IBM T42 or T43? Radeon 9600 vs X300

Howdy Guys,

I'm having a bit of a think between the platforms. Understood that the T43 is the newer senoma platform. But my biggest purchasing decision is based on the graphic chipset.

The X300 looks to be a very basic chip. I seems like it will not perform as well as the Radeon 9600. Am I right?

I can't find any decent benchmarks to compare. Even the ATI site is poor in this regard. Newer doesn't always mean better.

I would like to do some DX programming hence would like a decent DX9 chipset to program against.

If anybody can provide some idea about the relative pros cons would be most appreciated.

 

Can you post a link to this machine on the IBM site. Just surfed the main and EDU sites and couldn't make sence of the the dozen or so T43's listed as to which card was in them.

 

The T43 is the clear choice then, they offer the X600 with a 128MB card.

Brian

www.BargainPDA.com | www.DigitalCameraReview.com | www.NotebookReview.com | www.SpotStop.com | www.TabletPCReviewSpot.com

 

I couldn't find a notebook with an X600 card. All the T43s are X300 not X600

This is on both US and AU sites:

US:
http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?categoryId=2049168&storeId=1&catalogId=-840&langId=-1

Australian:
http://www-605.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=36&catalogId=-36&langId=036&categoryId=2056940

 

Hmm... I was also more interested in comparing the X300 and the 9600 chipset.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by BlueFish

 

the 9600 is a great card.
dont know about the x300

 

The X300 the evolutionary step from a 9200 even though it's technically based off the X600.

9200 -> X300
9600 -> X600 (which is equivalent to the 9700 in performance)
9700 -> X700
9800 -> X800


www.DigitalCameraReview.com

 

Ok... so the X300 is more like the 9200 in terms of performance. So if I were a gamer I would get the T42 with a 9600 chipset no?

Lastly... I currently own a Dell 8200 with a Radeon 9000. I'm guessing that the X300 will blow the socks of the 9000?

 

Heres something that might help... dont know how accurate it is though... by the looks of it the x300 is better than the 9600 or atleast pretty darn close.. anyone know when the r52's are gonna be out..


opps forgot the link.. http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&var1=98&var2=0

 

Just to clarify, we thought the IBM T43 was going to be offered with an X600 graphics card but as everyone has discovered, this is not the case, the X300 is the only option of a dedicated graphics card in the T43 right now. That's disappointing as the X300 is pretty basic and it is the evolution to PCI Express of the lower end ATI 9200 graphics card and therefore will not offer performance necessary to run the newest 3D games.

The ThinkPad R52 notebooks are now available.

DigitalCameraReview.com | BargainPDA.com | TabletPCReviewSpot.com

 

Abaxter. Where do you get your info on the cards?
1. From that link that i posted it looks like the x300 is on par with a 9600 if not better. Doesnt mean their specs are right. Where are you getting your info on the cards.?
Sorry But I need more info as im looking into buying one of these. Are you saying the x600 will not be an option for the R series only the T series.

2. Also if you are not going to game, does it matter.

3. I held off from buying a previous R because of the 7500 card, I wanted something more future proof. Will this be able to run longhorn when it comes out.

4.Should I wait for the x600 ?

I will be doing Basic office tasks. word,excel, publisher type programs, web work, databases, photoshop.

Sorry for all the questions..and thanks for the help

 

RazorsEdge - thanks... that's exactly the type of info I was looking for but could not find. But it gives me reason to believe now the X300 should beat the 9600 easy... here's why...

Basically, it looks like the X300 will and should win hands down over the 9600 based on the following:
1. Fill Rate (Texels - textured pixels). This affects:
1. The number of pixels that can be rendered realtime
2. Other reatime effects (glows, reflections etc etc)
2. Bandwidth (higher bandwidth means it will be faster to ship textures to and from the card)

It will probably suck a bit more power (350 MHz clock) and generate more heat.

Also, because PCIe allows for greater xfers between the card's main memory and system memory it tends to be a good buy even if the memory is 64mb and the 9600 is 128.

I believe to future proof it, Windows Longhorn will require a 64mb DX9 card to run. Of course, Longhorn is a way off, hence you'll never know
1. The offical specs on shipment
2. The date when longhorn will ship - maybe by then that sort of hardware is standard.

Given that I can just run doom3 on a radeon 9000 (haven't tried HL2 - but could image it to work just as well), I would image the x300 to cope a marginally better. Plus it has support for dx9b.

Just some pointers for the guys out there looking for more info:
1. FireGL chipsets aren't good for games. They are designed to work for CAD like applications (Autocad, 3dsmax, Maya, XSI). For those apps, the priorities for acceleration is quite different (eg. most CAD applications require acceleration in a window, not full screen. Most require wireframe acceleration, games don't, and most require acceleration even when you have another window on top of it - games don't). So if you're looking for a gaming platform, forget the FireGL - and use the money on more ram and faster hard disks.
2. Notebooks sporting the the NVIDIA 6XXXX are actually supporting the next generation of DX9. Not all DX9 compliant cards are the same. MSoft have done a good job to confuse the entire market! Shader 3.0 support is what's the latest and greatest in terms of DX9 and the 6xxxx chipsets support shader 3.0. I'm not aware of any ATI chipsets that support shader 3.0.

Just thought I'd share...

 

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=7436

Here's some good info on the T43 and T42.

 

BlueFish...glad to help out..

Quote...But it gives me reason to believe now the X300 should beat the 9600 easy... "

I would think so to, unless the person that put that all together screwed it up somehow. Thats why i was asking abaxter where he was getting his info from, for some more compairsons.
Let me know if you come up with anything else.

 

ttt

 

I spent the better part of last weekend testing and comparing a T42 with 64MB 9600 to a T43 with 64MB X300. The results were not conclusive.

Well, it is an "evolution of the 9200" only because it is the low-end mobile PCI Express card. I compared it to the 9600, ran a ton of benchmarks and it was a "wash". It got just better than a 9600 on 3DMark05, lower in 3DMark03 and 3DMark01, a little lower in Aquamark.
In SiSoft Sandra video testing, it was a little better than the 9600.
(both cards were 64MB by the way).

I don't know why the X300 would edge out the 9600 in 3DMark05, yet lose to it in 3DMark03. It lost by even more in 3DMark01 and Aquamark.

There is really NO GOOD REASON why the X300 should not run Myst IV.
It has to be a driver issue. The X series drivers have been described as less mature than the 9600/9700/9800 series (for good reason) and my guess is that a new driver will make Myst run, when it is available.

I do realize that "newer is not always better" but I am about to go (I think) with a T43 with X300 over a T42 with 9600, because:
1.) The T43 CPU and memory interface are faster.
2.) I don't hardly game on a notebook at all.
3.) I tend to replace computer hardware often, and I think the T43 will have a slightly higher resale than a T42 in a year or so.

Anyhow, that is my rationalle.
(now, if I can just convince myself to do it!)

Andrew
Austin, TX

Andrew
Austin, TX

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by jsutton_golf

 

This is a great thread, thanks. My question is: does anyone know why Myst IV says it works with the Radeon 9600 but will NOT work with my x300 (as I've tried it and it says it won't work)? I can't get a straight answer out of UBISOFT, the software maker. If the x300 is supposed to be an evolutionary step up, why wouldn't it also run programs its predecessor ran?

Any help or comments would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

My bad on the last post. The x300 is an evolution of the 9200, not 9600. Myst IV is supposed to work with all Radeon's cards from 7000 on up.

 

Oh and one other thing. 64mb of ram doesn't 'really' determine the speed of drawing. It does give more space for textures to ship up to the gphx card thereby reducing the cache misses - which would require a reship from system memory to video ram.

From my readings, the X300 seems to have an edge here due to PCIe (though I don't know for sure). It is partly the reason why PCIe cards have less video ram because they can utilise onboard system ram more effectively.

So - MB in video ram really determines the kind of texture detail you can see in a scene (ie. quality) and not really speed - although related because higher quality requires more data on the video card and that requires more fetches if you have less video ram.

 

Hmm.. interesting results there.

Here's my guess at why the x300 performs better on 3DMark05.

The X300 is suppose to support more of the direct9c pipeline in hardware. It has better support for pixel shaders and vertex shaders which would explain why the 3DMark05 works better - since the 05 benchmark requires a 9c compliant card. My guess is that the X300 has more of it in hardware and therefore runs faster. If things aren't in hardware, DX tends to emulate them in software and then it's dependent on CPU.

3DMark03 doesn't require that level of support in hardware. It would seem that the 9600 has great acceleration in this area - but because it's older, it doesn't have the support for the 9c stuff - hence it runs it slower (might require multiple redraws etc).

Other variables could be:
1. Voltage - heat could be slowing down the X300 (most probable)
2. CPU (possibly)
3. Bus speed.

Thoughts?

Think you're making the right decision though... the T43 is def a goer. How much of a difference (in % terms) was the T43 underperforming?

 

Thanks, the stuff you say makes sense.

Where the X300 lost (in the older tests and Aquamark, it was by about 10 percent or more). Won't bore everyone with raw numbers.

However, in memory speed tests, like Sisoft Sandra, the X300 won by a THIRD or MORE!

Andrew
Austin, TX