How is the 9600 for games?

Hello,

Looking at a Macbook Pro with nVidia 9600 512 or Gateway 7805u with 9800 1gig for games like Medal of Honor.

Thanks

Frank

 

9600 is the best!

 

The thought the 9800 was more powerful + 1gig ddr3 mem.

 

he doesn't know what he is talking about

 

9600GT with DDR3 memory is fine, DDR2 is ok, but below expectations)) If you have a chance, go for 9800

 

9800 means a Gateway 7805u laptop from Best Buy.

 

The jump from 512mb to 1gb of video memory isn't going to boost performance as much as you would think. Just google some benchmarks for single GPU, 1GB video cards.

 

ok, what about the jump from 9600GT to 9800GT?

 

The 9800 is obviously a greater card.. More for the hard core gamer.

The 9600 however is the perfect "Hybrid" where you get really great performance but you dont have to carry your charger with you

 

Thanks, trying to decide if the mac is worth twice the price.

 

If you can afford it, but I think the Mac is worth that price any day over a generic brand such as a gateway

 

I think your right, now imac or macbook pro?

 

Do you want to take your computer with you places or not take it with you places?

 

Would be nice to not be tied to my desk. But like the 24" for movies.

 

What is the performance difference between the 9600GT with 256mb of memory inthe lower MBP vs the 512mb version ?

 

Usually negible.

 

Get a 24" monitor and hook your MBP up to it.

 

ARe the 24" LED better than the imac for clarity/angle viewing?

 

I don't think the iMacs are LED backit yet so the new apple displays probably offer a better display. Regardless, the iMacs 24" display is still gorgeous!

 

I'm pretty sure the new (which are not so new) iMacs all have LED back lighting.

 

Built-in 20-inch (viewable) or 24-inch (viewable) glossy widescreen TFT active-matrix liquid crystal display

Thats all it says about the iMacs display on Apple's website. I'm curious to know now.

 

couple of ACD reviews say that iMac's screen is still better!

 

I bought a Gateway 24" and am bringing it back, terrible display, bleeding through. I thought I would like a vista desktop, but I used to own mac and want to go back.

 

I am wondering when the new imac's will be out.

 

I see that too but I could have sworn when the iMac transitioned to the new design Apple announced LED displays for them, especially with their pursuit to go green. I'm curious now too.

 

I think they use LED

 

no,currently,they don't,but all are 99% sure that new ones are going to use LED...but since we are talking about apple,you never know...

 

Does not mean the display quality will go down?

 

nope,I don't think so!

BTW,lets stay on topic

 

1) I don't think they are LED Backlit
2) I can see the refresh happening over summer with the Snow Leopard release
3) The 256MB version isn't really "weaker" than the 512MB version as they're both bottlenecked at 128-Bit, so in thoery it can't even use that memory effectively. (I just think its a marketing scheme to make people think "Oh wow the more expensive version had DOUBLE memory!")
4) The Apple Cinemar Display is very nice and good reviews on it - but for my likeing its too expensive. Hey what apple product isn't?

Also the Apple Cinemar Display does have the "standard" graphics ports right? or are they only compatiable with the mini-display port for the MacBooks? (They did say it was the only monitor to be "built" for a notebook)

 

What do you mean by bottlenecked at 128 bit ? Can you elaborate on this issue ?

 

It has a 128-bit memory interface. Thats means only 128 lanes of information traffic can go into the memory at one time. Therefore since the 128-bit interface is a bit of a bottleneck with just 256MB of memory, the 512MB version is extremely bottlenecked and can not take advantage of its full capacity. 256-bit is the preferred amount for high memory bandwidth

 

Someone once told me a realistic way to look at it is to think about one person using 3 computers, and he can use no more than 3 computers.

If you were to give him 3 more computers, does that make him more productive? Will he utilize those other systems effectively?

 

Thats a wrong way to look at things.

Imagine the following: each computer can be on at most 1 hr consecutively, then it overheats and has to be shut down for 1 day before starting up again.
Then, you can see that having a bunch of computers helps.

This is more closer to the ram problem when data becomes stale, and new data has to be fetched from HDD or system memory, which takes time.

The RAM problem is a similar one.

I'm guessing the following is happening:
If data is not present in vram, then it has to be fetched from system ram; but if gpu performance is already throttled (only 128 bits can travel per cycle), then the % penalty due to a vram miss is small.

As an example, if there are 100 accesses, 90 of them in vram, taking 4 cycles, and 10 taking 10 cycles then total = 460 cycles.
With 512mb ram, say we dont have a ram miss, then we get 400 cycles, a performance improvement of 13%.

If memory bandwidth was double, then a vram access might ammortize to 2 cycles, and then the improvement would be 33%

For system ram, its a different issue, a data miss means things have to be fetched from the HDD which take millions of cycles.

 

You should of just answered your own question in the first place, Borg

 

I just have a possible scenario, I dont know if that is all that is happening