Sonoma: Underpowered? Hype? (S360 vs. FS)

Hey guys,

About a week ago, my laptop purchase decision rested between the Sony S360 and the newer Sony FS series.

The FS series had an advantage with a bigger screen, all new Sonoma technology, and the GeForce 6200 mobility chipset, which I had believed to be extremely powerful.

Then, skyshade pointed me to this link:
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0120/hotrev257.htm

Which has several detailed benchmark. In the end, I noticed that between teh S360 and a GeForce 6200 equipped FS, the S360 (which has a Radeon 9700) came out slightly ahead.

This was a big shock to me, because I figured since A. It's a Sonoma platform, and B. It's a new Nvidia card which has 128 megs, the Sonoma-based FS should have BLOWN past the S360.

What gives?

I have essentially decided to purchase the S360 after seeing it in person at the store (the screen size is actually quite acceptable), and I'm merely waiting for a good deal.

With the impending release of the S3XP (Which I believe is merely a Sonoma based, Geforce 6200 carrying S series), I am essentially waiting for the S360 to come down in price, or for a generally good deal.

So my question to you guys is:

1. What gives? Why is the Sonoma, which has been touted as the fastest mobile solution, being outperformed or "similarly" performed by a Dothan?

2. When do you guys think the best time to purchase an S360 is? Next week? Next month?

 

There are a number of factors that are in play, I suggest giving the article on this issue over at toms hardware a read, as it does a good job of explaining most of them (http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050119/index.html).
But breifly with graphics cards, don't be misslead to much by how many Mb's the card has, this in most cases has very little impact on real world performance of the gpu. What really matters is things like how many pixel pipelines it has and core speeds. For eg the 9700 has 4 pixel pipelines, the X800 has 12. There has heaps more things that impact on gpu performance, and plenty of good articles out there so I'll leave them to it. As for sonoma, its beeing held back somewhat by slower DDR2 speed ram, and cpu speeds. Take alook and any benchmarks for desktop m/b equiped with the same speed cpu and ram and there is generally very little differnce in performance, so why would the mobile m/b be any different? Obvioulsy it aint. This is probably why intel hasn't put a huge price tag on sonoma, they can't justify a hugh price/performance ratio.
Thus if I had to buy right now then I would A) try and get a bargin on an older dothan machine. or B) wait for a few months till more sonoma models come out and price comes down or speeds get faster.

ASUS M6Ne 15.4" WSXGA 1.7 PM ATI9700 80Gb HDD 1Gb RAM

 

Well, a 1970 vintage Porsche 911 is going to out-perform a 2005 Toyota Camry at any give day, and that's what happened with the battle between PCI-e GeForce Go 6200 and AGP Mobile Radeon 9700. Sonoma as a platform is great, but the 6200 in the new S is a low-end budget card and that 128 MB RAM is actually shared with system (there are like 32 MB dedicated VRAM, but it also uses 96 MB system RAM to make that total of 128). On the other hand, the 9700 is the top dog in AGP.

There are other factors involved and you can certainly dig more into the details of the graphic card, but that's basically what happens. I hope Sony USA will release their new Sonoma S with Go 6600 and Radeon X700 class cards (6800 and X800 are probably too hot and too big for S), then we should see some improvement in the graphical power.

EDIT: FYI, just saw CompUSA has S360 at $1650 after $250 Mail-in-Rebate. Worth a look if you want to buy S soon.

 

as i understand the geforce includes only 16MB of dedicated RAM but as its called TurboCache it means that is really more fast than usual dedicated memory for video cards ...

 

Well, the dedicated part in 6200 is indeed faster than the dedicated RAM in 9700, but the shared part is not as fast as the dedicated RAM in 9700. So you get like 1/4 or 1/8 of the claimed 128 MB RAM that is faster than before while the rest still sucks. It's very easy to see who wins.

On top of that, there are other processing power related specs where the 6200 just doesn't outperform 9700.[ ]

 

I'd like to get a laptop with a good video card. Is sony going to have the X700 in a thin n light by summer? What about a geforce better than the 6200 or 6300? I'm trying to find a reason not to buy the acer travelmate 8104

 

dangit - it will probably be harder for me to wait than it will be for sony to cram a powerful video card in there

 

The GeForce equivalent of X700 will be the 6600, but so far no one is using it and no body knows if it is ready yet. As for Sony releasing X700 or 6600 equiped laptops, well, there is no guarantee or time table there, but Sony does have a good track record in cramming powerful video card in their small laptops. If you can wait till summer for a new laptop, I'm sure at very least there will be more laptops with good video cards. [ ]