Hello again, everyone here at PCW.

Very recently, the most powerful video-cards on the market for laptops were Nvidia's GeForce Go 7950GTX (Direct-X 9) and the GeForce Go 8700M GT(Direct-X 10). Well, Nvidia has broken their own record on the laptop GPU(Graphical Processing Unit/Graphics Processing Unit) market with the release of the GeForce Go 8800M GTS and GeForce Go 8800M GTX (Both Direct-X 10).

So, ho much do these cards stand up to their desktop big brothers, as well as the previous two champions(7950GTX and 8700M GT)? Well, on a first note, these cards carry a formadable price tag, quite a bit more than the 8700M or 7950GTX. Here is a direct comparison of the laptop/desktop differences:

{color:#000000}*The table would not display properly so I deleted it. Sorry.*{color}

As you can see, the mobile GTS beats the desktop GTS(320MB/640MB) by 50MHz on the shader-clock speeds, which would help if you play the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which is heavy on pixel-shading capabilities. One downside to the mobile GTS is the fact that it has less stream-processing capabilities than the any of the desktop GTS(s). Other than that, the mobile GTS is equal to the desktop card, which is very good considering that this is a laptop card. (My opoligies for not being able to find the Memory Bandwidth and Fill-rate of the 8800M GTS; it wasn't on Nvidia's site or anywhwere else.) Something else to note: I found a conflict on the clock-speeds of all three cards when looking at Newegg specs and Nvidia's comparison chart(desktop GTS only), so I listed the lower speeds.(Nvidia's site.)

Now, on to the GeForce Go 8800M GTX versus the Desktop GeForce 8800GTX:

Specs	*GeForce Go 8800M GTX *	(Desktop) GeForce 8800GTX
Clock-Speed	500MHz	575MHz
_Mem-Clock _	800MHz	900MHz
Shader-Clock	1250MHz	1350MHz
Stream-Processors	96	128
Memory	512MB GDDR3	768MB GDDR3
Mem. InterFace	256-bit	383-bit
Slot	PCIe x 16	PCIe x 16
Mem.Bandwidth	(unknown)	86.4 GB/s
Fill-Rate	(unkown)	36.8 billion/sec.

As you can see here, the desktop version of the GTX easily trumps the mobile version of the GTX, but for a laptop card, the new GTX sets records. And, when you think about it, the mobile-GTX isn;t far behind its desktop counterpart as far as clock-speeds go. And again, memory bandwith and fill-rates were nowhere to be found on the mobile-GTX.
_Sources: _
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8800m.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130308
http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce8.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143081

So, looking for kick-a** video card for your laptop? Then you might want to consider a GeForce 8800M.( As of 12/21/07, Vigor offers a notebook with 8800Ms) Alienware is also expeted to release a notebook featuring the 8800M series in the near future.

Cheers,

-Techy



This image shows the core of the 8800M GTS card.

Ahhh. . . .lets think back a decade or two, and remember those beloved components that were so bleeding-edge at the time, but hardly compare at all to today's low-end components. You sat there with that old Commodore 64 or IBM-PC and thought "Shucks, aren't these "personal computer" things so darn high-tech?" Well, this what this blog post was created for.

I remember my first PC quite clearly. My parents got it to serve as the entire family's PC back in 1995. It was an HP, with a Intel 466MHz Celeron CPU, an 8MB ATI Rage Pro Craphics card, 96MB of SDRAM, a CD-rom and a zip-drive, along with a 15.3GB Hard disk, and a CRT(the big chunky things) monitor - a high-tech PC at the time according to my parents. Even before that, when I was just a small child, I believe my dad used to own an Apple II. I laugh when I think of those days compared to today's components, compared to the high-tech stuff of 1985, 1995, etc. This just goes to show how rapidly today's PCs are becoming so much faster, smaller, etc.

Something I would like to point out. In the early 1990s, we were just scratching the surface of multi-gigabyte hard drives. Look at today, where we're already going into the terabytes. Something else to note, too, though it's not technically a true 'component', are opertaing systems. Heck, compare, for instance Windows Vista, its advanced interface, etc. and compare it to Windows DOS, which we had until the early 90s as the only type of OS, until Windows 95 hit the market.

And lets also reminisce on another thing awell. Think about today's laptops, and all of the teeny-tiny components that are put in them, making them weigh very light. Compare that to the early laptops of 198X , though you might call them "luggables" instead of "laptops". Think of today, where you can buy even a handheld PC.

Oh, just imagine what life would be like today without computers, or more spcificly, personal computers. There'd most likel not even be a PCW website for me to post this. I say this as a final tribute to the humble beginnings to those parts and components that made the computer, well, personal. (And, not to forget, affordable)

May all of you originial components of the personal computer rest in peace.