8600m GT DDR3 v.s. Saphire ATI RADEOM 9600

Hi folks, I hate asking such a basic question.

I'm moving overseas, and my home PC is ancient.

I'm looking to get a DELL XPS 1530. equipped with the 8600m GT DDR3.

How will it compare to my old ATI Radeon 9600?

I'm hoping equal or better.

Will a 8600m GT DDR3 plug into a 19" monitor, A OK, and play games like WoW, TF2 etc. alright, and at max settings? Resolution of 1280 x 1024 is what I mean.

Hope I make sense.

 

It will be much much better. You will be just fine with games like WoW and TF2 max settings. BTW you have a 19" monitor with 1920x1024 resolution? I've never heard of such a res before, sure you don't mean 1900x1200?

 

The 8600M GT will beat the 9600 hands-down without a question, although it will struggle playing games at WUXGA resolution at max settings.

 

19'' is 1280x1024 or 1440x900

 

Oh, how embarressing. I meant to say 1280 x 1024. I edited the orignal post to reflect this.

My bad. So I'm guessing it's safe to say the 8600m GT DDR3 will have NO issues with my 19" monitor.

I'm only grabbing the 15.4" WXGA+, 1440 x 900, for the laptop.

 

Then yes, the 8600M GT GDDR3 should have absolutely no trouble playing those games at high settings.

 

the 8600m gt will play tf2 and wow at 1280x1024 at max settings, with a good amount of anisotropic filtering and anti aliasing. try 2-4x aa and 8x af

 

Great!

I'm pretty stoked now.

My old system is a P4 3GHZ machine, with 2 GB's of RAM (4, 512 MB generic RAM) and the 9600 I mentioned already.

This is going to be quite an upgrade.

 

You won't be dissapointed

Be sure to give us some feedback after the upgrade !

 

Wow. That 9600 lasted this long? LOL. I ditched my 9600 (and 9800) years ago.

That 8600M GT is going to smoke your old desktop. You won't be dissapointed.

 

I can't believe you had to ask - it's like asking is this new ferrari at least as good as my bicycle?

 

=( I've been out of the market that long. Imagine a cave man coming out of cryo freeze, and into our world now. That's how I feel.

I was going to go ahead and buy a tricked out desktop. 8800 GT, 4 GBs of Ram, 3.0 GHZ Penryn, overclocked to 4.0 GHZ yaddi yaddi yadda.

Didn't think it would be good for my health, my studies, or if I would be able to handle myself when I got it.

Conservative upgrade this time, save the major upgrade for when I graduate .

 

The Radeon 9600 is a solid card, and my old PRO is in the hands of a light gamer still getting full-time duty.

The main things is that now you will have access to some games that were restricted from you (without moding), and those SM3.0-only titles will be playable on the GF8600, as will any future DX10-only titles too (although gameplay will likely be very slow by that point [probably similar to R9600 in Crysis by the looks of things]). You get both a performance and feature boost.

You should enjoy it, plus you get alot of other nice little features that you can explore old games with like turning on HDR in FartCry, etc.

 

Mine will still be serving duty as well, and you're right, it has been a very solid card. I'm giving it to my GF, a long with the rest of my gutted parts, so she can play WoW and a few other games as well.

Not worried about Crysis, but I am worried about Fallout 3 (if it doesn't suck). Not getting my hopes up to be honest.

This laptop as I said, is more to tied me over until I graduate, at which point, I hope to buy a new desktop anyway.

 

8600 GT is around 6 or 7 times faster than the 9600 Pro, according to benchmarks

 

I've heard from a friend that his 8600M GT performs around the same as his old 9800Pro in games that require no more than SM2 (FEAR, COD2, etc.)... But I have no idea how a 9600 measures up to a 9800Pro (apart from the fact that it's inferior)... so take that as you will.

Of course... The 8600M GT whoop any of the older cards hands down when it comes to SM3 and DX10... However, I don't think you'll be playing any SM3/DX10 games at 1280 x 1024 with MAX settings with a 8600M GT .

 

Your friend is wrong - The 8600GT stomps the 9800 in any game. The 9800 is much better then the 9600, an in turn, the 8600GT is hugely superior to the 9800 - even the 7600GT is faster.