GF 7700 vs. X1700

With Asus ready to release its two new products A8Js and A8Jp, which are equiped with GF7700 and x1700 respectively, I think a lot of people are waiting to see which of the two graphic cards is better at running games. I found a article comparing the two cards, here is the translated link from Chinese: Translated

For those people who can read Chinese, here is the original link: Original . I do apologize if anyone has already posted the link.

Cheers

 

On the 7700 nvidia has enabled 4 of the disabled texture pipelines, upping the number from 8 to 12. This makes it the same as the desktop 7600's in terms of pipeline configuration. All ATi did with the X1700 was up the clockspeed a bit and use TSMCs new 80nm process to reduce heat and power consumption. It's not a surprise to me that the 7700 beats the X1700, since the desktop 7600 GS/GT is faster than a desktop X1600, though it would be nice to see more games benched.

 

I think we can't compare desktop cards and mobile chipsets..... But maybe the gf wins... dunno

 

They r both mobile cards.

 

Yeah, they are. To be honest, I am a little disappointed with the performance of x1700 which doesn't show a very significant gain from x1600. Although it seems that x1700 used in A8JP will be in the axiom format which is the ATi's version of MxM.

 

The Go 7700's performance isn't as spectacular as it's 12 pipeline configuration indicates.

http://translate.google.com/transla...earch?q=%22mobility+radeon+x1450%22&hl=en&lr=

The Go 7700's performance isn't much higher than the Go 7600's despite 50% more pipelines so they probably lowered the Go 7770's clock speed to try to offset the power increase. The 80nm process is a cost node not a power node so the shrink doesn't help that much in controlling power. The Go 7700 is also most likely severely bandwidth starved since it's memory frequency is the same as the Go 7600 despite the extra pipelines.

For the MR X1700, it's only an overclocked MR X1600.

http://xtreview.com/review139.htm

The performance difference is about 3%. The MR X1700 still uses the same 4 pipeline, 12PS core as the MR X1600 just manufactured at UMC instead of TSMC.

At the end of the day, the Go 7700 is definitely faster than the MR X1700, although I'm still concerned about it's power usage.

 

I would ask the user Ice tea to clear that up for you.

The seperate card in asus notebooks use asus own mxm. No cards other than asus own.

both the x1700 and 7700 use the same one.

 

Alright after some research it seems that Ati has chosen to use MxM format for some of its mobile cards instead of its own Axiom, which seems to be the case in A8JP seen in link. Although MxM format is a proprietary standard owned by nVidia, not really Asus.

I guess this means Asus doesn't have to make two different motherboards, which possibly also means you can change your card from ati to nvidia and vice versa if you can find one on market.

 

I have no sensitivity to graphic card specs so I have a small question. Would increasing the RAM speed un-starve the 7700 and make it far surpass that of the x1700 if the x1700 is overclocked also?

 

yes the speed of the dedicated video memory is what is holding the 7700 back. By overclocking the video memory you are likely to see some decent gains in performance as you aleviate the bottleneck, but remember this is a laptop in a tiny 14" form factor. You do have to worry about heat damaging your components.

The x1700 is basically just a x1600 with a die shrink (generally requiring less power, therefore less heat, therefore more stable at higher clock speed), so overclocking further will increase the speed overall, but you are unlikely to see as dramatic gains from overclocking as with the 7700. You also have to worry about overheating.

If that doesnt make much sense, the analogy to vehicle engines is that the change from a 7600 to 7700 is like going from a 1500cc engine to a 1800cc engine, but without increasing the flow of petrol to the engine. So starved of fuel the extra engine capacity of the 1800cc will not enable it to perform as it should. The speed of the RAM has a direct effect on the ability to feed the GPU/engine with data.
The x1700 is basically just a x1600 revved a bit higher - no larger engine capacity over the x1600.
Hopefully that makes sense.

 

So the 7700 is more powerful than the X1700? I wonder if the V1J will get the 7700?