8600m GT

I'm looking at the Dell 1520 and Sager 2090. The Dell has a 256mb 8600m GT while the Sager says it has a 512mb 8600GT. What is the difference between these cards? It looks almost like the Sager has a desktop card.

 

The 512MB card is the same as the 256MB...same core, different amount of memory...and it is nothing but a marketing scam. They perform about the same as the core of the card can only really use about 256MB of memory effectively anyway.

 

Since Compal doesn't do any marketing I wouldn't call it that, but you're correct in the fact that with current games it performs the same, the Dell and IFL90 both benchmarked nearly the same as well at stock settings.

 

What really matters is the type of memory the card has, ddr2 or ddr3. The dell has ddr2 and i believe the compal has ddr2 also, so the compal will perform slightly better.

 

I think it's obvious that more is always better than less, even if it only slight increase in performance,"It's an increase". However by default both company's ship there 8600mgt with ddr2, but Dell offers gddr3 on there 256 model (If you order it custom only !!) And it smokes the sager's 512 model.

This is only viable for Vista, using XP both the sager and compl w/ddr2 are dead-even.

*As a side note Asus G1s comes with the ddr3 256 model and it's smoking...

COM

 

the apple MBP now has an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM. how does this compare with the 7950GXT with 512MB? I'm debating whether to wait for the leopard OS X release in october vs. just getting a clevo m570RU (sager 5790) now. It'll be a long while before the 8800 series come out anyhow and I need a lappie ina few months. appreciate your comments and TIA.

 

I think you should also consider which OS would be better for you, as they both have their advantages and disadvantages, but the 7950 gtx definitely performs better than the 8600 gt, its just the 8600 can support dx10 whereas the 7950gtx cant. if it were up to me though, id go with 7950gtx, because by the time a lot of dx10 games are out and standard, nvidia will probably have 9 series, which probably will perform better than the 8 series. until then, you can have the fastest dx9 card in town =). but thats just me

 

But Dell offeres GDDR3 on their 256 model?!
whats the dell 256 model??

edit: how... i read wrong...lol gesh.

 

Dell uses lower clocked gddr2 memory in their 1520 laptops. The 1520 core and memory clocks are considerably lower then the MBP, G1s clocks (both use gddr3)

 

According to Nvidia, the 8700m is their top performing card (read that as meaning it's better than the 7950).

And given the 8700m is already out in some Toshiba notebooks, I expect the 8800m very soon. Probably by summer's end it will be announced.

 

will the memory in the 516mb 8600gt come into better play?
like later down the road for future games with newer better drivers

 

How do you custom order a DDR3 Geforce 8600GT from dell? Do you call? Are you sure the phone monkeys will know what to do? Cause I don't trust them. They use wikipedia pages for reference...

 

yeah i dont think you will be able to. The guy i talked to on the phone thought i was referring to ram the entire time when i was talking about GDDR3.

 

You can NOT get ddr3 from dell, end of story. You have to go somewhere else if you want ddr3

 

what are the laptops that offer the gddr3 8600gt besides the g1s? and are there any 512 mb gddr3 8600gt cards?

 

No other laptops other than asus g1s with the possible exception of the zepto znote. No 512MB 8600GT that I've seen has GDDR3 so far. The asus c90s looked like it might have it but it turned out to be downclocked.

 

apple macbook pro has the gddr3 card also.

 

But the Macbook Pro only has the 128 or 256 MB version of the 8600M GT. They don't offer the 512 MB version of it on either 15.4" model, or even the 17" model.

 

But is there any GDDR3 versions that come in 512MB sizes since osso002 said there wasn't? I haven't bother to look so I wouldn't know. It's not that relevent anyways since the 8600M GT really doesn't have the power to take advantage of more than 256MB of VRAM. I've mentioned it before for the Go 7700, but tests have shown that even a desktop 7950GT, which is more powerful than even the 8700M GT, doesn't show much performance difference between the 256MB and 512MB versions. Yes, future games and super-high resolutions will start to show benefits, but the 8600M GT would have trouble maintaining minimum frame rates to really matter. 512MB is nice to have, but it's hardly a deal breaker over 256MB, which clock speed being most important.

 

Is it possible to get a GS1 with GDDR3 for only 1600$?

 

g1s go for around 1800/1900$ starting...