In the two-player GPU race, it should come as no surprise that ATI and nVidia throw rocks at each other—a lot of rocks. After all, who else are they going to throw rocks at, other than Intel’s underwhelming integrated cores?

In the desktop GPU race, each company ultimately has to put its GPU where its mouth is, and may the best GPU win. With mobile GPUs, direct comparisons have usually been much more difficult, owing to system-level component disparities like chipset, CPU type/speed and amount of system memory. Most laptop makers decide on a single mobile GPU, and forego the competitive alternative from the other GPU maker. In the new era of upgradeable mobile GPUs, some laptop makers are differentiating their systems by letting you choose which mobile GPU you want to power your laptop. One such outfit is Eurocom, whose D900 series of high-end gaming laptops let you choose between ATI’s Mobility Radeon X800 and nVidia’s GeForce Go 6800. Putting the choice in the hands of end-users is a very good thing indeed. The other upside is that we’re able to directly compare the performance of these two mobile parts, and see who the real deal is, and who the real dog is.

If you’re looking at a high-end gaming laptop, then you’re staring down a $3,000+ purchase, and will want the very best of everything. So which of these mobile GPUs will deliver that to you? Continued…