When we were presented with the preliminary specification sheet, we were vaguely reminded of the RADEON VE, which was introduced at Comdex. Like ATI's value desktop board slated to appear this month, the Mobility RADEON boasts a single pipeline with three texture units.

Unlike the RADEON we've come to know on the desktop market, the Mobility RADEON will not support T&L acceleration. Although we have found that T&L offers a significant jump in low-resolution performance, we're hoping that ATI's upcoming-generation Mobility processor will offer performance great enough to enable high-resolution gaming, negating the benefit of T&L. Further enhancing performance is the inclusion of ATI's HyperZ technology, which increases the effective memory bandwidth. Furthermore, ATI has taken an additional measure to ensure Mobility has access to sufficient memory bandwidth to maximize performance.

Whereas the memory limit for ATI's Mobility 128 was 32MB, the Mobility RADEON offers support for up to 64MB of DDR memory operating at up to 200MHz. We expect that the processing power of current generation graphics products will be significant enough to stress the memory pipeline, making DDR support crucial in order to realize full rendering potential. For laptops with small footprints, in which motherboard area is a premium, ATI can incorporate up to 16MB of DDR memory in the chip packaging, eliminating memory chips mounted on the motherboard. More powerful machines that fill larger footprints will likely feature external DDR memory.

Expanding on an already impressive list of connectivity options, ATI has beefed up their integrated LVDS transmitter to support Quad Extended Graphics Array resolutions (up to 2048x1536). Dual Digital to Analog converters mean two display devices can be used simultaneously. Coupled with Appian's HydraVision software, which was recently obtained through a cross-licensing agreement, ATI believes that Mobility will offer the most compelling multi-monitor interface on the market. After all is said and done, Mobility RADEON boasts support for both TV and CRT output as well as an integrated TMDS transmitter for digital flat panel output at up to 1600x1200.

Now more than ever, power is probably the single most important aspect of mobile computing (especially in California, where power outages can render desktop systems useless). All "rolling blackout" jokes aside, if your battery only lasts 30 minutes, your laptop will be next to worthless, right?

Several features of the Mobility RADEON help ensure low power consumption. Most significantly, ATI has incorporated Voltage/Frequency Modulation - a complicated name for throttling. When a graphics processor is running in Windows, it does not need to operate at full frequency. Similarly, when the chip is running a 3D application, it does need the extra frequency to translate into performance. Using this throttling technique, the Mobility RADEON can be slowed down and sped up by the user, depending on the application in a way similar to what we have already seen from ASUS and their Smart Doctor utility.

Secondly, Mobility RADEON carries all of the video acceleration features of the more powerful desktop boards. While features like alpha sub-picture blending and adaptive de-interlacing provide picture-enhancing quality, other features, like iDCT and motion compensation augment performance. In a desktop computer, these features lower the system requirements for smooth, full-frame DVD playback. On laptops, however, motion compensation and iDCT actually prolong battery life. For example, a processor consuming 17W of power, 100% of the time, will take quite a toll on a system's battery. Video processors typically draw between .5 and 4W of power - significantly less. The video processor taking 40% of the video stream decoding load off of the processor may mean the difference between you finishing "Gone In 60 Seconds" on the airplane or getting just a brief glimpse of "Eleanor" before your system blips off.