Manufacturers are taking advantage of lower CPU power consumption to beef up laptop graphics. The iBuyPower Battalion SC-650 SLI takes the power of two GeForce Go 7800GTX' to nomadic gamers.
How about gathering test data on notebook graphics options available now?
How about putting that gathered data into a chart?
Perhaps in a graphics chart like the one for desktop graphics cards?
More and more people are getting laptops/notebooks that are graphics intensive systems because these systems are capable of running the most demanding applications/games at reasonable levels. The availbility of dedicated 1900 and 7900 graphics cards; as well as SLI and possibly the eventuality of crossfire in these systems means that people will want information on these options. However, as of now the ability to compare the various mobile graphics cards' power is difficult.
That is harder to do as the specifications are very different across platforms. Even though the Eurocom and the iBuypower notebooks are almost identical, they can be configured with different menory, hard drives, processors, etc. While this would be the close, the differences between these and the Dell XPS would be too different to make accurate comparisons. Of you can put the results on the same chart... but who wants to read the novel that would have to be attached to the charts.
One other notebook, perferably highend, tossed into the test results would have been nice. Kinda odd you used 3dmark05 for the tests, but used 06 for the looping power test.
Glad to see a laptop, for the more part, being able to keep up with the big desktop boys, even if it is a little heavy. It will give geeks a workout they might not get otherwise...
I am not a big fan of 3DMark06. I did an review on it back in April. 3DMark05 is more consistant with its scores doing comparative analysis. If you look at some of the results we have posted in the past using the SM 2.0 tests you can see there are issues with individual scores. This can show up in the overall score. IN that chart you can see an AGP and other less powerful cards outperforming much better cards. The top half is this way.
I will continue to test with 3DMark05 for a synthetic until the next version is tested under D3D10 but that will be some time. I used 3DMark06 for the power test because it is graphics and CPU intensive as the tests are designed for system testing rather than graphics testing as 3DMark05 and before were. Prime95 is purely CPU intensive while idle just the floor of power consumption. 3DMark06 gives the full system being pushed score.
