8600 vs 8800 graphics card

I'm thinking of getting an imac to compliment my macbook pro (which is great but just that wee bit lacking in power for what I use it for)

Will the 8800 card with 4 gig of memory (vs 2 with the 8600) make that much of a difference? Or will the fact its a cut down model (as I understand it) make the result pretty anemic?

 

yeap,8800gs is alot more powerful then 8600gt,but if you are not in rush,I think you should wait for iMac/MacBook Pro refresh.

 

Well, you're obviously not buying the imac for modern gaming as there are much better windows alternatives and the 8800 GS is somewhat low-end in itself.

So... get the 8600 GT and feel good about the money you saved.

This is unless you happen to be a casual gamer and needs the gfx power.

 

8800gs is powerful enough to play crysis on high/med with 30fps,but yeah,iMac is not "made" for gaming

 

I should say - The only games I tend to play are online mmorpgs like wow or warhammer - so not too worried about high end graphics for that reason.

I do work in games for a living though and do a lot of modelling/texturing. At work I'm using dual xeon 2.6 processors, 4 gig of ram and an 8800 GTX card - so wondering how a 3.0 dual pentium, 4 gigs and the 8800 GT would compare in comparison.

And yeah - I'm aware there's a refresh possibly in a few weeks time - though was kind of assuming that was just going to be aimed at the laptops

 

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=534&card2=551

There's no such thing as a "3.0 dual pentium"

 

he meant C2D,right?it will be 25-35% weaker(not exact numbers)

 

Um...total pwnage? Nah, there's just a 10-15% gap between the GS and the GT although the GT is a better bang for the buck when bought in-store. You have to take in consideration that an iMac runs already hot and putting some powerful video card like the GT won't be so bright. You could live with a GS I believe.

 

em,sorry,but those are Desktop results,while iMac uses notebook GPU

 

imac uses desktop gpu- custom chipset.

 

The "dual" pentium 4 would either be a Hyper Threading P4. Or possibly a Pentium D. Or the motherboard could be dual sockets.

 

Sorry - I was simply describing a top of the range imac - so I meant a core 2 duo 3.06 processor

And thanks for the info... roughly speaking it sounds like the imac graphics card would be operating at about 15% less efficiency than my work one... (unless I'm reading the above advice wrong)

 

Maybe one of you is right but even if the desktop scores are not equal to the ones of notebooks, I believe a 8800GT > 8800GS in both cases. I believe that for the small difference in performance, the GS runs cooler than the GT.