From 8800gtx to 9800gtx/280gtx. Is it worth?

Good Morning all,
Please help me deciding: I have the big dell in my sig (13030 3dmark with vista, cpu 3,0mhz, gpu stock) but I am follen in love with sager/clevo (because of you guys-).

My question is: If I had to buy a new laptop today how much performance would I gain going for a quad and a gpu 280gtx/9800gtx sli?

My impression is that I need to wait at least until the sli 280 comes out to have a real improvement. Is it right?
What do you think guys?

Afterall my sli 8800gtx plus the x9000 gives me still great numbers, isn't it?

Any advice is highly appriciated.

 

i dont think you would notice much of a difference - i think the 280 will only score 14k - 15k in 3dmark06 - so not much of an improvement over your current setup. i would stick with what you've got and upgrade when you really need to!

good luck!

 

8800M GTX / 9800M GT has 96 shaders

9800M GTX / GTX 260M has 112 shaders

GTX 280M has 128 shaders

so there will be a noticeable performance gain, but IMO probably not very "bang for the buck"

the 8800M GTX (~ 9800M GT) is still a high-end contender in the mobile market.

 

cant buy it 'today' if its not out yet can you

and the answer to your question is "no its not worth it UNLESS you have $2000 just lying around and you REALLY want the best there is, in which case id suggest a 4870x2"

 

for gaming, upgrade the gpu first, then the cpu if you still have enough money. BTW, if you did not know, the GTX 280m is actually cheaper than the 9800m GTX.

 

You're thinking of the GTX 260M, the 280M is more for a single card than a 9800M GTX is at last I checked.

 

No, it's less than the 9800M GTX which is ~$700. The 280 should be about $450

TC, the 280M won't make too much of a difference from the 8800 GTX. I'd wait another gen

 

If I were you Id wait, from those cards its only like a couple thousand 06 marks faster. Its not worth it yet.

Just wait around, maybe larrabee will make it to laptops. I wonder if it will be a good GPU.

 

I'll be taking the plunge on a new notebook in a few more months. It will be replacing my smoking hot ATI X1300. I plan on it increasing my 3DMark scores by 15,000%

 

You can always try and do a slight overclock and that will help and may even get you to close or at the 280M GTX level. I hope this helps. God Bless

 

Take advantage of the GTX280m. The performance gains found by upgrading to that will be very noticeable. I could tell a huge difference when I upgraded my 8800M GTX to the 9800M GTX, and this jump will be bigger than that one.

 

going from the 8800M GTX to 9800M GTX, not worth it.

going from the 8800M GTX to GTX 280M, worth it.

 

Thanks guys...
But Ichime and Emike maybe you did not notice I got 8800gtxSLI.
So do you still think that upgrading to single 280 is worth?

cheers

 

can we just start calling the m280 the m9800GTX+ maybe it would lead to less confusions about it's performance

 

I'll say go for it IF there are games that will go from unplayable to playable at reasonable settings from the upgrade. Else, meh, I'll keep the money and buy couple more games with it.

 

Even the 260M is a worthy upgrade over the 8800M GTX, but neither card alone will be worth giving up 8800s in SLI.

 

I'm not really getting how anyone would throw away their powerful SLI 8800mGTX notebook, and spend thousands more on one with dual GTX280m's Aka Mobile 9800GTX+ for the small upgrade. Over all you'd get what, like 30% performance boost tops. It's not like it's going to make games that are unplayable on your current setup now playable, I'd imagine most games run maxed out over 60fps on your current machine anyway.

 

Ya, Crysis is about the only game you can't max out. I think its all about impressing your friends. Whip out Crysis on a 3GHz quad and sli 280GTX cards at full resolution, full settings, and watch their jaws drop. That really all that matters in the long run anyways.

 

I dont think its worth to upgrade right now. The specs you have are excellent. Its like you have lamborghini gallardo but you want to buy Porsche carrera gt although you wont go on the top speed in either one.

 

is the difference between 8800/9800/280 not that great because they all use the same platform?
was there a huge, or at least a bigger, leap in technology from 7950 to 8800?

 

Not really. Its because the number of shaders.
96 vs 112 vs 128 which is not really a big difference.
8800m was much powerful than 7950 gtx or 87m SLI but that is not really the case while comparing 88,98 and 280m cards.

 

The 8800 cards were MORE than twice as powerful as the 7950 or similar 7 series cards because of a huge architectural change in the card's cores. They moved from static vertex and pixel shaders, to unified shaders. Also the total number of unified shaders on the 8800m GTX compared to the total vertex and pixel shaders combined on the Go 7950 is almost 3x as much.

The problem with the 8800/9800/GTX280 mobile cards is that they are all the same core, with the same ring bus, the only difference is their clock speeds, and the GTX280 has all of it's 128 unified shaders enabled unlike the previous versions that only had between 96-112 enabled.

And if you wanted to "impress" then why not spend 2x less and put 4 HD 4890's in quad crossfire in a desktop..

 

when go you think the next leap (like the one from 7950 to 8800) in laptop graphics is coming?

 

When the desktop GTX core makes it to 40nm, then we'll see a 192 shader mobile card.

 

Preety soon.

 

Worth it?
Yes, if you want bragging rights, but seriously there all excellent cards and with each passing generation you get better performance but the difference is not really that substantial.
BUT
Until someone gets a 280GTX and runs some actual benchmarks to see if it's truly a next gen card.We will have to wait and see to what it is capable of.
Like other people are saying you really wont see "next gen." GPU's until they switch to 40nm chips.