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    Geforce Go 7400 thrashes Mobility Radeon 1600!!

    Discussion in 'Gaming (Software and Graphics Cards)' started by zany-ninja, Mar 30, 2006.

  1. zany-ninja

    zany-ninja Notebook Enthusiast

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    According to these Cinebench scores, the Vaio SZ 1.83 GHz with the Geforce Go 7400 really thrashes the Macbook Pro 1.83GHz with the ATI Mobility X1600 in the OpenGL hardware shading tests - the Go 7400 scored a 2942, the X1600 scored a 1328! (the higher the better)

    Any idea why? Woefully optimized ATI drivers in the Macbook Pro perhaps?

    (I'm assuming this pc and mac comparison is a kind of apples to apples comparison as the cpu and chipsets are very similar now, and cinebench is universal binary and good on both platforms etc etc...)

    Referenced links -

    http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbookpro.ars/6

    http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=286177
     
  2. Charles P. Jefferies

    Charles P. Jefferies Lead Moderator Super Moderator

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    That's not a real indicator of performance -the X1600 will demolish the Go7400 in standard PC benchmarks.

    Of course, it is cra- I mean a mac . . . that's probably why.

    Chaz
     
  3. Androo

    Androo Notebook Evangelist

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    The x1600 in the macbook pro is the 128 megabyte version.

    The 7400 is the 256 mb version. (couldnt find the specs of the comp with the 7400, so this is an educated guess)

    Ive seen the 256mb version of the x1600 (512 hyper) get nearly 5000 on 3dmark05 while the x1400 will only get around 2500

    mac benchmarks... PFFF!!!!
     
  4. zany-ninja

    zany-ninja Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hey Androo I think the Vaio SZ sports the 128 MB version of the Go 7400, not 256MB
     
  5. cbr

    cbr Notebook Guru

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  6. Androo

    Androo Notebook Evangelist

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    yep the 256 x1600 smokes the 256 7400 in that benchmark table

    . I dont know if its just the mac benchmark, or if the 128 version of the 7400 is faster than the 128 version of the x1600.
     
  7. mach_zero

    mach_zero Casual Observer NBR Reviewer

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    I would think that would probably have a lot to do with it. These are most likely newly hatched drivers (this is after all the first widely available run of an x86 flavor of OS X) and I would imagine that performance would increase after ATI has a little more time to tweak them.
     
  8. zany-ninja

    zany-ninja Notebook Enthusiast

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    ^^Well I hope you're right mach, coz currently I'm leaning towards getting a Macbook over a Vaio FE/SZ, and the GPU would affect the real-time performance of Cinema4D, which is what I use...as it is, it would run faster on the Vaio (although render times would be about the same)...

    The ATI drivers must be real bad - currently the Vaio Go 7400 has more than double the performance of the Mac X1600...hopefully they sort it out soon...
     
  9. Meaker@Sager

    Meaker@Sager Company Representative

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    Ever thought it might be poor performance of the mac osx when it comes to different areas of performance, for instance its utter woefull handling of server type loads.
     
  10. zany-ninja

    zany-ninja Notebook Enthusiast

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    But isn't the Mac good for processor intensive graphic design apps? Actually in the cinebench CPU test, the Mac CPU scored higher than the Vaio CPU, although they were both Core Duo 1.83 GHz. Its just in the GPU test that the Mac was much lower than it should have been...i'm guessing (and hoping) that its just unoptimized drivers...if not, what else could it be?
     
  11. TwilightVampire

    TwilightVampire Notebook Deity

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    Its probably unoptomised drivers and the Mac OS. I dont see how this would be posible if these were both windows systems. Because I've seen Windows systems with an x1600 score better than GeForce 6800's.
     
  12. mach_zero

    mach_zero Casual Observer NBR Reviewer

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    I'd still blame the drivers rather than the OS itself. The tests where it really lagged were based on OpenGL (according to the original post) which OS X usually excels at. Couple that with the fact that Nvidia hardware historically handles OpenGL better than ATI in the first place and it makes the ATI drivers all the more suspect. I also find the statement regarding OS X's poor performance at handling server type loads hard to accept as well since OS X is based on FreeBSD, which is an outstanding server OS.
     
  13. zany-ninja

    zany-ninja Notebook Enthusiast

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    Well it seems it was unoptimised drivers - after the latest OSX updates, the cinebench OpenGL scores of the Macbook's GPU have almost doubled! Cool!
     
  14. tullnd

    tullnd Notebook Evangelist

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    Interesting...I know a slew of ubergeeks who are directors for major corporations, and they are often buying Mac's(G5's) for a variety of server functions. They all seem to praise their stability and efficiency(albeit at an increased initial cost...but they insist the long term makes them come out ahead).
     
  15. Meaker@Sager

    Meaker@Sager Company Representative

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  16. Darbyjack

    Darbyjack Notebook Evangelist

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    lol that made me laugh! Macs are cra-! indeed