15. Conclusion: Evolution, Not Revolution

With the launch of its new flagship mobile GPU, the Mobility Radeon 9700, ATi has closed the 3D performance gap between notebooks and comparably desktop systems even further. The results make one thing unmistakably clear: A desktop PC with a year old graphics card such as the Radeon 9600 can't hold a candle to notebooks built around the Mobility Radeon 9700.

Compared to the previous top-of-the-line model, the Mobility Radeon 9600 PRO, the new chip offers nothing new aside from higher maximum clockspeed of 450MHz. Granted, the new and improved production process may help reduce the chip's power consumption, but the higher clockspeed easily counterbalances that advantage. Features like VPU recover are nice, but don't justify going out and buying a new notebook in our opinion.

Consequently, if you've only just purchased a notebook using the MR9600Pro or MR9600, there's no need to feel twitchy about upgrading just yet. Even hardcore gamers of the mobile persuasion should consider whether this is a worthwhile upgrade, regardless of ATi's promise to have notebooks using the new chip on shelves from day one. For example, the German company Medion has announced it will already be offering an M11-notebook on the day of the launch. If rumors currently making the rounds are to be believed, other notebook companies such as Acer, Asus, Alienware, Gericom, Voodoo, Targa, Rock Direct, Packard Bell Fujitsu-Siemens, Toshiba and HP want to follow suit and introduce their own MR9700 notebooks over the next few weeks/months.

All in all the Mobility Radeon 9700 is better characterized as a step in 3D evolution instead of starting a 3D revolution.

For future generations of mobile graphics chips, we would like to see one thing above all else (and we're sure the majority of our readers concur): a manufacturer-independent, standardized graphics card upgrade module for notebooks. Now that would be a real revolution! Aside from a proprietary solution offered by Alienware, this feature is markedly absent from most notebooks available today.