TravelMate 8100

Back in January we took a look at a MOBILITY RADEON X700 card to see how the chip performed in comparison to desktop cards such as the RADEON 9700 PRO, RADEON X700 PRO, and GeForce 6800 GT. To see how the MOBILITY RADEON X700 fared in a functional notebook system, we took Acer’s TravelMate 8100 out for a test spin.

The TravelMate 8100 is Acer’s flagship thin and light notebook, featuring Intel’s 915PM Express chipset with Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG “Centrino” networking. Our test system was outfitted with Intel’s latest Pentium M processor, the 770 model running at 2.13GHz with a 533MHz bus, 2MB L2 cache and built on Intel’s latest 90nm manufacturing process. On the memory side, the 8100 system was equipped with 1GB of DDR2-533MHz memory running in dual-channel mode.

Acer outfits the TravelMate 8100 exclusively with ATI’s MOBILITY RADEON X700 VPU, with the visuals outputted to a 15.4” WSXGA+ widescreen display capable of resolutions up to 1680x1050. Acer sweetens the package with a DVI output located on the back of the notebook, making it perfect for hooking the TravelMate 8100 up to a high-end LCD monitor, although it would have also been nice if Acer had included a component video output for hooking the 8100 up to an HDTV. For those of you with CRT monitors, Acer also provides a VGA output on the side of the system, while the S-Video-Out can be used to hook the system up to a TV.

For I/O and connectivity, the TravelMate 8100 ships with RJ-45 and RJ-11 Ethernet and modem ports (in addition to the aforementioned wireless) a 5-in-1 media card reader, four USB 2.0 ports, and a mini-IEEE-1394 connector.

In use, the TravelMate 8100 was quite speedy thanks to its Pentium M processor and MOBILITY RADEON X700 graphics. Acer sticks pretty close to the specs of the MOBILITY RADEON X700 reference board we tested, clocking the VPU in the TravelMate 8100 at 357MHz on the graphics core (7MHz higher than stock) and 297MHz on the memory (53MHz below stock). We honestly weren’t surprised to see the memory running a little lower than default, as Acer elected to use cheaper DDR1 memory for the TravelMate 8100, rather than GDDR3 (which generates less heat than previous memory types).

In all honesty it isn’t uncommon for notebook manufacturers to go conservative on the graphics memory side to conserve power/generate less heat and save a little money in the process, so Acer is by no means alone here.

Overclocking

To see what the TravelMate 8100 and its MOBILITY RADEON X700 graphics could really do, we decided to crank up the clock speeds a bit, overclocking the graphics core and memory each by 10%, resulting in speeds of 393MHz on the graphics core and 327MHz on the memory.

With speeds this high the system ran flawlessly in every application we threw at it, with the exception of Far Cry, which would lock up after a few minutes of gameplay. This was a little surprising to us, as DOOM 3 is usually the title that brings overclocked graphics chips to their knees. We feel that we probably could have pushed the graphics core even higher if we wanted to, but better judgment got the best of us. After all, we did have to ship the system back to ATI.