7700 in A8Js vs 8600 expected in F8 (comparable to Dell 1520)

So I bought a used A8JS and hopefully will receive it soon. I am preapred to be content with it, but the deals on the Dell 1520 look very good and I'm trying to avoid getting swept up into the F8/V2 hype. Anyway, I noticed something interesting in the synthetic 3DMark benchmarks for the two video cards expected in these laptops.

1 7700 8600 GT (DDR2?)
3DMark05 ~4300 ~5300
3DMark06 ~2900 ~2665

It seems like the greater disparity in absolute values and in percent is in 3DMark05 and not in 3DMark06. I'm surprised by this. I would have expected the disparity to be greater in percentage in 3DMark06 than 3DMark05. I wish there were real video benchmarks, but that's all I have to choose from.

Any ideas why?

 

For 3DMark06, the 8600GT DDR2 should be more around 3600 stock.

 

Those aren't the graphics score but the overall scores, cpu and ram influences it. So if they are not the same (even only RAM's brand will differ), you cannot compare.

The 8600 DDR2 gets about 1200 in 3DM06. The 7700 will get more because of the GDDR3

It does not reflect gaming performances though

 

From what I saw, the 8600 GT (GDDR2) 3DMark06 score from the two 1520 reviews here get 2900. The 3DMark06 score you quote looks like it is from the G1S which has GDDR3.

 

Just a side question. Does the a8js have GDDR3?

 

The scores compare the T7300 at 2Ghz for the 1520 to the T7200 at 2Ghz for the A8Js. The T7300 should be at least slightly faster than the T7200 just based on FSB bus speed. The Dell 1520's have 2Gb memory compared to the 1 GB memory in the A8js, another advantage for the 8600 GT system but I don't think either benchmark changes much increasing memory form 1 to 2 Gb. The only thing that is not in the favor of the 1520 is Vista, which lowers scores somewhat.

The 1520 8600 GT system has a slight advantage in CPU speed and amount of memory, but a disadvantage in running Vista. I still find the differences not that great.

Is it even worth considering going up to a newer model for graphics? I've had a hard time tracking down real game statistics. Has anyone really looked at how well the 3DMark05 results correlate to game performance. Real values and not just a statement pulled out of a hat?

 

From what I understand, it has GDDR2.

 

The 7300 and higher also have 4M cache versus 2M for the 7200 and 7100. The Dell one has 256MB of DDR3 800 so it scores less than the 512MB DDR2 800 too. But vista effectively lower the scores on 3DM06

 

Since the free version of both programs runs at 1280x1024 or something like that, I would expect 256 and 512 MB to make little difference. I thought 512 only made a difference once you went to resolutions of 1680x1050 or higher.

I'm still surprised the 8600GT is not significantly outperforming the 7700. Has anyone done a comparison using actual games?

 

the 8600GT doesn't outperforms the 7600GT alot in 3Dmark. But it gest like the 7800GT in games.

 

Actually the 7200 does have 4 MB L2 Cache. Not that it adversely affects performance or anything. And I thought the Dell actually had 256 MB DDR2?

 

It's DDR3 800 so it performs exactly the same as DDR2 800.

The "real" 8600 has GDDR3 1400

And thanks for the info about the 7200

 

Heh, no problem. But between all the dancing between DDR2 and DDR3 of the Dell notebooks, I kinda lost track and didn't really know. But thanks for the info.

 

Can you point me to the benchmarks that show that? I'm really interested.