Performance Preview
The quick benchmarks that you see below were run on an Asus A7G notebook with the following specifications:
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Intel Pentium M 2.0 GHz
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Intel 915 chipset
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1 GB DDR2-533
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ATI Radeon Mobility X1600
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470 MHz core / 470 MHz memory clocks
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128 MB frame buffer
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17″ Widescreen – 1440×900
Since we didn’t have a similarly equipped notebook with a competitive grahpics system, our tests will show the new X1600 mobility standing on its own. We can still get good information on what kind of power the X1600 has in its mobile form by looking at what we have below.
High Quality IQ settings
Very High video settings
All IQ settings at High (HDR turned off)
Default settings at High image quality
CPU and GPU settings at Medium
CPU and GPU settings at Medium
All settings at Medium
Due to the native resolution of the notebook (1440×900) the highest resolution we could test at was 1152×864. This only turned out to be an issue in a couple of tests as the newer games required us to run at a lower resolution than that to have playable frame rates.
Doom 3 turned out to be very playable at 1152×864 even with 4xAA on the X1600 and A7G. Far Cry was nearly fast enough to be run at 10×7 with AA and AF enabled, but without it the gameplay was much more smooth. Half-Life 2 played beautfully even with AA and AF enabled on the system.
In our newer titles, BF2 was playable at 1024×768 with just a few minor hitches with AA/AF enabled. FEAR was a real hog on the system even with medium IQ settings, and we found that with Catalyst AI (ATI’s driver optimizations) disabled the new X1000 GPUs still perform better. Finally, Call of Duty was basically NOT playable on this system with at 1024×768 and medium IQ settings.
Overall, the X1600 mobility GPU proved to be a capable gaming part. While you shouldn’t expect to play at the highest resolutions possible with AA and AF enabled all the time, you will be able to play nearly all games on it with proper settings. It is definitely a step up beyond what we saw in the X700 and 6600 mobile parts over the past year.