8600 GT M 256 MB DDR How is this card compared to the 7800 GT PCI-E 256 MB Desktop card?

Roughly what is the performance difference between the two?

 

The 7800GT is a bit better

 

The ddr3 version is probably really close.

 

The GDDR3 8600M GT is almost identical, only about 100 3Dmark06 points different, thats plus or minus, different people get different results.

 

the 8600m gt preforms close to my 7900 gt, so I'd imagine it's nearly the same.

 

pretty close close. equivalent for all intents and purposes.

 

That may be so, but it also depends on the brand. There are many many brands, and just saying "a geforce 7900GT" doesn't help because each company has different speeds. With that said, the 8600mGT is inbetween a 7600GT and 7800GT desktop.

 

Are these two graphics cards similar in performance?

I run the 8600mGT on a dell XPS m1530 with T9300, 3gb and run the 7900GT on a desktop with Pentium D950 3.2ghz, 2gb.

Just wondering if the 7900GT is better than the 8600mGT because so far, my 8600mGT can run games a lot smoother (higher frames per second) in games (eg, COD4, BF2, NFS Pro Street). They are both running vista and the desktop gets about 5000 on 3dmark06 and the XPS gets about 4500 on 36mark06.

I thought that the 7900GT was a high range 7000 series and that the 8600GT couldn't compare to it. Any ideas?

 

Technically the 7900 is better, but as far as better frame rates are concerned you can only tell if a gpu is any good by trying it. It may be that the games have different defaults for the graphics settings on the two machines. I really don't trust 3D mark 06 as it's not really for DX10 cards, and I've seen a lot of varying scores for the same card, whereas I get good results from the games I play yet have relatively low 3d mark 06 score.

 

the biggest problem with your desktop is the processor. You would probably get better score in 3dmark06 if you tried your videocard with some other and better processor (core duo). If you noticed, your processor score in 3dmark06 is definitely better in your laptop than in your desktop. the processor in your desktop is somewhat a bottleneck.

 

No the 7900GT is equivalent to the go 7950GTX and is way better than your 8600m GT. Try to play at higher resolutions and come back post some results. Also it sounds like you have a CPU bottlenecking your 7900GT.

 

Care should be exerted under which resolutions the results are being discussed. The 7900 GT should have better performance at high resolutions in comparison with the 8600m GT.

 

My desktop can hardly run games at minimum resolution (COD4, NFS pro street). It skips alot and makes the games virtually unplayable. On the other hand, my XPS can handle medium-maximum resolutions quite easily.

Also, what do you mean by my CPU bottle necking my 7900GT?

 

It means your CPU is limiting the performance of your 7900GT.

 

For some reason I was under the impression that the 7950GTX is better than even the 7950GT,by having a faster core clock(575)

 

True eleron now that you say it. Got it all wrong there, the go 7950GTX is faster than the 7900GT. It is the 7950GT that is as fast as the go 7950GTX

Skipping, well that is still your CPU holding you back and drivers that the 7900GT doesn´t cope with. The 8600m GT has a 128bit bus and is severely limiting it at higher resolutions. I know since I have owned not one but two 8700m GT´s in SLI and these cards that are even faster than your 8600m GT is no good performers at higher resolutions like 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 or with any AA or AF for that matter even with some crazy overclocks like I had on them. On the other hand if you had a better CPU than a dual core P4 for your desktop 7900GT that card would perform pretty well today and definitely better than your 8600m GT.

Here is a rough comparison

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=384&card2=534

The bandwidth is almost 2x as high as your 8600m GT both these are non overclocked.

 

Yep, even the 7800 go GTX is somewhat better than the 8600M GT.
But you need a modern day CPU. At least an AMD x2 4000+ or a Core duo 2.2

 

Yeah I have a go 7800GTX too in my old XPS M170 Still a fine GPU and can run some of the newer games even in 1920x1200