New laptop--how good is ATI Radeon 9600?

OK. I have:

Toshiba Satellite A75-S209. Pentium 4 3.06 GHz. 512 MB RAM (but effectively 384 as I have shared video RAM.) ATI Mobility Radeon 9000, 128 MB of shared RAM.

It is a piece of crap (various hardware defects) and I took it to Best Buy. They said since they can't ship it off to be fixed right now for some reason, they would do an exchange--but there is a risk they might be able to ship it off soon, so I need to make up my mind now so as to not blow my chance at an exchange. My most appealing options are:

Gateway 7422GZ. AMD64 3400+, 1.0 GB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 9600, 64 MB dedicated RAM.
HP zd5405us. AMD64 3200+. 512 MB RAM, NVIDIA Geforce4 440, 64 MB dedicated RAM.

Seems like a no-brainer (especially since the Gateway has quite a few goodies lacking in both the Toshiba and the HP) but frankly--I'm worried about how cheap it is. I am afraid that the way they packed in all these goodies for cheap is by sacrificing build quality--and I'm really concerned about build quality after my experience with the Toshiba and its glorious crapfulness.

So: How comparable are the Radeon 9000, the Radeon 9600 and the Geforce 440? I am really only playing one game (The Sims 2 [:I]) and while it runs more or less smoothly with most options on high on my 9000, it looks like crap--"smooth edges" is the option that makes it look good, but I can't run the game with smooth edges turned up. Is the 9600 likely to be good enough to fix this problem? And how does the Geforce compare?

Thank you infinitely to anyone who can help me with this by tomorrow morning. I am sorry this is so long.

 

Definitely the 9600 would do the trick. I don't have experience with the 440, but I've got a 9600 (128 megs of ram) in my laptop at the moment and it plays Half-life2 and the like pretty much flawlessly.

 

Two things:

1. You seem to be confusing the "gx" and "gz" variations of the same model#. Check the messages above.

2. Here´s the info on the ATI RADEON 9550 chipset. It´s actually a 9600 at a lower clock rate.

ATI preps Radeon 9550
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/29/ati_preps_radeon/

While I don´t like the fact that Gateway has decided to "downgrade a bit" the video on this board, at least the 9550 is a "true" graphics acellerator and not a braindead chipset like the ATI "IGP" series which are a pain in the .ss.

The ATI 9550 has decent linux drivers, the latest ones released January 15, 2005.
And available at:
http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/linux/radeon-linux.html?type=linux&prodType=graphic&prod=productsLINUXdriver&submit.x=12&submit.y=8&submit=GO%21

Regards
Fernando

Regards
Fernando

 

yup another vote for the 128mb 9600, runs great in my Zx5000.

 

The ATI MR9600 128mb works for me!

 

9600 s enough to play all games...but of course,sometimes in some games u must play with low settings,such as doom3,9700 gpu play it with middle settings...(sure,no aa and af)

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I haven't used the 9600 on a laptop. But I have a 9700 64meg dedicated, and it runs HL2 decently, low graphics. It runs Doom3, low graphics, slightly smoother but mainly because it loads from the HD less.
But other than the newest of engines I would assume the 9600 should handle everything, especailly the Sims2.

About the nVidia, I don't have a clue. I'm an ATI fan.

 

what are you all talking about? I run Doom 3 Fine on Medium and High settings. and runs with a little lag on Ultra settings.

I have Gateway 7400GX w/ ATI radeon 9600 64mb

 

Notabook101: I find it quite hard to believe that a game such as doom 3 will run on that system at high settings, and

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>and runs with a little lag on Ultra settings<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>

There are people with systems MUCH superior than yours, and you say that on ultra settings it lags very little? did you know that on Ultra settings it is highly recommeneded you have a MINIMUM of a 256mb video card? Why you may ask? well mainly becuase the textures are SO HUGE that it would require an ample amount of video memory in order to use it to the fullest extent.

And by "fine" do you mean 20 frames per second?
"Gateway 7422GZ. AMD64 3400+, 1.0 GB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 9600, 64 MB dedicated RAM."

would run doom 3 on medium @ 800x600 (MAX) at approx. 30-50 frames per second, and even so you haven't hit the magic number.

Remember: as long as you hit 60 frames per second on any system, you have a good one =)


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i play planetside on this and it runs anywhere from 60 - 200 frames per second.

On all doom 3 modes, my computer runs it, Ultra lags, high lags in action, Medium and Low work fine as in no lag

 

usually around 60-120 is consistend on planetside and then it changes to 180 sometimes.

 

Sadly I don't believe you, Notebook101.

DELL 9100
P4 3HT
512meg RAM
40gig 5200rpm HD
Radeon 9700 64 meg

The game runs stutterly on any setting higher than low.

 

I don't believe it either, my computer runs it alright on med but anything more and its getting choppy. Unless all the parts in your machine are incorrectly labeled I don't believe it either.

Compaq R3000T (CTO)
P4 Desktop 3.0GHz w/HT
2 X 1024MB RAM
Radeon 9600 128MB
60GB 7,200RPM HD
AquaMark3: 24,257, 3DMark03: 3,115