14. 3D Performance

As can be seen from the features chart, IBM's T40 with the Mobility Radeon 9000 has a DirectX8-capable graphics chip with 32 MB DDR-RAM. Its predecessor can be found in the Asus L3C with the Mobility Radeon 7500.

Direct-3D Performance: 3D Mark 2001 SE

At first blush, these values don't look too shabby. But let's recall the comparison test of the Mobility Radeon 9000 and the Mobility Radeon 7500. Back then, at a resolution of 1024 by 786 pixels, the 32 bit values were more or less equal to the T40's values at 800 x 600 pixels. So, using an up-to-date driver from IBM's website, we tried to coax a little more performance out of the machine. Not only did the current driver on the website not result in an improved result, but it wasn't all that new, either (Ver. 6.13.10.6305 versus Ver. 6.13.10.6278). It's true that it's not really uncommon for manufacturers to neglect to provide a sizzling-new graphics driver with notebooks. But when THG asked IBM to explain why the customer is not/ cannot be provided with the best-performing and newest driver from the manufacturer, we got the following answer:

"We generally use standard drivers from the chip manufacturers, adding our own functionalities as required. We then intensively test and release them in accordance with our quality standards.

Manufacturers of graphics cards usually optimize their drivers for 3D gaming performance. Even though our ThinkPads are suitable for gaming, we place a slightly different focus on our driver tests and releases. So we do not release drivers for single components (and especially not for graphics chips) based on the manufacturer's most recent generic driver. We are mainly concerned with maximum system stability. For 3D, we are more interested in exactness (as you need in the CAD environment, for example) than in maximizing frame rates for 3D games. We also optimize the speed of the graphics chip and graphics memory for stability and precise image quality.

Fans of complex games can use generic drivers from the chip manufacturers on our machines, although we cannot provide software support for such a configuration."