Does the new iBook have a better graphics processor than then new 12" Powerbook? I've read that the ATI Radeon 9200 is better than the GeForce 5200. Im so torn between the two machines, i dont know what to do. This may be the decision maker.
They're approximately the same. According to Tom's Hardware (keep in mind these are the PC desktop variants, not the mobile variants which are clocked much slower), the Radeon 9200 has an outdated engine for full screen anti-aliasing, while the GeForce FX 5200 has somewhat unimpressive performance because of the slow clock speed and the fact that it's basically a sped up GeForce 4 MX.
Get whichever one suits you best. The cards are very close in performance so I'd suggest looking at other factors. The PowerBook will be better at games because it's simply faster.
I too am in exactly the same position... the iBook looks soooo nice (dare I say it, even better than the AlBook), but the RAM limitation worries me a little. The 12" AlBook is the only other option available within my budget (and racksuck space - cycling 40 miles a day adds up with a heavy load on your back). I believe the difference in performance is very little between the two cards, but I'd like to make certain of this by locating the Opengl based performance tool (somewhere up on the web) and checking out the statistics. The performance is crucial for my work, as I will be developing and running applications made with the hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics standard.
If I find this performance analysis tool, I'll post up the results.
Comments
Get whichever one suits you best. The cards are very close in performance so I'd suggest looking at other factors. The PowerBook will be better at games because it's simply faster.
If I find this performance analysis tool, I'll post up the results.
Regards,
ribot.