ATI Xpress 200M, GForce 6150, and Intel VS AMD

Greetings,

First off, i want to say that i am NOT looking for a high end gaming laptop as my desktop is home grown, top of the line. All i want to do gaming wise on the laptop is play Flight Sim X @ Med Gfx 15-20 FPS.

I bought this laptop at Bestbuy:

Gateway MT3705

Intel Dual Core T2060 1mb L2 Cache, 1.7 GHZ 533 FSB
ATI ATI Xpress 200M 256 Hyper Mem
14.1 Ultrabright Screen


The guy told me it had 128 Dedicated / 128 Shared GFX Memory, but it seems that was wrong and they will allow me to swap out the laptop w/o a restocking fee if i want.


They have a Turion 64 M-36 which is Not Dual Core but it has a GForce 6150 256 Shared Memory GFX Card. Vista scores this higher by .5 in Areo GFX and the same in Gaming GFX. It also scores the processor the exact same as the Intel Dual Core T2060, which i found strange. I am a little hesitate about the Turion 64 M-36 as its inferior to the X2. Anyway, this laptop is $150 more then the gateway.

Next they have another Gateway w/ an AMD Turion™ 64 X2 & ATI RADEON XPRESS 1150, for about $250 more. This is a step up from the 200M but is still only DirectX 9B, unlike the GForce card.

Lastly they have a HP for $300 more. It has AMD Turion™ 64 X2 & GForce 6150.


Currently, my Gateway w/ the 200M can run flight sim x at Mid-settings w/ AA2x around 10 FPS. Again, i would like to get that up to 15-20 FPS.


So my questions are:

Going to the GForce 6150 or XPRESS 1150 will i see at least a 5-10 FPS boost over the 200M in flight sim with the same settings?

Is a card that is DirextX 9c going to have any impact on things over the 9b or is it just pointless on a low end card?

Is the Turion 64 M-36 a really large step down from the AMD Turion™ 64 X2?

Is the Turion 64 M-36 a really large step down from the Intel Dual Core T2060 1mb L2 Cache, 1.7 GHZ 533 FSB that i currently have?

Is the AMD Turion™ 64 X2 a (significant?) step up from the Intel Dual Core T2060 1mb L2 Cache, 1.7 GHZ 533 FSB that i currently have?

Is the HP with the 64 X2 and GForce card is really worth the extra $300?

Is the Turion 64 M-36 w/ XPRESS 1150 for $150 worth the extra $150 when it has a non-dual core chip? Will i see any performance boost over the 200m?


All of the above choices have a 15.4 screen instead of the 14.1, which sucks because i like the smaller screen. Also, i don't care what anyone say about HP, the Gatweay with the Aircraft Aluminum seems built better then the HP accept for the touchpad buttons.


I have 2 days to decide what to do and thank everyone for their time and input. I have read reviews on all three chips but cant trust them because they say that the 200M should be getting around 140 Marks with 3dMark06 and when i ran it on the laptop i got 181 Marks. I wish i could find someone with an HP that has the Ati X2 chip w/ a GForce 6150 and have them run 3dMark06 for me. Anyone out there have this config?

Thanks in advance.

 

both the Geforce 6150 and x200m are weak cards.....u wont have a good experience playing FSX....i can even play it on medium with 20+ fps....and my card is leaps ahead of the 200m and 6150......

if i were u...i would have gotten a laptop with atleast a go7600.....there are some really cheap notebooks at www.powernotebooks.com with the go7600

 

Welcome.

1.) You are not going to be happy with integrated graphics.
2.) Look at the GPU guide for rankings.
3.)The two cards will be very similar--neither are very good.
4.)Which card has 9b...DX9c came out with XP SP2, I believe.
5.) Depending on what you're doing, you may not notice a difference in chips. In the mobile market, AMD has lagged behind intel for quite some time. They aren't as fast and don't get quite as good of battery life. This is a moot point for some users because processors are quite good at what they do and likely today you are being held back by some other aspect of your system (RAM, GPU (in your case) HD speed, etc)
6.) Dual core is the wave of the future--there is really no reason to pay for a single core system at this point in time.

 

If you seriously want to play games, you'll need to invest a few more bucks. There is no real steal for a new gaming notebook. I managed to purchase mine for $1000 CDN (~$850 USD) with taxes and all a few months ago, but it was a refurb and two generations behind in processor and soon for GPU. This unit was a steal, but I got lucky.

As mentioned, get something with a dedicated card - either a NVidia 7300/7400 or a ATI 1300/1400 for basic playability. Bumping up to the 7600 or 1600 will make a big difference, but if you're not really into gaming it probably won't be necessary. Problem is, if you really want to play any modern and future games at med res with >15-20 fps, you'll probably need the 7600 or 1600 I'm afraid. And that will mean dishing out accordingly.

Good luck,

Chef

 

If it's solely between those 3 then the X1150 is the best option really. Best out of a bad lot, at least, for what you want it for.

 

I don't know about the other options, but I ran the FSX demo on my laptop. It's VERY playable at Low settings if you're willing to live with them.

 

Thalinor,

I purchased a Gateway MT3705 at Best Buy last week for $600. I was going to live with the T2060 1.6 MHZ duo processor with only 1 meg of cache and the ATI 200m; for the price; how could you go wrong?
Lo and behold, when I first booted up the MT3705 it said that I had the Duo Core T2250 1.73 MHZ with a full 2 megs of Cache! I downloaded Belarc computer diagnosis program and it too stated I had a T2250. You might want to check out whether you too have an upgraded processor inside yours.
Yea, the ATI 200m is a weak card, but no worse than the Nvidia 6150 (check the score of both next time you are at Circuit City or Best Buy), and certainly much better than the Intel 950 GMA.
As you stated, and I have done also, your desktop is your gaming machine. You will pay 3x or more for the same graphics performance for a laptop, and just remember: you can always upgrade a desktop graphics card, but not a laptop's, so what you pay through the nose just to match the desktop, is what your stuck with as time and graphics cards march on.

 

I noticed the same thing!!! Mine has the T2250 1.73 MHZ with a full 2 megs of Cache. Also, i just went to best buy and pulled a Mission impossible by sneaking around with a usb drive and installing PCMark05 and 3DMark06 on the above laptops. I even went as far as to download the new drivers for each and install them on the laptops so that the scores i got were valid. Two times i was stopped by best buy employees and both times i pulled some "these are not the droids you are looking for" **** and it worked as they let me continue on with my mad scientist work.

(Side note, i work on an ambulance evenings and decided to take advice from some of the Signal 17's [psychs] we pick up... “if people thing your crazy they usually leave you alone”... well it worked!!!)

Anyway, both laptops i tried with AMD Turion™ 64 X2 crapped out when i tried to run PCMark05 and so i decided to give up on that test.

The claim that the ATI 1150 has a 33% performance boost over the xpress 200M is a total lie. First off, the ATI control panel said the card was a 200M even though the device manager said it was an 1150. Second, after shutting down all the bloat ware and running 3DMark06, which also said it was an 1150 (Why the ATI panel says otherwise confuses the hell out of me, in fact it said that before and after i upgraded the drivers!) i found that the 1150 only got ~150 marks!

Next came the 6150 test. That scored 194 Marks.


The funny thing is my 200M (Laptop Specs in original post) in the gateway i have now scored 204 Marks!

The thing that is bothering me is that the score of 204 marks is with 1 GB of 4200 DDR2 ram but when i take out the 2 512 chips and put in 2 1gb (2 BG total) 5300 DDR2 (which is faster) my 3DMark06 score DROPS to 164 Marks!


Also it is really bothering me about the windows vista scores. All three chips (200M, 1150, and 6150) score 3.0 on gaming but the 6150 scores 3.1 for windows desktop BEFORE updating the driver and after it dropped to 2.4!!! The 1150 scored 2.4 consistently and the 200M scored 2.5 consistently. While i don't have much faith in this vista test, the numbers do correspond with the test scores i got with 3DMark06, which makes me believe they are at least close to being correct.


The verdict? The 200M actually outscores the other two chips. All laptops tested had 1 gb of 4200 DDR2 ram. The 1150 and 6150 were tested on laptops with AMD Turion™ 64 X2 chips and the 200M was in the laptop with the Intel T2250 1.73 MHZ with a 2 meg Cache.

Even if windows update (which was not available as there was no Internet connection) provided better drivers for each of the test laptops i doubt very much that there would be a huge change in scores. I was totally shocked at the results and am rethinking swapping out my current laptop.


If anyone else has some real life data from 3dmark06 tests on laptops running the the 1150 and 6150 i would love to see the scores.

 

Thalinor,

Congrats on having the better CPU too. I did some real hard thinking after the early demise of my Dell Inspiron 600m. That lappy had a 1.6 Pentium M, 1 gig RAM, 100 Gig HD, and a ATI dedicated Mobility Radeon 9000 with 64 megs of memory. It could play OLDER games, but the Video card was so buggy even with Catalyst updates, that I never ventured into the territory of newer games.

I thought long and hard about getting a gaming laptop, or one that had a decent dedicated video card, but even though you would pay so much more for a rig like that, it still could only approach, but never exceed a desktop video card that was so much cheaper. Besides, as I mentioned before, once you get a laptop, the video card that is there, will remain there.

As for me, I'm keeping my Gateway MT3705 for its portability and great value, will settle on playing older games on it, while the desktop will allow me to play newer games. I loved my Dell, but I only got 2 1/2 years out of it, while Dell reps told me that since I didn't take out an exorbitant extended warranty it was C'est La Vie.

 

Good detective work there. Sounds like you got a good unit. I might be able to shed some light for you on a couple of issues.

Firstly, my guess as to why the 200m is outscoring the other cards is because it has dedicated ram (probably 128 mb), whereas the other cards use partially or completely shared ram!

Secondly, the reason your marks dropped with the higher amount of ram is that the 4300 ram has a lower latency than the 1 gb 5300. There have been numerous discussions on the topic, but basically the higher frequency of the 5300 does not offset the higher latency. Also, the FSB for the machine may only be 533 MHz, limiting the 5300 from running any faster than the 4200 ram anyways!!!

Good luck,

Chef

 

I called ATI and asked them about the 128 onboard and they had no clue. The guy (who was outsourced from India) told me he would look into things and email me back in an hour, but that was two days ago and still no reply. I thought i had 128 onboard but when i change the UMA Frame buffer, the dedicated vram changes as well to whatever the UMA is set to, so i was not sure if that meant it was all hypermemory or not?

As for the ram, thanks for the info! A Q though... does that mean that i should have gotten 2 1gb of the 4200 ram instead? Excuse my ignorance, does the latency go up as the amount of memory on the chip goes up regardless of speed, or is it just a problem with the 5300 ram? Is it even worth using this extra ram?

Lastly, is there an ATI program out there where i can force the amount of hypermemory used to lower then what its set at? The box says that i have 256 total but the laptop is setting it higher then that depending on how much ram i put in the unit.

If i have the 2 gb in it says i have 128 dedicated (as long as i set the uma buffer to 128 in the bios) and 703 shared for a total of 831 vram. If i keep the 1gb of ram it came with in the unit it say i have 128 dedicated and 191 shared for a total of 319 vram. Both numbers are over the 256 max it says on the box and honestly, i dont think it even uses any of the extra vram. With 1gb system ram in the unit it says that i have 896 system ram (which means its using 128 shared for vram).

I guess when i think about it, thats a good argument for the theory that there is in fact 128 dedicated onboard because its only sucking 128 from the ram for hypermemory. I really dont understand why its showing much more shared vram but only really sucking 128 mb from the system ram. If i put 2 gb in the laptop it still only shows the system memory as missing 128 mb but again, the shared number goes way up as stated above.

In the end i think the added shared memory (703 mb with 2 gb installed) is not really being used as vram because for starters, it only shows 128mb lost from the onboard system memory and two, i see no real boost in performance. I would like the numbers to add up though because call me paranoid but i think the unused "ghost" shared ram is in fact hurting performance rather then helping. In any case its just pissing off my OCD because things don't add up to a round number like 256!!!

This laptop is all messed up. As another user stated above, what it says on the box is not what is in the unit. I am not going to complain because its much better but its really strange that gateway messed up like that. My only guess is they ran out of the other chips and just installed the upgraded ones in a batch to keep production flowing.

Anyway, thanks again for the replies. I have been building my own pc's now for years but this is my first laptop and i am finding out how ignorant i really am when it comes to laptops.

I noticed the laptop has a Mini PCI-Express slot that has a (really ****ty) wireless card installed. I googled Mini PCI-Express looking for a video card and found nothing. Is it likely in the future they will make gfx cards in the Mini PCI-Express format? I know as of now there is no way to upgrade the video card but it would be nice if in the future they make one for that format with a way to disable the onboard video!

Lastly, the wireless card (which sucks as stated above) is a 802.11b/g Realtex 8185 Mini PCI-Express card. The range i get on the thing is awful. I know i can buy a PCMCIA wireless card with an external antenna but would really prefer a built in one with more range. I went by my parents house a few days ago and put my laptop next to my dads work (dell) laptop and my girlfriends compaq. The compaq and my gateway only had 2 bars where my dads dell had a full 5. I checked to see what brand he had and while i cant remember off the top of my head, but i think is was also a 802.11b/g. Does brand really make a difference? I know the router is just a linksys G rated router so there is no reason his should get better signal unless the antenna on the card is just that much better. The same thing happened at a friends house where he had a HP and an apple that had 4 out of 5 bars and i had only one on and off.

Any suggestions on internal Mini PCI-Express wireless cards i can buy localy (compusa, etc) that will at least 2x my range with a regular g rated router?

Thanks again.
Jonathan

 

FYI: Just ran 3dMark06 again after putting the full 2gb back in the laptop and got the same score (actually i think it was 1 Mark more) 205 Marks. Guess it was a fluke the first time...

Downloaded X3 Reunion Demo and tried it on the laptop. Wow, the game visually gorgeous. The controls are going to take some getting used to but the game runs great, even on high settings. In fact, when it runs it sets the same auto into "High" settings w/o AA/AS. With 2x AA / 2x ATF the frame rate drops a little but its hardly noticeable. With 4x AA/ATF there is noticeable fram rate drop though still playable.

Found that if i turn off Areo (set vista visual settings to performance) i get my 17 FPS With GFX set to Medium High in FSX!!!

I tried Doom 3 set on Medium GFX & 2x AA and it ran well enough to play with out being annoyed but i could not figure out how to get it to show frame rates, so i can't tell ya what "well enough" was in FPS. When i turned AA off i could play it w/o any noticeable lag!

Lol, i considered renaming the laptop to Mary Anne and my login to Mike Mulligan. Everyone said this thing wouldn't run crap, hell i even figured i would have problems running anything gfx related, but its been a pleasant surprise. Can't wait till Catalyst 7.3 come out!

 

Useful info.

BTW, Catalyst 7.3 is out: Go to the first page of the second sticky in this forum for the direct link.

John

 

Generally the higher the frequency of the ram the higher the latency. You can buy lower latency PC5300 ram, but it is much mroe expensive. DDR2 ram has a higher latency than DDR ram as well, as DDR2 ram generally runs at a higher frequency. This is very simplified, but a general scale. The issue is that althought the PC5300 runs at 667 Mhz, and the pc4200 at 533 Mhz, the lower latency of the PC4200 allows for more rapid cycle changes that in the end means the ram outperforms the PC5300. PLus, as I said, I suspect your CPU FSB is only 533 Mhz which means that the PC5300 runs only at 533 Mhz anyway, so it runs at the same frequency as the 4200 but with the higher latency. Considering you would very rarely use more than 1 GB ram anyway there is no performance boost in general for you to use the 2GB PC5300 ram unless you are running very ram intensive programs.

As for the dedicated GPU ram, it was just a theory, but I suspect you have the 128 MB dedicated and 128 shared as you thought. In reality, the GPU probably doesn't evenmake use of the 128 MB shared, as it is not powerful enough to make use of the extra memory. I wouldn't sweat it too much!