New Mobile GeForce Go Graphics

Brent Kupras writes "NVIDIA just launched a whole bunch of GeForce Go 7xxx graphics cards for notebooks. There is a Go 7900 GTX, a Go 7900 GS, a Go 7600 and a Go 7300. The GTX version looks like just a faster copy of the old Go 7800 GTX. There are also a few benchmark results of these new chips against the older NVIDIA chips and ATI's chips."

Comments

Enough power to run Aero Glass

[Anonymous Coward]

This might just provide laptops with enough power to run Aero Glass. That is presuming that battery life and testicle health don't matter.

This is great, though. With the new Core Duo laptops and killer mobile chipsets, I'm finally seriously consider getting a laptop and dumping the desktop (more like deskunder, but whatever) all together.

Re:Enough power to run Aero Glass

[Blazeix]

I have the NVidia Quadro FX Go1400 in a Dell M70 Laptop, and I can run Windows Vista Beta fine. True, I only have a batter life of about an hour when I'm doing anything graphic-intensive, but it can still run all of the most recent games.

Re:Enough power to run Aero Glass

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe any of the public betas thus far have demonstrated Aero Glass.

Re:Enough power to run Aero Glass

[radiotyler]

I have the random nerd assortment of desktops required to maintain my dork union status and my laptop which is almost four years old and has literally survived two trips to a war zone. The laptop is nice to have and extremely convenient - especially for me being in a situation where a desktop is just plain not workable.

The biggest problem that I have with laptops - and the one that's not getting solved any time soon - is the ability to be easily upgradable. It's just not there yet, because there's no real standard on chassis / case configuration as I see it. And unless you're buying pretty super high-end it's something that's just not attainable for average Joe User, or even above average Joe User.

I think while super cool, this is one of those things that's going to take another couple of years to come into fruition. The laptop / desktop replacement market has made leaps and bounds towards turning out systems that are more than curiosities - especially in the graphics card (I have 32MB shared RAM and it makes me cringe still) but they're still not in any range of affordability when compared to a desktop of a similar configuration.

That being said, I hope all the major graphics card companies keep up withe the innovation, drag the prices down, and come up with a more modular setup for laptop graphics cards. That would be especially noteworthy.

Re:Enough power to run Aero Glass

[shaedee]

who care's about Aero-Glass...
i just wanna get the totl model to install in my state of the art RH7.2 gaming machine
oh boy.. the fun i am gonna have!!!

Re:Enough power to run Aero Glass

[cciRRus]

This might just provide laptops with enough power to run Aero Glass .

This is Slashdot. We wanna know if it has enough power to run a 1600x1200 XGL desktop. And from here, it the older chip 7800 Go is supported. Presumably, these faster version work with XGL.

Re:Enough power to run Aero Glass

[powerlord]

Interesting link, especially this bit in the conclusion:

Windows Vista

Which brings me to Windows Vista (previously Windows Longhorn).

One of the major new features of Windows Vista is the Aero Glass experience (both as an API for applications, and the shell itself). Aero Glass in essence turns your desktop into a video game: Instead of the current model where the GDI draws on a 2D palette, updating the video card memory (making use of acceleration routines that the video card supports) only when changes occur, the model of Aero Glass is that of a traditional game: With every "frame" the scene is wiped clean and re-rendered from scratch, layering "textures" that represent application canvases onto 3-D polygons and building the user experience from there.

This system will attempt to push 60-90FPS of user experience goodness through your video card.

In many cases this will max out even high end video cards. Even where it doesn't, all of the shaders and T&L engines on the video card are engaged - the additional power consumption will be considerable. This could easily add 150W+ to your system power load, and could absolutely devastate battery lifespan for portables. This is on top of the fact that you're suddenly measuring your GUI in frames per second.

In other words the new, shiny user experience in Aero Glass isn't just making use of unleveraged hardware in your PC (which is a valid point - there's a big powerful graphics card there, so why should it go to waste) - It's also considerably adding to the power consumption, heat generation, and cooling requirements. In the mobile world it would be hugely detrimental to the battery lifespan.

All to add a bit of eye candy that, at least as far as I've seen, marginally improves usability.

I hadn't considered that Aero Glass is essentially turning the desktop into a FPS issue.

Suddenly Microsoft's decision to grab people from the XBox360 dev team makes more sense (to me at least), since they probably have more experiance thinking this way than other GUI developers.

Go 7800 GTX is hardly old

[Anonymous Coward]

the old Go 7800 GTX.

Does that mean my 6200 is from the Jurassic Age or something?

Re:Go 7800 GTX is hardly old

[Traiklin]

in the world of graphic cards, yes.

anything older then 2 versions is considered jurrasic, anything over 3 is ancient and anything over that is completly obsolete...to bad developers don't get that little factoid, their bastards for actually caring about budget gamers and ones who don't rush out to upgrade their systems.

CURSE THEM I SAY!!!

yes that part about developers was a joke, I was shocked to see I can run Half-Life 2 on almost high settings with my Radeon all in wonder 9200.

Dell's Latitude Line

[SlashdotOgre]

I hope Dell considers offering some of these cards in their upcoming Core Duo Latitudes. Currently the D610 & D810 are only offered with Intel's integrated card or a Radeon X300 (which uses "Hypermemory" basically borrowing RAM from the system like the Intel card). The X300 unfortunately has some lockup problems with Xgl in Linux, so having the option to go nVidia would be great.

Re:Dell's Latitude Line

[GooberToo]

I've been looking for a Turion 64MT laptop with a nice NVidia card which doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I've not been able to find much. The ATI drivers suck badly for Linux. ATI pisses on Linux users and smile the entire time they do so. So, simply rule of thumb. If you want string 3d graphics performance and a reliable box, you must use Nvidia. If you want crashes, incompatibility, graphics artifacts, broken features, use ATI.

Long story short, ATI + Linux is not a viable solution unless you enjoy hitting your self in the head with a hammer.

Drivers

[dchaley]

Let's just hope that they support drivers for these new mobile cards better than they do the Go5200 series. Dell hasn't updated their drivers since 2004, and I used to be able to download the normal nVidia drivers; then sometime in mid-2005 the nVidia drivers stopped recognizing the Go5200 as supported hardware. Harrumph.

Re:Drivers

[Snover]

Problem solved.

Re:Drivers

[dchaley]

Thanks for that; good to know. Given how simple the fix appears to be, it's unfortunate that nVidia chose to cut the support. I guess that they don't want to be responsible for doing the vendor's support for them, and instead choose to make me think that it's all Dell's fault. :-)

Re:Drivers

[sloose]

You might want to add support to your card manually by editing the nv4_disp.inf file (check your setup folder), before you install the latest drivers.

You can get a preformatted inf file here.

If you want to do it yourself, in windows go into device manager and view the properties of your video card. Then go into the details tab and select hardware ids in the dropdown list. You can then use the last value displayed and add it among the other hardware id's in the nv4_disp.inf file. For most unrecognized cards, this requires adding two lines of text to the file.

Re:Drivers

[LEgregius]

Starting with the 7800 GO, nvidia is directly supporting the GO chipsets with their drivers, which is good given that Dell like to never update them.

Re:Drivers

[Surt]

Don't count on it. Their drivers don't work for the Go6800 series either.

Re:Drivers

[darkmeridian]

Heh. You think you're in a bad shape? I have a GeForce 4200Go. The only thing that's GOne was the support.

Re:Drivers

[PPGMD]

nVidia always put made the mobile drivers the responsibility of the laptop maker, at least as long as I have had a nVidia Go cards in my laptop it sucks, but hacked drivers are available because the limitation is inf based, take a peek at the inf file in one of the hacked driver sites, and you can hack together your own inf file for each nVidia release.

Re:Drivers

[Surt]

C'mon mods, overrated on an unmoderated on topic post? Bust 'em in metamod!

Re:Drivers

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

What's broken with the drivers you're using?

You don't need to upgrade drivers just because there's a newer version. You know that, right?

In all likelyhood there is nothing in the newer driver that has anything at
all to do with your 4+ year old graphics card, so you don't need to load the new version.

If you really WANT to, there's a method (referenced elsewhere in this thread) but it's likely not going to do anythign positive for your performance.

THESE cards ARE from the Jurassic Age....

[80 85 83 83 89 33]

speaking of old cards, i volunteer at a church refurbishing old comps for poor kids. almost all the computers that we get donated are pre 2000. after seeing so many really old graphics cards in those machines, i had to make a comparison list of witch ones were the dogs, and witch ones were ok for a free system (mind you, these machines are Pentium II and III era).

from fastest to worst (and yes, i've seen many rage II systems)

the Radeon 9000 and up
can work much faster if the
CPU is faster than 1GHz:

=GEFORCE 5600 (PCI)
=RADEON 9100 PRO 128MB
GEFORCE 5200 (128-BIT)
Radeon 8500
geforce3 Ti500
geforce3 Ti200
Matrox Parhelia
GeForce3
Radeon 9000 (Hercules PCI)
GeForce4 MX 420/440
Radeon 7500
geforce2 GTS
RADEON 64MB DDR
Kyro II
geforce 256 DDR
Geforce2 MX 400
Radeon 7000 S60 no T&L!!!
intel 845G (integrated)
ProSavage DDR (integrated)
RAGE fury MAXX
GEFORCE 256 SDR
SAVAGE 2000 32MB (Viper II)
VOODOO3
MATROX G400 bump mapping!
TNT2 ULTRA
TNT2
VOODOO2
ati Rage Fury (Rage 128)(DX6)
Banshee
Nvidia Riva TNT 16MB
S3 savage 4 ???
S3 Savage 3D
G200 16MB
i740
NVIDIA RIVA 128
ati RAGE pro
ati RAGE II

Re:THESE cards ARE from the Jurassic Age....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what type of benchmarking you're doing, but there are some obvious problems with that list. Speaking from experience (as I have owned and know the operating performances) the GeForce 256 SDR is significantly faster than the Radeon 7000, Intel 845G, ProSavage DDR and RAGE fury MAXX. The TNT2 Ultra is faster than the Savage 2000, Voodoo 3 and Matrox G400. Finally, the GeForce 2 MX 400 is faster than the GeForce 256 DDR (but not by much).

These were all cards that I used to use on a regular basis with both 3D and 2D games/applications.

Re:THESE cards ARE from the Jurassic Age....

[80 85 83 83 89 33]

thanks for the info, mate. i'm sure many are not in the correct place. i'm glad to get input so i can adjust it.

ubuntu

[irimi_00]

let's just hope that ubuntu supports these drivers I want to install ubuntu on my laptop, but I am afraid. ahh

Re:ubuntu

[shaedee]

well there is a good chance Debian/ubuntu/knoppix will,.. but you might have ta wait til version 7
(codenamed 'fluffy-muffburger')

Re:ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia is going to release a new driver in the next couple weeks, and it should make it into dapper unless it has some major bugs. The new driver will probably add support for the new cards as well as improved xgl/aiglx support.

^ thats kinda speculation though, dont quote me on it.

Re:ubuntu

[NitsujTPU]

Well, sorry, you've said it, and you're stuck with what you said, Anonymous Coward!

Re:ubuntu

[jvd]

What you have to hope is that the X Window System that you use supports these... the Linux kernel doesn't have anything to do with this.

Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[MojoStan]

This might just provide laptops with enough power to run Aero Glass.

I'm pretty sure you were kidding, but for those who don't know the AC was kidding, the GeForce Go 7 Series (even the low-end 7200) has WAY more than "enough power to run Aero Glass." Low-end mobile NVIDIA GPUs from two generations ago (GeForceFX Go5100) will support Aero Glass.

Aero Glass requires a DirectX 9 class GPU that supports Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM). Low-end mobile GPUs that meet this requirement include GeForceFX Go5100, Mobility Radeon 9500/X300, and Intel GMA 950. Even GMA 900 (which a lot of current Centrino users have) should work if they write WDDM drivers for it, but I doubt they will.

Here's some links for those who want to see the Aero Glass mobile GPU requirements:

• NVIDIA GPUs "Windows Vista Ready"
• ATI Vista Ready GPUs
• Current GPU Guidelines for Windows Vista Capable PCs

BTW, the "Vista Basic user experience" (formerly known as "Aero Basic") does not look like Windows XP (the GPU requirements will be similar to XP). In fact, I think many users will prefer this interface to Aero Glass. Here's some screenshots:

Windows Vista February CTP Screenshot Gallery 8: Windows Vista Home Basic

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Low-end mobile NVIDIA GPUs from two generations ago (GeForceFX Go5100) will support Aero Glass.

• Aero scales the experience based upon the power of your graphics chipset
• If users get shitty performance, such that many of the "support" chips you listed provide, they will disable it post haste. That hardly qualifies as being powerful enough.

So no, I really wasn't joking. Based upon some metrics I've gotten, and a demo I was given, I stand by my original statement.

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[MojoStan]

Got it. Similarly, no one plays Direct X 9 games with a GeForceFX 5200 (a low-end DX9 GPU).

Vista is still in beta, though. When Vista is complete, I'd be really surprised if a GeForce Go 6200 with enough RAM couldn't run Aero Glass with acceptable performance.

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[Andrzej Sawicki]

If it actually uses DX9 functionality, it will simply not do well on low-end graphics cards. To make it smooth, they would have to stop at DX8 capabilities, in which case even a low-end GeForce 5200 is enough, or make the interface 2D. Speaking from experience here, I had one of those 5200s until recently.

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[Sparr0]

Bzzt, wrong. I own two video cards. A GF 4 4800 and a GF FX 5200. I use the 5200 for DX9-heavy games, and the 4800 for everything else. The 4800 is quite a bit faster, but its missing those features that games like BF2 require.

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[MooUK]

"Similarly, no one plays Direct X 9 games with a GeForceFX 5200 (a low-end DX9 GPU)."

Apparently I don't exist.

My FX 5200 does an acceptable job of everything I throw at it.

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[MooUK]

"In fact, I think many users will prefer this interface to Aero Glass. Here's some screenshots:"

What the hell have they done to Minesweeper?

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[Yaotzin]

Yes, I agree. Allthough I'm not the most fastidious person about graphics, so far I've been very pleased my FX 5200 for almost 3 years now.

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[Tim C]

Heh - until a little over a year ago, I was using a GeForce 3 Ti 200...

Of course since then I've upgraded to a 7800 GTX, but I digress. (The time gap is due to the 6800GT I had for a while between the two)

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[ErroneousBee]

Apparently, they've taken away some of the game and replaced it with screen furniture.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

define "driver"

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean a supported windows driver, and maybe a linux driver that if you sacrafice chickens under the full moon and join the circus and learn to jump through flaming hoops it might almost install on one version of the kernel from like a year ago? Those "drivers"?

The videocard vendors all *suck* when it comes to anything but being MS butt buddies. I mean, they must spend up to ONE DOZEN DOLLARS a year on non MS programming!

Re:define "driver"

[IntergalacticWalrus]

C'mon now, nVidia is not that bad. Their drivers are actually quite good considering all the hoops they must get over to get their drivers to run on most configurations out there. If anything the kernel devs are to blame for not providing a standard and stable kernel driver interface. But of course nVidia are evil and deserve to get those problems because they don't exist in some magical utopian universe where everything is open source, or so the kernel devs seem to imply.

Re:define "driver"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only there is no stable kernel driver interface in Linux, it is illegal to develop closed source commercial drivers for Linux. If Linux wants to be blessed with drivers from the harware manufacturers, Linux must remove the GPL only restrictions and must be business friendly.

Re:define "driver"

[IntergalacticWalrus]

The legality of closed kernel modules depends on whether or not you consider modules as part of the GPL's fucked up definition of "derivative works". The more sane kernel devs like Linus don't like closed modules but nevertheless don't consider them in violation of the GPL.

And for the "business-friendly" thing, the GPL really is the best suited business-oriented open source license, because if you don't force modifications to be made public like most other licenses, companies will use this as a chance to get a free ride on the open source train by not giving back anything to the community.

Anyway, what people must understand is some drivers simply cannot be open source, notably video and wireless drivers. Look at Mac OS X: all hardware drivers are open source, save for... yep, video and wireless drivers. Think about it.

Re:define "driver"

[MooUK]

"Anyway, what people must understand is some drivers simply cannot be open source, notably video and wireless drivers. Look at Mac OS X: all hardware drivers are open source, save for... yep, video and wireless drivers. Think about it."

I'm sorry, I don't understand why you say that. Can you explain what you mean?

Re:define "driver"

[MooUK]

It's not illegal to develop them. Distributing them to others might be more of a problem.

Re:define "driver"

[Anonymous Coward]

And for the "business-friendly" thing, the GPL really is the best suited business-oriented open source license, because if you don't force modifications to be made public like most other licenses, companies will use this as a chance to get a free ride on the open source train by not giving back anything to the community.

You call that is business friendly!? :) Hmmm...I better don't comment any further.

Re:define "driver"

[m50d]

The legality of closed kernel modules depends on whether or not you consider modules as part of the GPL's fucked up definition of "derivative works". The more sane kernel devs like Linus don't like closed modules but nevertheless don't consider them in violation of the GPL.

It's not the "GPL's fucked up definition". It's the legal definition that matters. The GPL just says it applies to derivative works - it probably varies from country to country whether the modules count, and may well be unclear - most copyright laws weren't designed with programming in mind. But it's unfair to blame the GPL.

Anyway, what people must understand is some drivers simply cannot be open source, notably video and wireless drivers. Look at Mac OS X: all hardware drivers are open source, save for... yep, video and wireless drivers. Think about it.

Not so long ago there were other sets of drivers that were never open source. What makes you so sure these won't be opened up?

Re:define "driver"

[GooberToo]

The nvidia drivers are excellent these days. Several years ago, if you had crappy chipset, you probably had problems. These days, nvidia is rock solid, fast, provide accurate rendering, and easy to install. The ATI drivers suck ass. If you want solid, fast, stable 3d performance for Linux, nvidia is your only option...which is not to say it's a bad option.

Anyone that uses anything other than nvidia and expects a stable, high performance solution, are either uninformed or just plain stupid. Nvidia has been standing with Linux for a long time now and they provide a first class driver. Anyone that spurns Nvidia as a viable Linux solution are just wacky zealots. And frankly, I could care less if a zealot wants to complain.

Re:define "driver"

[wolrahnaes]

Anyway, what people must understand is some drivers simply cannot be open source, notably video and wireless drivers. Look at Mac OS X: all hardware drivers are open source, save for... yep, video and wireless drivers. Think about it.

That's retarded. Look at the multitude of open source wireless drivers. Look at every single ATI video card before r300 (and even r300 is getting some support now). Video and wireless drivers can be just as open source as the rest of the system, just the manufacturers of the various chipsets don't want that to happen. They seem to think (justifiably or not) that opening their drivers would either give their competitors an advantage, or in the case of wireless, open them up to legal issues if their customers modify the driver to transmit on other frequencies or otherwise fuck with things.

Of course, in my mind both of those are bogus claims, because a company who has engineers capable of designing a 300+ million transistor GPU can surely find the people to reverse-engineer a mere driver. With regards to the wireless issue, since when have manufacturers been liable for what a customer does with their gear? Ford's not liable for me going well above 100MPH on public roads, so why should Broadcom be worried about me tweaking their chipset to transmit on another frequency?

Re:define "driver"

[IntergalacticWalrus]

What about licensed patents and third-party code? Do you really think video card manufacturers own all the code contained in their drivers? What makes you think they are legally capable of opening up their drivers?

As for wireless, the FCC requires that 802.11g wireless drivers can't be modified. It's not the manufacturers' fault they can't open them. Yes, Broadcom sucks for not providing any support at all, but that's another issue. OTOH Intel does provide closed Linux drivers for their wireless hardware. If that makes you unhappy, complain to the FCC.

Welcome to reality. Not everything can be open source. It's as simple as that.

Great Benchmarks!

[ickyellf]

Chronicles of Riddick should really fly after I get this card!

Availibility

[gcranston]

Unfortunately for us in North America, these notebooks are currently only available in Europe. Evesham Quest Series (scroll down) look amazing but quite pricey.

There's also a German company Wortmann that makes a much more affordable notebook at around 1000 Euros. Looks like we're holding our breath for a few months or calling up friends and relatives abroud to get them for now.

No desktop comparos?

[timeOday]

It's annoying that laptop and desktop benchmarks are usually separate. Makes it hard to know how much performance penalty there really is with a laptop.

Those SLI results are quite impressive, almost double speedup. I have to wonder if a laptop might make a decent gaming rig. I could even put up with short battery life for gaming, so long as battery life for simple word processing / movie watching was decent.

Re:No desktop comparos?

[Surt]

I've been pretty happy gaming with my inspiron 9300 with goforce 6800. 1024x768 or 1280x960 is playable (>30fps) for most action games (Quake IV, HL2) and 1440x900 or 1920x1200 is fine for non-action games (civ iv, wow). It's a bit heavy, more of a luggable than a laptop really, but I've used it on the airplane, at borders, etc. Battery time is about 1.5 hours of gaming, or 3.5 hours of web browsing and programming, and I carry a spare battery to double that (switchout costs me about 45 seconds of downtime to hibernate and unhibernate 1GB of memory to a 7200 rpm disk). Obviously, this is not top of the line performance, I don't have all the eye candy going, nor the highest resolution, but to me the convenience is worth it.

Why no top games for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just downloaded and tried a multimedia Linux OS named Tomahawk Desktop on a fast P4 desktop computer, and I don't mind buying a laptop with Nvidia 7900.

Why no top games for Linux, What's wrong with Linux? Is it really the market share?

Re:Why no top games for Linux?

[Klowner]

Never heard of that distro, but there are a few well known games natively available under linux, Doom 3 amongst them. I got Steam + Half-life2 running on my Gentoo box really slowly on my Radeon under Wine though.

Slightly OT

[Klowner]

But, I've been looking all over for a new laptop with nvidia graphics and decent specs for around $1200, why are they such a royal pain in the ass to find? Anyone have any recommendations?

It's cool that they're rolling out mobile GeForce chips, but they going to jack the laptop price all the way to the moon?

Re:Slightly OT

[fredistheking]

Ebay. Search for dell+9400+7800. There are some available in this price range.

Re:Enough power (GPU always at 100%?)

[Doppler00]

Yeah it's enough processing power; here's my question though: Will the video card run at full speed to render in 3D? My experience has been that once you initialize a 3D game on any computer, the video card will want to run at 100% GPU speed. I've never really seen a GPU adjust speed and run slower, it's always optimized to run at the fastest FPS it possibly can. This is going to be a serious noise/power issue unless Microsoft and the video card vendors can work on some sort of 3D mode that doesn't require the GPU to run at full speed all the time. It would still need to run at 60fps though to match the LCD refresh rate, it would be unacceptable for the desktop performance to be any less than it was in 2D mode (using the old GDI renderer??).

And....then a year later they come out with...

[threedognit3]

It's like Microsoft...only it's video cards. Pay the price while game makers catch up.

Re:And....then a year later they come out with...

[Anonymous Coward]

awww, poor baby.....

External Graphics Cards?

[pranay]

I am not an expert, but I was wondering what is keeping the likes of nvidia and ati from offering an external graphics card for portable computers. I like my low-power, light-weight, sleek notebook. I am quite satisfied by its performance for daily tasks. But when it comes to serious gaming, it simply does not have enough oomph to take me through all the eye-candy I can immerse myself in on a proper gaming desktop PC.

My other option is to buy one of those desktop replacement mammoths (which, oddly, some people still call notebooks). But it is a completely ridiculous solution. I like the mobility, convenience, integration I get from my ultraportable notebook. It is definitely a step in the right direction. It is the future. Agreed, but I simply cannot give up PC gaming.

I have a usb hub which is connected to my external hard disk (300 gb), external dvd burner, optical mouse, and 7.1 speakers via audigy 2. I really use all that only when I am on my desk, at home. Why can't I also have an external graphics card (with its own power supply and cooling solution), that I can connect to when I am in a mood for some serious gaming?

I would happily pay $300-400 for an external graphics card (USB or otherwise), that I can upgrade at will and use with my other computers. Is it technically impossible to do something like this? Or is it one of those things where all the companies have mutually agreed upon to keep screwing the unsuspecting consumers.

Please don't tell me I need a desktop. I like the notebook mobility, and do not see a point in paying for another set of software and OS licenses for a gaming desktop.

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a really great idea. It might also help with battery life. At the moment the really powerful internal laptop graphics cards drain the battery a lot more than the basic integrated solutions, and I think even when you're not using the graphics card to the full, like in a game, there is still a battery-life price to be paid. If there were an external graphics card, you could unplug it and get extra battery life for when you need it. I'm not sure if it's technically possible though either. Maybe the external interfaces like USB, firewire, or cardbus are unsuitable for the task?

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

An expresscard interface seems like the fastest generally available external interface on a laptop, and this runs at 2.5 Gbit/s. That's roughly 10-20 times slower than first generation PCI express interfaces, which is what current desktop graphics cards interface to. So it looks like it's the limited bandwidth of the external interfaces(amongst other possible things) that makes a consumer external graphics card unfeasible right now. However, I have heard that ATI and Nvidia may be standardizing the form-factor of the internal laptop graphics cards, which could allow upgrading of the graphics in a laptop, just like as is done with a desktop now. Although being an internal interface, it may not be very easy to add or remove the cards when necessary, for the extra battery life.

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[MindPrison]

I would happily pay $300-400 for an external graphics card (USB or otherwise), that I can upgrade at will and use with my other computers. Is it technically impossible to do something like this?

Nothing is technically impossible to do really, it's always a matter of time. But at the moment it's not likely because of transfer-speeds.

Have you noticed the difference between SHARED memory and ONBOARD memory? Those laptops with onboard memory are WAY faster at handling 3D because the 3D card itself can access the memory directly without having to transfer content via bus/cpu/standard-ram. If you had an external graphics card it'd work just fine with Video-playback and such, even at pretty high speeds, heck...you could even playback HDTV 1920 without jitter - BUT 3D graphics with lots and LOTS of textures are an entirely different game. Imagine that you have several 1024 x 1024 bitmaps that are RAW (uncompressed) and imagine how many of these you need to build a real-time city. Now we're cooking. Before you know it..you realize why the graphics card-ads on the box always brag about their hefty GIGABYTE per frame transfer speeds, this speed is vital because you need to transfer such HUGE amount of textures realtime to the various polygons and you couldn't possibly fit them all on the card, so you need to do background-transfers while using the On-board memory on the GFX-card itself. Getting complicated? Well - it is! And that's why.

Then you might ask - why don't they make onboard GFX-cards interchangeable. well - that has been tried too, but you're on a laptop mate! This means you'd be dragging the thing around half the planet and anything Wiggly that can potentially move and get disconnected during transfer should be avoided at all cost, so most of them dropped that idea (very VERY wisely so!) I've had such a machine itself, it got warm...the GFX card failed on the laptop simply because it got too hot and the mini-PCI connectors got heated...and if you remember your classroom physics you KNOW that METAL EXPANDS....and vice versa when cooled down....bad idea!

Are there any future solutions for this you might ask? Of course there is, you could potentially have it today if your laptop have the bus for it, but you also need a ton of customers wanting this. So ...I don't think that will happen - after all ...you're on a LAPTOP...you bought it to be portable....and if you want to drag along a huge powerful graphics card, external Audigy and a gazillion other parts..you might as well pack it all in a desktop pc ;) seriously.

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[MooUK]

"Please don't tell me I need a desktop. I like the notebook mobility, and do not see a point in paying for another set of software and OS licenses for a gaming desktop."

Read most of your EULAs. Many of them will say you can install it on one computer AND one portable computer. That cuts out some of your extra licenses.

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[evilviper]

If you had an external graphics card it'd work just fine with Video-playback and such, even at pretty high speeds, heck...you could even playback HDTV 1920 without jitter

Only if you're talking about onboard video decoding (which only works with select few codecs, and doesn't allow for any sort of processing). Sending 30fps uncompressed 1920x1080 over USB2/Cardbus would be a show-stopper.

This means you'd be dragging the thing around half the planet and anything Wiggly that can potentially move and get disconnected during transfer should be avoided at all cost,

Everything in your laptop can get disconnected if they don't attach it well enough. Your hard drive is usually only held-in by one screw, or a piece of plastic over it, but they've designed the mechanisms well-enough that everything works. There's no reason they can't do the same for graphics cards. (Note: Mini-PCI really isn't fast-enough for graphics, anyhow.)

I've had such a machine itself, it got warm...the GFX card failed on the laptop simply because it got too hot and the mini-PCI connectors got heated...and if you remember your classroom physics you KNOW that METAL EXPANDS....and vice versa when cooled down....bad idea!

This makes no sense at all. Yes metal expands and contracts, but you should be more worried about the solder connnections on the mobo, rather than connectors... Your hard drive is using a similar type of connector, without problems.

Either you made this little story up, or you simply don't understand why your card actually failed.

So ...I don't think that will happen - after all ...you're on a LAPTOP...you bought it to be portable....and if you want to drag along a huge powerful graphics card, external Audigy and a gazillion other parts..you might as well pack it all in a desktop pc ;) seriously.

Personally, I was thinking of doing something quite similar, for those who want portability, but HATE laptops due to their crappy components, non-interchangeable parts, ergonomics, and high price.

A sub-pizza-box-size PC could be put together, with an LCD screen attached, a keyboard/mouse mount, and some sort of handle or carrying case. You could have room for several half-height PCI/PCIe cards, and a much larger and longer-lasting battery than seen in any laptops.

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[MindPrison]

This makes no sense at all. Yes metal expands and contracts, but you should be more worried about the solder connnections on the mobo, rather than connectors... Your hard drive is using a similar type of connector, without problems.Either you made this little story up, or you simply don't understand why your card actually failed.

No such luck! A 2.5" harddrive doesnt get very hot, but a 3d-graphics card however - gets incredibly hot, especially an ATI 9600 Radeon. Ok, it's an mobile edition, but it gets fanatically hot. I also have an Apple Powerbook with this GPU, but they have a better fan...and it's connected directly onto the mainboard itself.

Oh...and for the record...I'm a radio amateur (that's an electronics freak to you) and the only thing I'll make up is new plots for my cartoon animation ;)

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[zrelativity]

Putting an external graphics card (specially a top end one) is not going to be particularly useful with current PC bus architecture unless PCIe is exposed. 3D Graphics performance is very largely determined by bandwidth and not shader performance. Many cards support bandwidth exceeding 16GB. Many at the top end is twice that. USB 2 does not deliver what a low end card demands.

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bandwidth. It sounds like you just want to offload 3D acceleration to an external device, in which case you need high bandwidth to the external card and then higher bandwidth back from the card to the internal display.

I don't know if USB has enough bandwidth for the input stream, but for output you'd probably need something like a DVI input on the laptop (which would be kinda cool anyway, but take extra space).

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[dilbert researcher]

bandwidth issues can be dealt with as most laptops have a pci-e slot for the dock. Instead of docking with all accessories, it should dock with an external video card.

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[Deliveranc3]

Laptop and Notebook are technical terms there is some kind of weight restriction on laptops (less than 3 kg I think).

Hope that cleared that up!

which benchmarks to believe?

[saarbruck]

ok, I'm confused. The linked article shows the Go 7800GTX beating the Mobility Radeon x1800.

This article shows the mobile x1800 with a slight lead. What gives? What's different between 3dMark05 and 3dMark06, and what does it mean in for real games? They're all pretty nice cards and would be great for a gaming laptop... now if only I could find one with a core duo and a 15" screen instead of all those 17" monsters.

Anyone have any more benchmarks or knowledge to contribute?

You're totally missing the point man.

[Khyber]

nVidia advertises a UNIFIED DRIVER ARCHITECTURE. That means that drivers for a 7900 should still recognize a GeForce 2 card. The need for some pre-formatted or manually-edited .inf file means SOMETHING IS WRONG AND NVIDIA IS AT FAULT. If you have to MANUALLY EDIT A FILE that should by all means automatically say "Look, here's the card!" then you've GOT A PROBLEM. That Unified-across-the-board driver suddenly isn't so unified, is it? Betcha they start cutting out support for slightly older cards to make room for their newer cards, and on top of that, they STILL have yet to deliver live, realtime cinematic graphics to the desktop, even though they've been advertising it since the GeForceFX chipset came out *I've got a poster hanging on my wall from the GeForceFX 5200 series, BTW, so bite me. I've still not seen graphics that compare to that poster real-time, PERIOD. Not even F.E.A.R.

Re:You're totally missing the point man.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Settle down, Sparky.

There's nothing new in the current drivers that will do ANYTHING for cards that aren't on the official list. 70 Series Forceware drivers are the best for those OUTDATED cards, because the new features for CURRENT cards don't apply. You're not going to get those features for free. The OUTDATED card doesn't have the hardware to support it.

The text override is there so that ANAL RETENTIVE FUCKWITS like yourself can force the new driver to run on the old hardware (at a lower performance level than the older drivers would provide) and make themselves feel good about their TECHNICALLY IGNORANT, BELIGERANT selves.

Anyone with a 5000 series card that thinks current drivers are magically going to make their card run oh, say Oblivion, is a FUCKING IDIOT.

Caps added for your benefit, since you seem to like them so much.

Re:You're totally missing the point man.

[Lord Kestrel]

I wouldn't say that he's trying to get the new drivers to run for speed, it's mostly for bug fixes. I had to do the same with an old Dell laptop. The Dell drivers were from early 2003, and had a large number of bugs related to Twinview. By screwing with the inf files, I was able to get current drivers to work on my laptop, and the old bugs were gone. Of course, there are probably new bugs, but I've yet to notice any.

Which idiot modded this off-topic?

[Khyber]

Excuse me, but this summary/TFA is about mobile chipsets in laptops, this post is completely on topic by discussing this possibility/scenario. Mods, either go back to school and learn to infer what people mean from what they say, or leave slashdot. This moderation of offtopic is totally UNFAIR to this person. This inquiring mind raises a valid point, and you should be damned ashamed for modding this as such. DO YOU KNOW THIS PERSON'S EDUCATION?? I didn't fucking think so. So instead of modding him as offtopic, why don't YOU FUCKING EDUCATE? Oh, I'm sorry, quite a bunch of you are EXACTLY LIKE LINUX FORUM/IRC CHAN people, you just shun those you deem as idiots and praise those who can best you. Fucking hypocrites.

Now mod me offtopic, assholes, for sticking up for someone who raises a valid point, you blind, cowardly, too-scared-to-give-up-your-mod-points-to-post-to someone's-insight tools.

Re:Which idiot modded this off-topic?

[GooberToo]

This is classic slashdot these days. IMO, the 80/20 rule applies. 80% of the mods have their heads stuck up their asses these days. It constantly amazes me how stupid the moderators can get around here. If the moderators were worth a damn, as they were 4+ years ago, this type of crap would have already been fixed. Sadly, as /. has become more main stream, the IQ of the reader base (and thus the mods) have dropped into the toilet. As you rightly point out, most can not even infer basic facts, logic, or bring any knowledge to the table.

The best thing you can do is meta mod as much as possible. It used to be, some years ago, I might have to correct the moderation once or twice every three or four meta moderations. These days, I have to fix things three or four times every meta moderation. That clearly indicates that the current readers (therefore mods), are completely retarded and have not a clue what the fuck they are doing.

I hate to say it, but /. is rapidly going down hill because there are so many completely fucking retarded people running around here these days.

Re:Which idiot modded this off-topic?

[Khyber]

Want to start up a site that does do real news for nerds? Forget stuff that matters, as that only serves to bring flamebait and trolls. I joined /. hoping this would be a technology discussion forum, instead, it's just a shit-slinging fest. Go check out my comment about being raped in jail and look at the tards (who've not been thru prison like I have, mind you) fall right in line to tell me I'm wrong, when I've been thru it firsthand and they've not. It's quite funny, honestly. We should just start up a pure technology discussion forum, and leave this place to burn in it's blissful ignorance.

Re:Which idiot modded this off-topic?

[thealsir]

It's classic slashdot. I got modded troll once for suggesting an alternative view that didn't toe the party line. Made my karma bad. Nah well, a $1200 laptop with decent graphics is more than possible. You may not get one equipped with an SLi 7900, but something like a 6600 go is feasible.

Except - it's not actually released

[m94mni]

No, it hasn't been released yet.

Should have been released March 22, but has since been delayed. No one has said for how long.

I want a Turion + NVidia + Linux laptop

[MWales]

But have a hard time finding one. I want 64-bit (which only AMDs Turion line has support for), and a NVidia graphics card (preferabbly one with dedicated memory) because we all know how great ATI's Linux drivers are. Any recommendations. Almost all the Turion laptops I see come with Radeon XPress GPUs. What brands sell such a configuration?

Re:I want a Turion + NVidia + Linux laptop

[scenestar]

You want an asus A6k or an ASUS z92k.

http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/5970.html

its a bit old, but it runs debian like a breeze.

Re:I want a Turion + NVidia + Linux laptop

[GooberToo]

Do you know if the battery issue has been fixed with the MT-40 CPU's? Last I heard, because of a bios bug, the laptop would hang during post if you attempted to boot from battery and had the MT-40 CPU installed.

I've been eyeing that sucker for a while now...but always worry about performance. How well does the GPU perform? Good enough to play games like America's Army? How long does the battery last for you? I would love to see a good Linux user's report with this laptop! Care to share?

For those that don't know, the z92k is the barebones model of the more main stream A6k.

Re:I want a Turion + NVidia + Linux laptop

[scenestar]

its woth buying, especially if you can find one for aroun 999-1200 euros.
As for the acpid issues, theyre all fixed with the newer 2.6.15 kernels upward.
The gpu is aboslutely GREAT, matter of fact, i can get more fps out of half life 2 on wine than on my desktop.
battery life ranges from 2 hours and at max 3 (depending on brightness, sound and what you use it for.

I have yet to test the irda or the card reader.
wifi works with the native bcm43xx kernel module or ndiswrapper.

its perfect.

Re:I want a Turion + NVidia + Linux laptop

[the_greywolf]

the A6k is unavailable in the US, as far as i can tell, and vendors with the Z92km are few, far between, and don't stock it.

i've been looking for something like this myself, and although the Z92km is the only thing i can actually find, i'd really prefer something smaller - like 14" or so.

is there anything else on the US market, or am i stuck with building a Z92km myself?

Re:I want a Turion + NVidia + Linux laptop

[GooberToo]

Wow! That's excellent! Thanks so much!

Where are the notebooks?

[Anonymous Custard]

I realize these were just released, but how do you find affordable notebooks using currently available nVidia gaming chips? They always seem to come at a ridiculous premium.