AVADirect's W860CU: Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Vs. GeForce GTX 285M

Features
By Thomas Soderstrom
published

Custom system builder AVADirect is one of the few companies to offer the flexibility of multiple graphics modules within the same notebook model. We used its high-end W860CU to compare AMD's and Nvidia's highest-performance mobile graphics processors.

Benchmark Restuls: DiRT2 Demo And S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

DiRT2 Demo punishes the use of DirectX 11, giving non-DirectX 11 cards such as the GeForce GTX 285M a “performance advantage” for all the stuff they don’t render. In order to make the competition fair, we had to retest the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 using the game’s “Force DirectX 9” setting. The results for all tested settings are shown.

With both cards set to the same DirectX mode, the GeForce GTX 285M is only able to beat the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 at moderate detail levels and low resolutions. Both cards are fast enough to play the game at the panel’s native resolution, where the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 card edges out a win. Impossible for the GeForce GTX 285M, DirectX 11 slows the Mobility Radeon to a crawl.

Increased detail levels put the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 in the driver’s seat.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat benchmark results provides DirectX 10, 10.1, and 11 modes, with the GeForce GTX 285’s highest level at DirectX 10. We retested the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 at DirectX 10, and found little loss of performance.

The Mobility Radeon HD 5870 outpaces the GeForce GTX 285 at all resolutions at the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat benchmark’s Ultra preset, but we saw minimum frame rates that would make any of these resolutions unplayable.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
54 Comments Comment from the forums
  • DjEaZy
    ... do they have AMD CPU's too?
    Reply
  • anamaniac
    How many partners use Clevo laptops and just rebrand them?
    Reply
  • ta152h
    I'm a little confused why you'd choose an i7 920 to compare with a different platform, but maybe it's because I don't know the mobile platform that well.

    But, if it's like the P55, which it seems to be, there's the added uncertainty of the architecture thrown in.

    Particularly with PCI-E being implemented differently, you might be seeing the inferior implementation of the P55 architecture responsible for a small amount of the relatively poor mobile performance. Since this implementation needs to multiplex the memory bus of the processor, you can run into situations where there is contention.

    I doubt it's significant, but I'm curious why you wouldn't want to make a comparison with a more similar desktop platform. Was it because you couldn't get an unlocked Lynnfield to get the clock speeds for the processors the same in Turbo mode?
    Reply
  • This doesn't make much sense to me... if a 5870M chip = roughly a 5770 desktop chip and a 285M = roughly an 8800gts.. why is it not completely spanking it? we all know 5770>8800.. by a rather large margin! what could be the cause of this?
    Reply
  • anamaniac
    Tom's, you should show your power usage results to AMD and ask for an explanation, on why a lower rated part is using more power.
    Granted, with a 45W CPU and 50W GPU, 30 mins is expected on a 40W battery if fully stressed.
    Reply
  • gti88
    It's not "mobile gaming" at all.
    So, is there any reason to own such notebuook?
    Reply
  • jkeopka
    I liked this article because I found it so darn relevant... I actually have this same Clevo Laptop, with the 5870 and 8 gigs of RAM.

    The GTX 285M was a $50 premium over the 5870, and I am glad I chose to stick to the 5870. It is kind of strange one would pay more to have less performance. I guess thats what fanboyism are all about?
    Reply
  • jkeopka
    anamaniacHow many partners use Clevo laptops and just rebrand them?Lots. Mine is a Sager 8690... which is a rebranded Clevo W860CU...

    I have seen this model at other sites as well.
    Reply
  • falchard
    Looks more like a bottleneck then anything conclusive. The results in nearly all the tests were close, yet 1 of them should have been clearly ahead.
    I think an ASUS JH73-A1 verse this would have been more interesting as its a bit cheaper for better parts.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    TA152HI'm a little confused why you'd choose an i7 920 to compare with a different platformSame speeds in Turbo mode, which is used during games, the primary focus being gaming performance.TA152HBut, if it's like the P55, which it seems to be, there's the added uncertainty of the architecture thrown in.That's true, but neither graphics solution provided the performance needed to highlight the mobile processor's on-die PCIe controller's performance advantage.TA152HI'm curious why you wouldn't want to make a comparison with a more similar desktop platform. Was it because you couldn't get an unlocked Lynnfield to get the clock speeds for the processors the same in Turbo mode? Exactly. Besides, Tom's Hardware has already seen that clock-for-clock, Lynfield games at least as well as Bloomfield when a single card is used. If nothing else, the comparison favors the mobile solution's lower power consumption.
    Reply