GeForce 8600M GT 256 vs 512?

I've been looking at laptops, and looking specifically for the GeForce 8600M GT because it looks like good card and the price seems right. However I've been seeing two models of the same card, one is 512mb and the other is 256 mb.
However, I only ever see the 512 in a 17", while the 256 is always in 15.4".

I'm wondering what the difference is and whether the performance will be better on the 17". Heres a site with a couple laptops that have the two different models.

http://www.ibuypower.com/mall/notebook.asp

Thanks for any assistance!

 

There are actually four different versions of the card, and all should be available in 15.4" and 17" machines. In order of lowest to highest performance, they are:
-256mb DDR2 memory
-512mb DDR2 memory
-256mb GDDR3 memory
-512mb GDDR3 memory (not sure if this one is available for purchase quite yet)

The performance of the DDR2 models will be 20-30% worse than that of the GDDR3 models. The actual amount of video ram makes very little difference right now.

As a side note, I'm not sure I would necessarily buy from that website.

 

How would I be able to find out what model of the GT is being used then? There doesn't seem to be a place on their site that says

 

Both of their 15.4" models use DDR2 vram, though the C90s would be upgradeable in the future. I don't know about the 17" models, you'd have to find out what notebooks they're based off of.

If you're looking for a new notebook, I highly suggest you post a FAQ in the What Notebook Should I Buy section.

 

Upgradable in the future eh? How would that work.
Thanks for the advice btw.

 

The Asus C90s has a standard MXM-II graphics card slot, which makes it upgradeable. Asus has said it plans to release 4 graphics cards specifically for this machine, and as long as nVidia continues to back MXM, there's a good bet you'll be able to upgrade to a 9600 (or whatever) in a couple of years. The C90s also uses desktop processors, although it's limited at 3GB RAM.

 

What do you think about the 128mb GDDR3? Where would that fit in on the scale? The 14" Thinkpad T61p has the Quadro 570m with 128mb GDDR3, which, I believe, is equivalent to the 8600gt.
Do you have to flash the 570 to get it to game like an 8600?

 

It's probably a better idea to be worried about the difference between GDDR3 and DDR2 than 256MB and 512MB. The 8600M GT really isn't powerful enough to use all of 512MB so it won't really make a big difference performance wise over 256MB.

 

No, you don't have to do any flashing. You merely have to install the nvidia Geforce drivers (with a modified installation file, so that it will work). You can see benchmarks on the 128mb GDDR3 version, since it comes in the MBP. It should perform very similarly to the 256mb GDDR3 version, and better than all of the DDR2 versions. 128mb dedicated should be fine for all games in the near future, I really wouldn't worry about the amount of VRAM at all.

 

to put the vram into context the 128mb gddr3 in the mbp gets about 3000 3dmark06 and 512mb ddr2 gets around 2900. so the difference is quite marginal. but the gddr3 256mb version gets around 3400-3500. but theses are synthetic so have a look around for some in game benches

 

Zepto do a 15.4" laptop with the 512mb 8600M GT

 

512mb is also useful if you want to turn texture quality to ultra high settings, like you can in doom 3

 

Zepto do a 14'' laptop with 8600GT...

 

I get 3400 with the GDDR2 512...

 

So do I with the GDDR2, got today 3467 in 3DMark06(got the free version, dont know what resolution)
I dont belive that the ddr3 gets 30% more, no way.. mabey 5-8% MAX, in preformance boost...

 

the default is 1280x1024, and seeing neither of your displays can go that high it defaults itself down to 1024x768 or something like that, thats why you are getting such high scores. to get an accurate score you'll either need to attach an external monitor that can display 1280x1024 or run it at 1440x900 which gives nearly the same score as 1280x1024, i think 1440x900 is about 1.1% higher than the 1280x1024 score.

 

Looked up my res in 3dmark06.. its 1280x800 for my laptop...
where do you get the nummber 1.1% ???
If 1440x900 and 1280x1024 is 1.1% between then,
my 1280x800 vs 1280x1024(that most have) is less then 1.1% between them???

 

1440x900 is 1,296,000 pixels and 1280x1024 is 1,310,720 so the difference is 1.1% less pixels for 1440x900

 

I have a 8600m GT GDDR2 256MB card and on custom settings i did 3589 in 3dmark06.

Since the card is very underclocked i have customized the clockspeeds to 600/475 and now i do 4200 with no extra heat production.

The 512mb version of the 8600m GT is for higher resolutions but on my notebook i dont need it.. I like to be able to read on it and dont want to look with an magnifying glass at my screen.. And when i use my HDMI output the 256mb is really enough to get nice and smooth video.

 

^^thats where the 1.1% comes from im just saying that if you cant support 1280x1024 you should use 1440x900 because it'll give you a good comparison to what others are getting. i wouldnt mind seeing what 1440x900 scores you're getting.

i totally agree with you, i have been using a 15.4" 1680x1050, and i think it is horrid, ugly, disgusting i dont know what to say i think 1440x900 is the sweet spot, and this is coming from someone who uses their notebook for a lot of design work as well.

 

No 1280x800.. Besides the card itselfs supports higher resolutions than that. and the performance will equally rise with the 512mb version.. The difference is is, that when u go higher with the res than a 256mb can support the 512mb can still handle it.. But who wants to get higher on a laptop than that.. Maybe when u game on a plasme with a 1.5m screen but that exceptional.

 

Technically more VRAM helps for higher resolutions, but I'm pretty sure that 256MB is sufficient for gaming all the way up to 1280x1024 or 1440x900. 512MB would help in higher resolutions than those, but I think you would find that the GPU itself would start becoming the bottleneck rather than the amount of VRAM you have.

Doom3 is a valid use for 512MB in that it requires that much for Ultra-High settings. However, I believe the only real difference is that Ultra-High uses uncompressed textures so you need that much since it's flooding the RAM. I'm not sure there is much visual difference between uncompressed and the light compression used in High settings.

In terms of 3DMark scores, beyond the resolution issue, I should warn people that 3DMark06 is designed for 256MB of VRAM so you can view that as fairly or unfairly differentiating between the 128MB 8600M GT and the 256MB 8600M GT. By the same token, at identical clock speeds, there shouldn't be much difference between the 256MB 8600GT and the 512MB 8600GT since 3DMark06 wouldn't use the extra VRAM. 3DMark05 is designed to use 128MB of VRAM.