The PCMag review shows it with a 4200 RPM drive - the typical speed for most notebooks, but that should be slowing things down, in this test right?
This review doesn't say if the test unit had an optional 7200RPM HD
defter - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - link
"NVIDIA informed us that the TDP for the chassis is 65W."If we assume that Pentium M takes about 25W, this would leave 40W for system memory, chipset, hard drive, GPU and graphic memory. Wow, nVidia managed to pull miracle here. Gone are the days of 100W power consumption for high end Geforce 6800 cards.