FX 1600M vs 7950 GTX vs 8700M GT, etc.

I'm in the market for a mobile workstation for engineering use. Dell just announced their M6300 which replaces the M90. The M90 was available with the FX 1500M, FX 2500M or FX 3500M, the M6300 uses the FX 1600M. Based on the numbering, it looks like the FX 1600M is meant to fall between the FX 1500M and the FX 2500M, but the specs suggest that the performance is not as good as the FX 1500M! see:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx_go.html

Would an FX 2500M outperform an FX 1600M?

Could anyone shed a bit more light on this? Any good reason that Dell would limit the choice to only one GPU?

Other laptops in the same class (17", T7300/T7500 processor, etc.) use either the 7900/7950 GTX or the 8600/8700M GT. I've been attempting to compare the specs of these 3 families, but I'm having difficulties seeing a clear advantage to one over the other. This computer is not "intended" for gaming, but I'd like it to support some graphics applications.

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

 

The FX2500m which is equivalent to the 7900GTX should be higher performing than the FX1600M. The FX1600M in turn is comparable to the 8700M GT. Confused yet? And the 7950GTX outperforms all of the above.

Only the FX1600M and 8700M GT are DX10 , rest are DX9.
Also the difference in said performance is more pronounced at WSXGA+ and above ie at 1680X1050 and above. So if you are running at say 1280x800 the cards are actually quite close performance wise.

 

Yep, you are definitely confused... that is obvious.

The workstation cards offload some of the work from the CPU, so basically any of them will significantly outperform the Go 7950 GTX or any other gaming card in workstation benchmarks/applications, and by significantly I mean between 2-5 times or more depending on the applications.

Now, any of the workstation cards you mentioned would be fine for engineering use since most of the workstation applications are CPU limited not GPU in contrast to games. And, the difference between the high-end Quadros would be seen only in some high-end Visualization applications; otherwise, the CPU is the primary determining factor of the rendering speed.

As for the gaming performance, it will be the same as of their gaming counterpart...

Out of curiosity, why would you choose an ugly, bulky and heavy M6300 over the HP 8710w...?

 

Is it possible to install a 8700 GT with the Quadro FX 1600M drivers in some way? I need actually a quadro card and I would like to get the new XPS (if I like it and I suppose it will come only with the 8700)...

 

Dreamer - actually the HP 8710w is on my candidate list - I'm leaning toward it due to the screen res (1680 x 1050), I'm thinking 1920 x 1200 is a bit too fine for 17" for me - wish it came with 160GB drive. Are you familiar with with laptop. Any quirkiness worth mentioning?

As for the M6300 - I was intrigued by the reviews that I have read on the M90 (durability, etc.) and was hopeful that the M6300 would be a bit 'more" than it is.

I'm also considering the Sager NP5790 (w/7950 GTX) - which is why I'm trying to distill the graphic card specs.

Thanks for the info!

 

In Berlin you can configure the HP the way you want... probably you will find a place in your country that can offer the same...
I really wonder if it is actually loud... I already sent the M 5790RU back because it was terribly noisy...

 

I can't help you with the resolution since it's a personal preference but a 17" WUXGA screen is fine to me. As for the notebook, it's new so besides the review I can't tell you anything more... but I used the pevious version and never had any problems with it. Also, it was built like a tank to my mind.

Don't get me wrong it's fine notebook, I just don't like that it's too thick and heavy even for 17" and the design, plus the keyboard doesn't have a numpad, but these things may not bother you.

Otherwise, both of them would do...