6. A Special First For Mobile GPU Testing - Modular GPU Testing!, Continued

The Inspiron 8100 provides us with a unique close-up look at these products. Of course, looking at the newest generation ATI product versus last year's NVIDIA entry does raise the question of fairness. We know, for certain, that NVIDIA has upgraded its drivers for the GeForce2 Go several times, including some video BIOS upgrades, as well. The GeForce2 Go only has 32 MB of RAM, a disadvantage when compared to the Mobility Radeon 7500's 64 MB of RAM. Clock speed is another issue, and clearly, the Mobility Radeon 7500 is clocked a lot faster than the GeForce2 Go.

We tried to provide you with a more detailed close-up of both of the Mobility Radeon 7500 and the GeForce2 Go. Again, you will see the Mobility 7500 is installed in the center of the 8100 and the GeForce2 Go is on top of the notebook off to the side.

Given the limitations of notebook/ laptop reviews in general, we felt we were presented with a unique opportunity to examine these products, as neither card would have an advantage due to platform differences. It is important to point out that, in most reviews of notebooks, it is difficult to accurately compare two machines when perhaps the only similarity with the units is the speed of the CPU and the amount of RAM. Differences in design and choices in components can also lead to radical differences in performance. What we would have preferred to do would be to test NVIDIA's claims about the NV17M GPU on our Inspiron 8100, and look at its performance in comparison to the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500. However, we doubt that this will ever come to pass, as Dell will most likely redesign the next version of the Inspiron 8100, and in that next design phase only Dell will know where the GPU will be located and how it will be connected to the system.