by Anton Shilov
11/20/2006 | 11:50 PM
Fujitsu Siemens Computers, a leading notebook supplier in the European Union, has quietly started to ship ATI Mobility Radeon X1900, the not-yet-announced graphics product from ATI, which is likely to deliver the world’s highest performance in pixel shader intensive 3D applications.
<%BANNER[article]%>The laptop vendor recently started to offer its Amilo Xi 1554 mobile computer, which is based on Intel Core 2 Duo microprocessor (up to model T7200, 2.0GHz, 667MHz processor system bus, 4MB cache), Intel 945PM core-logic, can support up to 2GB of dual-channel PC2-4300 memory and feature RAID functionality. The notebook has 17” WUXGA screen with 1920x1200 resolution and ATI Mobility Radeon X1900 with 256MB GDDR3 (in MXM-III form-factor) graphics accelerator. The mobile computer also features Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g networking and Bluetooth connectivity.
Fujitsu Siemens’ web-site does not list any peculiarities of the new mobile graphics processing unit (GPU), such as clock-speeds or the number of pixel shader processors.
Even though the market of high-performance mobile computers for gamers is relatively small, it is highly profitable and so far Nvidia has been enjoying the lead over AMD/ATI Technologies here. Up to now the fastest mobile graphics chip the graphics processor developer could offer was Mobility Radeon X1800 XT, which has 16 pixel processors, 8 vertex processor and 550MHz clock-speed. Technical specs of the recently unveiled GeForce Go 7950 GTX are close to those of pre-overclocked GeForce 7900 GT graphics boards for desktops, which usually either deliver equal performance with desktop Radeon X1800 XT (625MHz core-clock), or outperform the rival tangibly, according to an X-bit labs review. The Mobility Radeon X1900 with its 48 or 36 pixel shader processors and 8 vertex shader processors could outperform the model Go 7950 GTX.
This is not the first time when Fujitsu Siemens uses a graphics accelerator from ATI Technologies that is not widely advertised. Earlier the company started to sell Celsius H-series mobile workstation with Mobility FireGL 5200 chip.
ATI did not comment on the news-story.