is ati x1600 top noch?

I'm looking into desktop replacement laptops and found that many are equiped with ati x1600, is it the best for 3d & games right now? Are there any test saying if they work in wow, doom3 etc?

 

Desktop Replacements are huge. If your from the UK (which i doubt you are) take a look at Rock laptops.
www.rockdirect.com
And take a look at the Xtream CTX with a X1800.
But yes the X1600 can run doom, Wow, oblivion. But take a look at the 7800GTX or the 7900GS comming soon

 

The x1600 is the new generation midrange GPU from ATi. It is a great GPU, very sutable for gaming, but it is not top notch. It'll play everything you listed at pretty high settings.

The Radeon x1800 and x1900 series are the top notch from ATi. They can generally be considered overkill for most gaming but some of the newer things can really push them.

 

If you are looking for a desktop replacement look for something with an Nvidia 7800 gtx, 7900, or at the very least a 6800 ultra (or the ATI equivalents like x1800 (which I haven't seen any)).

 

i would go with Nvidia for the top notch card..7800gtx. i havent even seen a notebook with an x1800 yet.

take a look at sager..very nice notebooks, and priced well too. (chazman421 has a 5720, and he loves it..read his review of it)

pb,out.

 

You need to look harder then:

http://www.rockdirect.com/notebooks/xtremectx_cons.htm

 

nice find, too bad it is in the UK.

i havent seen any in the US.

pb,out.

 

If you do other things than gaming that requires good performance from the gfx, like 3d or video editing do you think x1600 will be okay or is is a big step between x1600 and the top notch nvidia cards? I think heat is a big problem with laptops so going for the top notch card maybe isn't worth it? I mean the x1800 and 7800gtx must need more fan power than x1600?

Currently I have a two year old fujitsu laptop which has a s3 card, so I got really really bad expericene from bad 3d cards. Not even 3d studio max works correctly...

 

Well lets put graphics cards into perspective a little here. For my PC I have a AGP 128mb ati radeon 9600 pro and it does everything I need nicely. (I game, but not the newer, higher intensity ones). I am able to do video / image editing with no problems.

Nearly all of the newer graphics cards will rip my card in half. Sure it is laptop versus PC, but they are pci-e, have better clock speeds, larger data transfer, and more pipelines.

In other words if you are doing video editing, the cards below the x1600 will do very well.

I would say both the 7400 and the x1400 (both 256mb) would do a perfect job for what you want out of it, you would even be able to game on a somewhat lower level.

 

Video editing does not require a good GPU - even integrated graphics will be fine. I would recommend a dedicated GPU though, because they don't take a share of your main system memory.

The X1600 is incredibly fast (from a midrange laptop's perspective).

 

It does require gfx nowdays, look at AE 6 for an example -> http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/opengl.html

 

One problem with the X1600 is that it simply has no drivers for Linux. If you know for sure you are never going to run Linux or you are willing to pin your hopes that ATI may eventually release drivers, it's a pretty darn good card. However, if there's a chance you'll want to run Linux or one of the other operating systems, you'll almost certainly want to pass on the ATI graphics card.

 

The supposed "ATI has no Linux drivers" statement is a myth - we have Linux machines at work with Linux on them, I have buddies who use Linux and ATi, and they have worked flawlessly for as long as I can remember.

 

The older ATI cards such as the 9x00 cards do have binary drivers for Linux. So, too, ATI supports Radeon X300, X550, X600, X700, and X800, and the X850. However, ATI has refused to release a driver for any of the newer cards (the X1x00 line).

You can read the release notes for the current driver at https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/linux_8.23.7.html
It's not a myth, ATI has substandard support for Linux compared to nVidia. I suspect your friends have the older, supported, video cards or graphics chipsets. Of course, as you know more than most, some of those older cards are much better than some in the X1x00 line.

 

Yeah, I don't know much about the newer-generation X1000 series and Linux because I haven't heard if anyone tried it - I guess some have, but it didn't work since they have no driver support. My buddies 9600PRO and 9200SE don't have any problems.

Actually I said this:

Never said that they had substandard support, I said they had drivers - they do. I did not know about the X1000 non-driver support at that time.