ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 64MB and 128MB

I'm thinking about purchasing an Insirion 9100 and I was wondering if there is a significant performance difference between the 64MB and the 128MB versions of the graphics card. Is there a big difference in the heat and power consumption. If anyone knows or has some idea to whether there is a big performance increase of the 128MB video card over the 64MB version of it, could you please give me some feedback? Thanks!

 

OK... if I want to play games at big resolutions and big details.. I should get the 128MB. What about RAM? Is there a big performance difference between 512 DDR and 1024 DDR RAM in games, in normal Windows applications, in movies, and other stuff over all? I hear the heat in 1024MB RAM laptops are alot hotter than laptops with only 512MB of RAM. Is this true?

 

Well, it depends on what kind of gaming you do. If you play alot of 3d, first person games, and want maximum resolutions and details, then you want the 128 MB video card. If you don't play these kinds of games and don't need the max. settings, then the 64 MB would be a better suit.

As for heat and battery life...not much difference between the 64 MB and 128 MB.

 

Games would work with 512 MB RAM, but it sounds like you are a hard core gamer, so it would probably be better for you to get 1 GB RAM. 512 MB works just fine for general Windows applications and watching DVD's, but I think 1 GB is better for gaming. The 8600 gets very hot where the memory is located, personally I think 512 MB would still be hot just because of poor heat flow design in the 8600.

 

Look up the specs on both the 64 and 128MB versions of the video controller and see what the maximum resolution(screen size) that 64 MB will support. If it supports your notebooks resolution at full performance, then just get the 64 as the 128 would just be overkill and more power/heat.

Jack

The color of justice in america is green.
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Yah.. like to go from 64MB to 128MB is $150 CDN.. so if I can cut unnecessary power from the laptop... that would be wise for me. Also, I was wondering about the difference between the 60GB 5400rpm HDD and the 60GB 7200rpm. To upgrade from one to the other is $100 CDN, so is it worthwhile to spend that much money to upgrade the spin rate? I went to my local Best Buy and asked the computer dude there what the difference was... and he told me that the 7200rpm hard drive would only be approx 2ms faster. Is this true? How much faster is it really (in Windows applications such as IE and MS Office and in games)?

 

I think you would notice the biggest difference if going from a 4200 RPM to 7200 RPM. I have tested those 2 speeds, but I have never tested versus a 5400 RPM drive.

That being said, you can always get the cheaper drive, and later upgrade the to a 7200 RPM yourself which is really easy to do. Then you can use the old drive as a backup drive by getting an external USB enclosure kit.

 

If you'll be playing a lot of newer games, go for the 128 MB card. It's a luxury to be offered it, so take it if you can. In actuality, having more memory doesn't increase frame rates of NORMAL games by much. Probably around a 10-20% in frame rate at most. The bottleneck is more on the Processor and other components rather than the graphics card. For more intensive games like Far Cry, Half-Life 2, Doom III, the graphics card is the bottleneck and the extra 64 MB in the 128 MB card will make a huge difference, somewhere in the 50%+ range. It's the difference between playing something at decent levels rather than choppy levels.

As other people have said, opt for more memory and a faster drive if you can. It's amazing how much these affect even your daily operations. 7200 rpm drives are costly at this point in general, so a 5400 rpm drive would a better buy. The 512 MB -> 1GB upgrade I've not tried before, but if you play intensive games or if you like opening up many programs at once, it's a good idea to get that.

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