From
www.xlr8yourmac.com:
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GeForce2GO Mobile Graphics Chip Impressions/Performance: -
It's a bit off-topic, but since Nvidia is now supporting the Mac and there's a lot of reader interest in faster notebook graphics chips, I think this might be of interest. A friend recently brought over his new PC notebook with GeForce2GO chip (only the 16MB/SDR ram version, not a 32MB DDR version). I had shown off my PB G4 before, so turnabout is fair play he said and wanted to demo his new toy.
I ran some tests in Quake3 1.27h and Unreal Tournament v436. The results were hard to believe. I was floored... even the wicked400 Unreal Tournament demo (a stress test ) framerates were impressive - averaging just over 27 FPS (50FPS avg in the Cityintro test) at 640x480/32bit mode (medium detail settings). Wicked400 at 1024x768/16Bit mode also averaged 27 FPS. (The 850Mhz PIII in the notebook helped, since that game is very CPU bound.)
Since the notebook used SGRAM video ram (not DDR), 32bit Quake3 at 1024x768 took a performance hit (as expected), but at 1024x768/16bit mode it ran 44FPS in Demo1 and over 60FPS at 640x480/32bit (all tests run with all options on, high geometric detail, etc.) Of course desktop PCs with fast cards do better, but this is amazing performance for a notebook.
As a FYI, it was a PIII 850mhz cpu, 256MB ram and WinME (which is usually slower than Win98 for apps, not sure about games). Even in 16-bit mode, image quality was excellent, colors were rich and DVD playback was excellent (WinDVD player). I recorded the results (min/max/avg) of all the game tests as well as the usual Photoshop 21 filter test, and was considering posting them with comparisons to my PB G4 and desktop Macs.
It's not all rosy however, as this notebook was big, heavy (7.9lbs) and had poor battery life (about 2 hours playing a DVD). It did have an impressive speaker system with subwoofer to boot - the best audio I've heard from a notebook by a mile. Onboard firewire (4 pin unpowered port however), 10/100 NIC port, combo DVD/CDRW drive, 20GB HD, 15" screen (1024x768 max, with dual monitor support). List price was $2395 he said (w/128MB ram - he had added another 128MB before the tests).
I'd still not trade my PowerBook G4 for any other notebook, but I really hope Apple uses the GeForce2GO or at least the Radeon mobility in a future portable. (Radeon mobility is not available yet however, at least in production quantity last I heard). Personally I'd be willing to trade some battery life for a faster graphics chip, although not everyone may agree with that.
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