8600M GT: one of Nvidia's best mid-range mobile cards?

I mean just think about it. The Go 7600 GT was kinda gimped because it only had 8 out of 12 pixel pipelines. The 9600M GT is another big disapointment because it's terribly gimped with only 32 out of 64 SPs, giving it roughly the same power as a 8600M GT. Even the upcoming GT 130M is just a rebranded 9600M GT.

Seems to me like the 8600M GT is the only card that comes close to the desktop card in terms of performance. Even 2 years later it still performs well even against the GT 130M.

 

It's also got a horrible reliability history with the oft-reported soldering problems. At any rate there aren't many competitors to a very narrow niche market so being the "winner" doesn't say much.

 

Except for the part where they would explode.

 

Your post makes no sense because it seems to assume that nVidia has any rhyme or reason behind their numbering scheme, and that somehow the desktop and laptop models of a particular number are supposed to be the same. I assure you, that is not the case. The 9600M GT is simply a slightly better 8600M GT. It's not meant to have parity with the desktop 9600 GT.

The 8600/9600 laptop chips are a flimsy mid-range chipset. The prior generation 7900GS Go, a "true" mid-range chipset for the day, beats it somewhat, and the 7900GTX Go destroys it.

 

Even the 7800 GTX can still compete with it nicely.

 

If yours doesn't happen to suffer from the soldering problems, it's an excellent card. You can tell by the fact that people compare it to the high-end cards of the previous generation rather than the 7600. It's also still remarkably popular even today -- on Steam's most recent hardware survey, 8600M comes in by far the first of all mobile cards at 1.98%. And yes, it is pretty rare among laptop cards in being so similar to its desktop counterpart. It's really too bad about those soldering problems.

I think what helped it a lot was the move to the unified shader architecture that happened with the GeForce 8 series. This was something fundamentally new and it applied to laptop and desktop cards alike, resulting in performance increases across the quality spectrum. Thereafter, Nvidia laptop cards have been relabeled ad nauseum with a few extra shaders and slightly higher clock speeds thrown in each time.

 

The only reason you consider the 8600 a success is because Nvidia's 2 successors are just rebadges of the 8600??

You just need to accept the fact that since the release of the defective GPU , a.k.a. the 8600 Nvidia hasn't had a single improvement in their products.

ATI's new "midrange" cards are scoring 6k+ in 3DMark 06 and fit in 14" laptops. If we're handing out awards, let's give it to a winner

 

For people who actually look at what the chip does instead of comparing numbes that don't really mean anything... yes the 8600m did just fine.

Awards? no... considering the known flaws, it doesn't deserve any awards.

The 7800GTX and 7900GTX are high-heat, high price enthusiast cards which required very nice systems to place them in. The (correcty manufactured) 8600m needed very little cooling in comparison and performed admirably and in the end comparably! The result was a low-cost, good performance GPU which quite frankly was a step-and-a-half better than the previous 7600 GPUs which were nerfed to all getout in comparison.

The 8600m GT suffered a little from its 128-bit meory interface, but quite frankly most of the time never needed the 256-bit one as gaming beyond 1280x1024 wasn't really in the cards for the power the card held.

Final revisions of the 8600 and the current 9xxx and 1xx models when overclocked perform near or BETTER than the 7800 and 7900 generation at 1280x1024 and below with a lot less heat, cost, and with better shader technology.

Note that a previous poster is correct that Nvidia is not being pushed to excel in the GPU market... the same tech is being rebranded right now in a market which usually advances very quickly.

However, the 8600 was a stepping stone towards the new amazing 9800m GS and such cards. Decent performance at a reasonable price is the main concern and new offerings and price drops and the recent activity from AMD are pushing notebook GPUs to higher standards.

Let's hope the trend continues.

 

I'm perfectly happy with the card. I can play all the latest games with rather high settings on my native resolution and I'm getting better game results than my friends with lightly better cards. (9650, HD3650 GDDR3)

Even though the laptops with 9800M's and such have gotten quite cheap nowdays, they are cheap only still in low-quality brands such as Asus, Acer, Acme, Sager/Clevo and MSI.

But still, right now I wouldn't buy a laptop with nVidia as ATI seems to offer powerful cards even more cheaper in near-future. (48xx series)

 

8600m GT is a great card, just getting a little old now. I played both Crysis games on it as well as Bioshock and Company of Heroes. Performed quite well.

 

nVidia's most popular mid-range mobile card? yes. nVidia's best mid-range mobile card? Not by a long shot.

 

its strange how Asus and MSI are always the first to bring out the latest GPUs. i dont know anything about ACER cuz i have never had one, but CLEVO, ASUS, and MSI will always be my number 1 choice vs any other brand.

 

I certainly wouldn't call Clevo, Asus, and MSI low-quality. I'd take any of those over mainstream brands.

 

My 8600mGT has been running strong for a long time, was a HUGE improvement over my old x1600, and overclocks well. I would say its up there when referring to innovation since its one of the biggest improvements from a previous generation that we have seen in a long time. The 9xxx series was a disappointment when compared to the 8xxx series, and the 2xx series might turn out the same. The defected card issues with ddr3 and gpus in smaller chassis's are what keep it near or at the top in my book. But personally Id rate mine pretty well since its been working hard and has been over clocked for over a year and it still games at 1920x1200 just fine.

But alas its showing its age, along with my penryn CPU. So I can see it lasting 1 more year before Im forced to upgrade(unless this 16:9 craze gets worse and Im forced to upgrade sooner).

 

Low-quality brands such as Asus and Sager/Clevo? They may not advertise as much as Dell, but that does not mean they are low-quality.

 

9600m gt is much better than 8600m gt, i had both cards. u cant just look at 3d06 mark scores to determind a graphics card, its the display quality matters. likewise, you dont choose amd turionx2 2.2 over intel 2.0 duo even though it posts similar number on benchmark tests, its the underlying technology makes the diference.

 

As for the topic, the 8600/9600/GT 130M all is based on the same architecture -- just refined through die shrinks and higher clock speeds with each revision.

 

8600M GT had some great overclocking ability. It was good, until mine died from the stupid faulty mess Nvidia made. Id say the 8700M GT is probably better. But yea 8600M GT probably comes closest to its desktop counterpart but that doesent say much.

For me, ive switched to ATI. Nvidia is dead for me, for a little while. Or forever = O

 

Keep in mind that the card was released in May 2007 which means it is about a month shy of being two years old. Two years is a long time for computer parts so of course it is not the best mid-range card out there right now. However, when it was released and for about a year thereafter, it was the best choice if you didn't want an expensive 17" monstrosity (or the cheaper Gateway monstrosity with its lousy processor). This is why it is so popular today.

 

8600m gt has the overheating problem. Thats the only fault with it.

 

Ah, lol, right. I don't think so, MSI/ASUS/Sager/Clevo are not low quality, if anything they are more on the Hi quality spectrum. HP/Compaq/LG are much lower quality imo.

 

I've been gaming on my overclocked 8600GT for a year now, I have the same core/mem speeds as a 8700GT, which is the same card.

It is performing very well so far, never goes above 78ºC, and gets around 5700 3DMark06 points.

 

No they aren't and you're the one who brought it up.

Learn something about OEMs and laptops (and maybe advertising) before you go around spouting nonsense.

 

And isn't the 9500m GT essentially an 8600m GT in rebadged?

 

I don't think there is a 9500M GT, but the 9500M GS is indeed identical in every way to the 8600M GT (though supposedly it doesn't suffer from the bad solder issues).

 

You Sir are hilarious. It’s funny how you mention all the companies such as ASUS, MSI, Sager and Clevo who would be one of the only major ODM's (Original Design Manufactures) as “low-quality”. Basically ODM means that these companies design and produce their own notebooks and on top of that for other brands, while companies like Dell and HP buy from such corporations. In fact some of the highly noted Apple and Mac products were and still are produced by ASUS.

As for the topic at hand, my 2nd notebook which has a Geforce 9500M GS (which is an improved Geforce 8600M GT) performs well enough in getting my tasks done and doesn’t fall too far from my other notebook equipped with a 9800M GS. This shows the 8600M’s long lasting career which is still continuing into the next generation as the Geforce GT 130M.

 

Wow i wish i got those temps, my 8600gt gets to about 85C on normal clocks.... and thanks to AS5, it no longer reaches 88C!!! but it IS a very nice card, if i had a better cooling solution, i would OC it to meet up with the newer 9xx series

 

Just thought I would like to share my experience...

My 8600M GT has been running fine for a year now in my Inspiron 1720. I get up to 65*C on max and has NEVER gone 68*C before - overclocked by 25% and running stress tests continually for 8 hours. When on stock speeds, it runs at 59*C and on idling it can cool down to just a mere 35*C. And this continues to go on till this day for 1 year 2 months on and with powermizer completely disabled even on battery. Keep in mind that I used no cooler at all, and the ambient temperatures are like 30*C all day long even in my room. There's not going to be Winter, Autumn, Summer, or Spring here in Singapore.

Ask any 1720 owner in NBR and they'll tell you the same thing. It's the only 8600M GT that I know of that runs as cool as ice even while crazily OC'ed - Unless otherwise. I'm just proud of it I guess.

But hey, the 1720 is a 17" laptop; so probably due to the fact of better cooling.

 

yep, it seems its a very nice notebook, but they stopped making them a while back ... ( actually considered buying it one time, but then i went for a smaller m1530 )

 

That's pretty crazy. My MBP idles at around 65 - 70 and goes up to 85 C.

 

Hi there!

I have an ASUS F8Sv with this card (8600M GT) and so far it performs pretty well. (had the laptop for 1 yr and 1 mo and never tried OCing)

Though the temp idles at 54C and shoots up to 82C when I am playing, I think it's pretty normal, coz its summer here in the Philippines, and trust me, its THAT hot. Just forgot to record temps during Christmas time when it's colder here.

I think that SomeForm's laptop will run cooler coz it's 17" and it has a big chassis and there's more room for air to flow as opposed to 14" such as mine.

Just my 2 cents.

Ollie

 

I think that the ddr2 version runs cooler than the ddr3 version. My vostro 1700 ran at 62 degrees celcius while playing crysis!!!

But my 9600m gt arrives at 80 degrees celcius on the same game!!!

 

GDDR3 runs cooler.

 

It seems these vostro's have awesome cooling!

 

my 8600m GT is still running fine after about a year and a half. aside from one graphical problem I had that was probably driver related, no serious hardware problems. idle and load temps are fine and it oc'ed well. played most of the popular PC games that was out the last five years so I have no complaints about it as a mid-range gpu.

i would hope that if it was to fail within the next year or two, that nvidia would replace it as it is their fault but somehow I am less optimistic.

 

No, there were two different versions of the Go 7600. One was the normal Go 7600 which had 8 pixel pipelines.The other extremely rare card was the Go 7600GT only found in certain Sony Vaios. Those had full 12 pixel pipelines similar to the desktop card and performed similar to the 8600M GT.

 

Yeah my vostro 1700 never goes past mid-low 60s while gaming. I have seen it hit 70 once and it was while playing with it on my lap. So yeah the 17in chassis helps ALOT with heat.

 

I miss my vostro 1700

 

Vostros in general are beasts when it comes to heat dissipation. My Vostro 1500 w/ 8600M GT never went higher than like 74°.

 

My stock 8600m GT doesn't see anything higher than 65 degrees.

 

well not any more, the newer vostros like the one i have have terrible cooling systems, load temps are around 80c and idle around 60c

 

I think you need to read on laptops more...

 

In my local language forums we have threads about laptop companies like in this forum and there have been researches what show that companies like MSI, Clevo, Asus, Acme and so on build laptops with barebone components, which are very low quality when compared to others.

I have used around ~8 diffrent brands myself, about everyone in my college has a laptop, I know alot of people who use laptops/netbooks, I have fixed them and so I don't need to read about how some people whine and some people praise their laptops in this forum - it's all about the experience and knowledge. Think about it sometimes, why does one company offer a laptop with some specs at one price and the other company offers a laptop with the same specs, but the price is almost twice as much? It's because of the components and in some cases, the brands well known name.

Good : Sony, Apple, Lenovo, HP Elitebooks, Dell Latitude and XPS.
Normal : Fujitsu Siemens Lifebooks, Dell Vostro, Studio, Voodoo, IBM, Samsung, Toshiba, Alienware.
Low : HP Pavilions, Lenovo 3000 series, Dell Inspirions, Gateway, Clevo/Sager, Acme, Acer, MSI.

I've noticed only people who's laptop is qualified as "low brand" have something to say about this matter. Feeling butthurt?

 

This should really be in another thread, but I think there is a language problem here. A barebone notebook (also known as a "whitebook") does not tell you anything about quality. It's just a term for a notebook that is still missing most of its components (e.g. processor, ram, etc.). They are not limited to the four companies you listed above -- practically every notebook starts out as a barebone and has the removable components added to it later on.

You also have to understand that Apple, Dell, HP, Toshiba and many others don't actually design or manufacture their own notebooks. They outsource this to others, mostly to Taiwanese companies like Quanta and Compal. Asus, MSI, Clevo, Lenovo and a few others actually design their own machines and sell them directly to end users (though Asus also does it for others).

The price is twice as much for exactly the same reason that the price of the same exact RAM (down to the part number!) can be 4 times as much at Best Buy when compared to Amazon: the people who're charging you absurd prices are counting on people to either not know any better (how many have heard of Clevo as opposed to Dell?) or think that there is something wrong with the lower priced product.

 

Acer has really come around in terms of their build quality and style - ever taken a good look at a Gemstone Blue notebook like the Aspire 6935G?

But in regards to the 8600M GT, I agree that it's one of Nvidia's best mid-range cards in the notebook market. So good in fact, they used it TWICE - once as the 8600M GT, and again as the 9500M GS. And mine, despite being OC'd to the degree you see here is rock-solid stable after 70 mins of ATiTool stressing and haven't gone above 77 degrees temp.

 

Refer to these links:

Asus pulps Apple in hardware reliability survey

PC Reliability: Apple Falls; Asus & Lenovo Gain

Reference goes to Red_Dragon for finding the articles.

Also note, ASUS produces components for other manufacturers, including:

Sony (PlayStation 2)
Apple Inc. (iPod, iPod Shuffle, MacBook)
Alienware
Falcon Northwest
Palm, Inc.
HP