ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 Review

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In this review, I’ll try to show what you can expect from a laptop with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics, in terms of gaming performance and high-definition video playback.

The Mobility Radeon HD 3200 (RS780M) is a part of AMD’s “Puma” mobile platform that also includes dual core Turion and Athlon processors. The DirectX 10-compatible integrated graphics chip features 4 ROPs, 40 unified shaders, and a 32-bit bus width. The HD 3200 in the tested HP Compaq 6735s laptop has a GPU clock speed of 500MHz and a 500MHz memory clock. The amount of shared video memory was 256MB (default) during the benchmarks.

The test system:

HP Compaq 6735s
AMD Turion Dual Core Mobile RM-70 CPU at 2GHz, 512KB L2 cache
ATI Radeon HD 3200 (RS780M) 256MB (up to 512MB) shared video memory
3GB DDR2 PC6400 RAM
320GB 5400rpm SATA HDD
15.4″ 1280×800 Display
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit OS

The benchmark results:

3DMark 06

1390 3DMarks
462 SM2.0 Score
542 HDR/SM3.0 Score
1421 CPU Score

Windows Vista Experience Index

3.5 Desktop Performance for Windows Aero
3.7 3D Business and Gaming Graphics Performance

In older games 3D games, such as Quake 4 and F.E.A.R, the HD 3200 shows very good performance. It provides playable frame rates at medium settings.

Quake 4

Low Settings (640×480) – Average: 39fps
High Settings (800×600) – Average: 31fps
Maximal Settings (1024×768) – Average: 25fps

F.E.A.R.

Computer at Medium Settings, Graphics at Minimum (640×480) – Average 144fps
Computer at Medium, Graphics at Medium (800×600) – Average 32fps
Computer at Medium, Graphics at High (1024×768) – Average 19fps

In newer games, such as Crysis and Company of Heroes, the Radeon HD 3200 shows lower performance. But still, you will be able to run the games.

Crysis

Low Settings, 800×480 – Average 28fps
Low Settings, 1280×800 – Average 16.4fps

Company of Heroes

Lowest Settings, 1280×800 – Average 32fps

HD Video Playback

I have played two wmv video files at resolutions of 720p and 1080p on the laptop. The dedicated UVD (Unified Video Decoder) chip, that comes with the Radeon HD 3200, hardware-decodes the high definition video content, offloading the CPU. The CPU load was between 40% and %50 during 720p and 50% – %65 during 1080p playback. The video clips ran smoothly, without a glitch.

Conclusion

As you can see, the Mobility Radeon HD 3200 can be used for some basic 3D gaming, as well as for HD playback. That’s great for an integrated notebook GPU.

Posted in Reviews on January 23rd, 2009
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sweet dude

Cool sounds sweet im thinking about buyin this comp and wanted to no if the video card was any good

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668236.php
bishop

Thanks alot this will help in deciding my new laptop.
Alex

Hi!
Thanks for the test, very cool!
Is there any way to “give” the graphics adapter more than 256MB? On desktop systems with the HD 3200 you can modify that in the BIOS.
-Alex
http://roseza.dyndns.org Thriel

I just bought a HP 6735s with the specs above. How ever, in mine it shows dedicated video memory 256MB, shared memory 690MB total graphics memory = 946MB

You cant set the shared ammount, it seems the more ram you put in the higher tha shared gfx memory becomes, however selected models like mine does have 256MB dedicated ram.

I am very impressed with the laptop, so far i have installed the following :
Max Payne
Doom 3
Half Life II
Counter strike Source
Sims 3

and i dont have any hassles playing these games, most on medium, some on high.

I didnt buy the laptop for gaming so it doesnt bother me that some of the newer games cant run at highest setting ( thats what my desktop is for ). For the price i paid i am just happy that it runs all the games i play on descent settings
http://Typechupalol360ongoogle Paul, alias ChupaLoL360

Thanks a lot for this review, i actually was wondering what kind of performances the HD 3200 could show on my laptop, and i must admit that i’m very glad of what i’ve just read.

I’d like to thanks Thried as well, because i neither bought the laptop for gaming but this is a good opportunity to change my gaming platform and to turn off a little my xbox 360 ! ^^
nick

i just bought a hp laptop with this with the ati radeon hd 3200 graphics rs780m chipset and i was just wondering if it was capable of the crossfire feature and whether or not i could add a second mobile video card to it, any help in this matter would be much appreciated.
Robert

Wich Catalyst driver was used?
pau

is it possible to do crossfire on a laptop???
http://none JAX

hey ! if any one wanna play gears of wars on 3200HD at max graphics @29fps mail me for settings….
http://none JAX

yes it is possible to eanble cross fire X with either another 3200 HD or 3470 HD….
sam

i want to buy a notebook with the HD 3200 and id like to know if i could play Resident Evil 5 with it.
thanx a lot!
NTK

Hey thanx for the review, Im planning on buying the HP laptop with this chipset, mostly for my wife so she can play WOW and just do her daily BS, will this chipset run WOW ok? and at what settings do you thinK??
RAY11

Hi,
Thanks for this review it is quite helpful. I have just bought a Toshiba – satellite laptop with a 18″ LCD Monitor and it has a same graphic card, have’nt got a chance to load any games yet but could you please advise what kind of games will be best suited for this laptop.
Thanks
Spuds

Ray11: I have the same behemoth laptop you do, and it seems that stuff put out around 2007 is the best you’ll be able to do at really high settings. But you can do new stuff at low settings without big problems. For example, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 only runs at the minimal settings, but Mass Effect runs fine at maximum.
cristian

I have a hp compaq presario cq40 305au, with ati 3200 hd inside, do you think i can make a crossfire in it?or i can add another mobile gpu? tx
tareq

hey amm please i wanna know is the vga 3200 removable somehow? i have hp dv7 1130 us and i want to replace it by ati mobility 4860 hd so please answer
alex

i have had this hp laptop for 1 year now and the 3200HD is horrible, it is killing the cpu
sai94

This graphic card is QUITE powerful, because i had tried plays Left 4 Dead 2 with medium settings and it works great. I use my laptop ACER ASPIRE 4535 with 4 gb ram.
rgbHD

hey i have an Acer ASPIRE 5534 with an ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics Card with 1919MB Hyper Memory on an AMD Athlon 64×2 processor (L310 1.20 GHz) and 320 GB HDD..is there a chance i can play Modern Warfare 2 or Street Fighter 4 @ all with these specs??
UncleJJ

Hi all.

I see several questions here and I own a laptop with these settings, I’ll try to answer as many as possible:

- You can run SF4 on this laptop, however I ran it at 640×480 and with most graphical settings off, however the game has nice graphic filters so it still looks pretty.

- You can’t run RE5 without some awful graphics and low performance, sorry about that.

- Yes, you can play WoW and make it look really pretty, just tweak it a little bit since I play it on mid-high settings, I just disabled the shadows, a bit of fog and some gimmig settings to get maximum performance (I have all 3 expansions).

- Modern Warfare 2 is too taxing for this laptop. So that is a no.

- I suggest you get a decent cooler since this GPU tends to overheat, I use a cooler and also a small cheap usb powered fan to keep it even cooler.

Hope this helps.
Joe

I have one of these laptops just got it. ive been downloading a bunch of demos from low end to high end to see how they run on it.. so far so good.. also for those who dont know about shared memory,,, like this laptop ( pavilion dv7 1451nr ) it has 4 gigs of normal memory and the ati graphics card has 512 on board.. if u run a higher end game it will use up the 512.. then use up to 1.5 gigs of your normal memory as needed ( this is what my laptop does)

Also it runs ubuntu 10.04 exellent and it will auto install the ati graphics card drivers with the ati control panel also.

But yes as for the gamming it is not bad at all! I do video editing also.. it works GREAT for that!! Email me if ya have any questions!!
MIKE

dudes,
MODERN WARFARE 2 runs smoothly in low settings, i was able to finish the game sweetly!

RESIDENT EVIL 5 runs also smoothly in low settings, finished the game also.

so far, so good..
crysis warhead
left 4 dead 1 and 2
red alert 3
call of duty 5
and many more…

but shit also happens.. newer games are having difficulty.. couldn’t play bad company 2 and newer ones…
Keijo Keskiverto

I was curioues if Server 2008 R2 SP1 “Remote FX” will work on 6735s, but it seems that it does not quite fullfill all requirements.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817602(WS.10).aspx#

DX10 – yes.
NPT – i think yes
GPU non system shared memory – no

Not a big deal to most as average use of laptops is something else than Hyper-V host. =)

But then again i’m not average nerd either -im über geek nerd.
And don’t play games like most of commentators here.