Should a '9200' Brand Mean a 9200 GPU?

newsdee asks: "An enormous controversy is going on at the X1000 forums over laptop parts. Some Centrino-based laptops bear a label advertising the Mobility Radeon 9200 brand, but users have found out that the laptop actually contains the 9000 chip. The list of affected machines is as follows: Compaq Presario X1000, HP Pavilion ZT3000 and the HP Compaq NX7000. ATI's and HP's response have been that the label is promising performance and not a specific chip. Yet users seem to not like this at all, apparently because most of them define 'brand' as equating to product. According to reviews, there are no differences (same scores, same clock speed) between the chips other than AGP 8x support, which the Centrino chipset does not provide. I seem to remember that this is not the first time that this kind of thing has happened in PC hardware. Can anybody share insights of whether this is right or wrong? Should I complain about my 9000 chip that delivers what the 9200 brand promises, knowing it has not been overclocked?"

Comments

The Last Apple 15" TiPB.

[Jerk City Troll]

My 15" Titanium PowerBook, the last round of the series before they became the 15" AlPB, was advertised to contain a Radeon 9000. Nevertheless, bus scanning output from in shows I actually have an 8500. What's the difference? I really don't know. Nevertheless, seems a bit deceptive to me.

Re:The Last Apple 15" TiPB.

[MasterVidBoi]

How did you 'bus scan' the output?

On OS X the 8500 and 9000 share the same driver: "ATIRadeon8500.kext".

I'm willing to bet that you saw the name of the driver loaded to support that card. Of course, as other responders to this post noted, the 8500 is actually a better card than the 9000, so this is still isn't great news for you :)

You got the card advertised, not the better one.

Re:The Last Apple 15" TiPB.

[GarfBond]

You may indeed have an 8500 inside your PowerBook. But, here's some information that gives you just a little perspective :)

Codenames -- Retail Brand Name
R200 -- Radeon 8500, 8500LE, and so forth
RV250 -- Radeon 9000
RV280 -- Radeon 9200

Radeon 9000s are the mainstream version of the 8500; in other words a cut-down 8500 for lower costs and bigger production quantities. In order to do this, they had to cut down on complexity, and in the same vein, this also means slightly lower performance (compared to a desktop 8500) and lower clock speeds.

The Radeon 9200 is a modified radeon9000 to include support for AGP8x (and 4x too, of course) and slightly higher clock speeds.

The Radeon9600s found in highend laptops now are actually a completely new chip, based off of the RV350 cores and as such have more relationship to the Radeon 9700s than the 8500s. In fact, there is almost no relationship between a 9600 and an 8500.

Actually, I can tell you for a fact that you do not have a Radeon 8500 in your PowerBook. Know why I can say this? Because ATI *never* produced a mobility version of the 8500 :) Their recent mobility line went like this: 7500, 9000, 9200, 9600.