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AnchorDesk

John Morris and Josh Taylor
The GeForce2 Go: Desktop-quality graphics on your notebook?

John Morris and Josh Taylor
Contributing Editors, AnchorDesk
Monday, April 16, 2001
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Until recently, notebooks and top-notch graphics performance were about as compatible as Tom and Nicole. In fact, it wasn't that long ago that most portables had graphics acceleration built into the processor. Even as manufacturers began to ship notebooks with dedicated graphics chips, they usually came with a paltry 4MB of graphics memory, hardly the amount needed to run smoothly Adobe Photoshop or graphics-intensive games.

Now top-line portable systems are shipping with 16MB of video RAM, but even that's not enough to cut it on 3-D games like Quake III. Not surprisingly, road warriors have been hotly anticipating Nvidia's GeForce2 Go graphics subsystem, the first graphics accelerator for notebooks that is claiming to rival desktop boards in 3-D performance. After the inevitable production delays, the GeForce2 Go is finally set to launch, and we got our hands on one of the first systems to incorporate the new chip, the Dell Inspiron 8000.

The results of our benchmark tests suggest that the GeForce2 Go has actually managed to match those hyped-up expectations surrounding it. The new 8000 nearly doubled the score of the previously fastest notebook on our 3-D WinMark test, a score that, in fact, does rival comparably configured desktop systems. Also telling was the 8000's 56 frames-per-second rate at running a Quake III demo; considering that many notebook systems can't even run Quake III because of its 3-D requirements, the GeForce2 Go's performance is definitely a great leap forward.

Best of all, the new Inspiron 8000s won't break the bank. Just $1,848 will get you a 700MHz Pentium III with a 15-inch SXGA+ display, 64MB of RAM, a 10GB hard drive, and 16MB of DDR RAM on the GeForce2 Go chipset. Upgrading to the 32MB chipset will cost an extra $50. As you might expect, great-performing notebooks typically don't come in small packages, and at 8.1 pounds, the Inspiron 8000 is no exception, though to Dell's credit, they did manage to trim a pound off the previous incarnation.

Notebooks with the GeForce2 Go cater to a rarified audience. Mobile business users would rather sacrifice graphics performance to shave a few pounds off their portables, while mainstream users generally stick with productivity applications, Web browsing, and e-mail. But if you want true desktop graphics power in a portable package, it's the obvious choice.

Have you been yearning for some serious graphics capabilities in your notebook? TalkBack to us.

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