2005's nVidia 6800 256MB GO vs. 2007's 8400 128MB - which for gaming?

My old system:

Purchased 2005
Dell Inspiron 9300
Windows XP SP2
Pentium M 2.0
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 256MB


My system that hasn't arrived yet:

Dell Vostro 1400
Windows Vista Home Premium
Intel T7250 2.0
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8400m GS 128MB


Which of these system should I use for gaming? How does the older card fare to the new one?

Thanks,
Derek

 

The 8400 is 2 generations ahead of your old system so it will be the preferred choice. You should look at the hardware sticky by Chaz and have a look at the mobile graphics card GPU page to see exactly how the 2 cards compare. Meaker's chart in the sticky gives technical specifications as well.

 

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=185&card2=531

They're quite evenly matched. The 6800 has much higher memory bandwidth but the 8400 has much better shader ops per second.

The 8400 won't constitute an upgrade, but will handle newer games better.

 

I'd still use the 6800...

 

go6800 is around go7600 level in gaming performance, so it'll be faster than the 8400M GS. But the CPU will be much, much faster on the new one. The 6800-system is better for gaming though.

 

itd choose the 6800. now if you compared it to the 8600 thats a different story.

 

If it is the Go6800 Ultra that´s another story, that card is much faster than the 7600 by any means.

 

Perhaps I can be of assistance.

I own an Inspiron 9300 configured almost the same as yours - only difference being I have the 1.86GHz P-M. I also own a ThinkPad T61 that is very similar to that Vostro - sure, the NVS 140M is clocked higher than the 8400M GS, and has GDDR3 VRAM, but the memory bus is still 64-bit, which is the big bottleneck. I also have an ever-so-slightly faster processor (the T7300 vs. your T7250, not a significant difference in games, I imagine) and twice as much RAM. That said, benchmarks from my machines are probably still very relevant, so here are my conclusions:

In synthetic benchmarks the two are practically identical. 3DMark05 scores are very comparable at stock clocks. 3DMark06 gives a slight edge to the I9300, presumably because of the higher resolution. For comparison's sake, at 1024x768 in 06, the machines score about the same. At 1440x900 (as high as either of mine will go, and very similar to the default 1280x1024), the I9300 pulls noticeably ahead.

In older games, like CS:S, UT2004, F.E.A.R., the Inspiron 9300 kicks the T61's butt. CS:S benchmarks to about 36 FPS at maximum settings, 4x AA, 8x AF on my T61; the Inspiron 9300, on the other hand, pulls off about 63 FPS at those same settings. Similar results for F.E.A.R. - at native reosolution, I actually have to sacrifice a few detail options on the T61 to maintain playability. On the I9300, I can run full out + 2x AF (no soft shadows, however). The common thread in these older games is the greater reliance on larger textures and the less intensive shading. None of these use above SM2, for example.

On newer games, however, the T61 puts forth a commanding lead. UT3 is the poster child for the T61's gaming experience - 100%/2/2 details at 1280x800 post a fair average of about 29-33 FPS on my T61 - whereas those same settings put forth an abysmal 18-22 FPS average on my Inspiron 9300. A lot of this could be the Unreal 3 engine's use of multi-core processing, but a lot of it is the poor implementation of SM3 on the GeForce 6 series. Crysis is nigh unplayable on my I9300, requiring minimum settings at 1024x600 resolution to get decent performance. Not that my T61 screams in Crysis, but I can push several settings to medium at that resolution and maintain equitable performance. Minimum at 1280x800 is also an option for the masochist inside you, as well. These results repeat in BioShock, C&C, and C&C 3. Oddly, WoW runs noticeably better on my T61 as well, though anti-aliasing brings it to it's knees.

My conclusion is simple: For next-gen gaming, the GeForce 8400M is a noticeable improvement on the Go6800, regardless of the lower memory bandwidth. For previous-gen gaming, however, you may want to stick with the brute strength of 256MB of 256-bit GDDR3. You probably won't notice too much of a hit from the transition, though, and the dual-core processor and greatly improved portability and battery life will likely make the difference.

It should be noted that all of these observations were made with XP on both machines. With Vista...well, the XP -> Vista transition isn't pretty for your framerates, let's just say. My I9300 actually runs CS:S and C&C 3 better in Ubuntu through Wine than it does natively in Vista. Enough said.

 

I am in the exact same situation with you, my old desktop has a 6800 card and i have been using my M1330 for awhile. I have recently bought Gears of War for the pc, its plays quite smoothly on my m1330, very few lags or 2 sec freezes, mainly only when you reach a checkpoint, i could play it at 640X480 res, med settings which looks no diff from the xbox version.. maybe to me but surprisingly, my desktop's 6800 cannot even run it smooth enough to play at the lowest res i think it was 400 by something. Even with the latest nvidia's drivers.

Then again this is my experience.

 

The gdr3 usually has near double the bandwidth than the ddr2 version, almost like it had 128bit, so the performance should be much better on the quadro than on th 8400gs

 

The quadro NVS140M is closer to the 8400M GT though, isn't it?

 

I have a inspiron 9300 and i have had it for a little more than 2 years now. At the time of purchase, I believe it was the 2nd fastest card on the market only behind the 6800 ultra. now3 years later, it's on its knees and comparable to the slowest of modern day laptop graphics cards. Just the thought of that makes me want to avoid buying technology.

 

I second that .