DirectX9 To Go, Part II: ATi's Mobility Radeon 9600

4. The Test Configuration At A Glance

As was the case with NVIDIA's chip, procuring a test sample representative of the final product proved difficult. Granted, ATi and NVIDIA are only responsible for the graphics chips in the notebooks and don't manufacture their own portables. As a result, neither company has a storeroom full of notebooks just waiting to be reviewed, or even access to notebooks that are about to be released. Nonetheless, it is THG's opinion that it shouldn't be too much of a problem for these two companies to supply us with a review sample with final shipping status.

Again, we had to learn the hard way. To make a long story short, THG eventually decided to take the direct approach and acquired a notebook directly from a manufacturer.

At the time of this review, the Targa Visionary XP10 was the only available notebook using the Mobility Radeon 9600. Although this model is only sold in Europe, we decided to test it as a representative of the technology, rather than the (instable) pre-production sample we had at our disposal.