Geforce 8600M GT vs. Ati mobility fire gl v5250

Can somebody tell me whether the Nvidia Geforce 8600M GT with 256mb video card is better than the Ati Mobility fire GL v5250 with 256mb video card?

Basically i'm considering purchasing a new laptop and graphics are important. I'm considering the new apple macbook pro (released june 5th, 2007), the lenovo thinkpad t60p, or the sony vgn-fz190. Any comments or suggestions on these laptops would be appreciated as well. Thanks!

 

I'd pick a Geforce 8600M GT that's not in an apple for best gaming performance. BTW, Geforce 8600M GT is better, but in an apple it's worse than it would be in a "normal" windows PC.

 

if you dont want gaming, get a mac... otherwhise get the nvidia

 

Umm, once you boot into Windows it isn't any worse than it would be in a "normal" PC. Not sure what your point is. The only issue might be underclocking do to the 1" thick chassis, but it seems like if there is any underclocking, it is minimal (over on MacRumors someone ran 3DMark05 on the model with the 128MB VRAM 8600M GT, and it scored 7200, which compares pretty favorably to the 7700 that the 8600M GT with 256MB VRAM got in the Asus G1S).

But all early indications are that it is working just fine with Windows games (the person who has been posting results has tested it out so far with C&C3 Tiberium Wars and Oblivion, and gotten it to run smoothly).

-Zadillo

 

The early reports are that even the 128MB 8600M GT in the base model MBP is doing quite well (great performance in Oblivion and C&C3, 7200 in 3DMark05). I suspect the higher end MBP with the 256MB of VRAM would do even better still.

I'm not sure why you would say only get the Mac if you don't want gaming.

 

The Mobility Fire GL v5250 is based on the X1600..... the 8600M GT in the MBP will be significantly more powerful than that (the X1600 is essentially what was in the previous MBP).

-Zadillo

 

Just a small correction but actually the V5250 is based on the MR X1700; the V5200 is based on the X1600. No matter, they both have the same performance.

If you are gaming no doubt go for the Nvidia.

 

Ahh, sorry, right.

I've read also that the Fire GL's aren't really suited for gaming anyway (i.e. they wouldn't even be as good as an actual X1600/X1700), I guess due to different drivers, etc. Not sure if the same is true for NV Quadros compared to their GeForce counterparts.

 

Ok, sounds like the 8600M GT is the winner. Would you say the Geforce 8400M GT is better than the Fire GL V5250?

 

Good question, I haven't seen as much about it performance wise. I recall reading that the 8400M is supposed to be on par performance with with the GeForce Go 7600; if that is the case, it would probably be a bit better than the Fire GL V5250, and more optimized for games for that matter. Probably better NVidia driver support as well.

 

The T61p is just around the corner with a FX 570M - a 8600M derivative. It would be a better comparison instead of the FireGL V5250.

Although, it appears you're leaning towards gaming, in which case the 8600M GT will be the clear winner regardless (OS issues notwithstanding).

 

The 8600m-GT is by far the best for gaming, oh and do not get a mac if you plan on gaming. Don't listen to what people say, if you want a computer and plan on playing new games on it than you won't want to deal with the hassles of getting a mac. Everyone will tell you that a mac can run windows just fine, but there's the hassle of dual booting, DOS BS, and dealing with hardware that was NOT meant to run on both windows & mac.

If you want a gaming laptop, then buy a gaming laptop, not something that was meant for boring people who don't know why they even have a GPU in thier pc.

Another thing is that you should never under any cicumstances buy a Quadro or FireGL laptop unless you plan on doing Real-time OpenGL work, like creating a 3D animation.


Stick with the windows based 8600m-GT laptop. Steer far away from fireGL cards, and the 8600m-GS. For your own good, make darn shure your getting an 8600m-GT or better!

 

What is the "hassle" of dual-booting? When you boot up you choose which OS you want to boot into, Windows or OS X. It's one of the simplest processes out there.

What do you mean about the hassle of dealing with hardware that was not meant to run on Windows and Mac?

I'm not saying I disagree with you; if your primary purpose is gaming, certainly a dedicated gaming laptop makes sense.

But there is no reason someone can't buy a MBP with an 8600M GT and do just fine with gaming (as has already been seen).

Also, MBP's are meant for "boring people" who don't even know why their machine has a GPU? Give me a break.

-Zadillo

 

ultimately zadillo is right- in fact, its even simpler than zadillo suggests to use a mac as a gaming pc. you DONT have to choose your OS on every boot- you only have to pick your operating system if you want to change from default.

in both windows and osx you can select which operating system to boot into by default in the control panel / boot camp preferences

and you can override that by holding the apple key during the boot- at which point you choose an OS.

its VERY simple. the hardware is exactly the same. it is meant to run windows. the only reason you even need boot camp is because of the mbp having EFI (updated BIOS) that windows doesnt support yet. and supposedly windows vista will end up supporting EFI in the future. and NONE of that matters after the boot has taken place.

i've been using pc's and pc laptops for 12 years. i plan to buy a new mbp today!

 

I'm actually more worried about drivers and support for 64-bit vista under bootcamp.
BTW, when using bootcamp, is there any reason whatsoever to use Business or Ultimate editions of Vista?
For example, how would the bitlocker drive encryption work, if at all?

 

So far Apple has been fairly good about Boot Camp supporting, updating drivers to support new hardware even in the current beta form.

Although it seems like plenty of people have been able to use third party drivers as well without any problems (which a lot of people are doing now with the new MBP's, since Boot Camp hasn't been updated yet). Apple isn't using any really freaky bizarre hardware at this point, so it seems like in most cases you can use the same drivers you would as if it were the same hardware in any other PC notebook.

I'm not clear on how the bitlocker stuff works, but I don't technically see why it wouldn't work..... once you boot into Windows using Boot Camp, it's still the full OS, and has full access to the hardware.

 

I'm not really sure how it works either. Does the MBP have TPM?
And beyond that, what I'm wondering is..is there any point? Sure, it may lock someone out of Windows booting up, but then couldn't they just boot up using OSX and get into the files anyway?

Looking at this chart, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx, it appears that BitLocker is the only advantage having Ultimate would have over Home Premium, that I couldn't already get elsewhere from OSX itself, or 3rd party software.

 

I think Ultimate would also give you the shadow backup stuff that is otherwise only in Vista Business.

According to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker_Drive_Encryption

There are three BitLocker modes; the first two require a TPM module (which as far as I know, the MBP does not have), and the third does not, letting you use a USB key instead.

It sounds like this third mode could work if you needed it.

I think if you did use this, the encrypted data wouldn't be accessible from OS X.

On the OS X side there is the "FileVault" feature which lets you encrypt your Home folder (and automatically encrypts and decrypts stuff).

I'm mainly just guessing though, haven't heard much about people using the BitLocker stuff with a Boot Camp Windows partition or not.

 

Heh. This is one feature I'd turn off anyway. The last thing I need is for Windows to be writing to my HDD nonstop, especially if I'm dling torrents in large blocks.

 

8600GT vs v5250 is apples to oranges.

8600GT is a mainstream consumer card meant for gaming. It is significantly newer than the v5250.

v5250 is a business card BASED ON the X1700. The X1700 is older at this point and is inferior to the 8600GT. Business graphics cards for gaming see at least a 10-15% performance hit.


Go for the 8600GT. The v5250 is going to be replaced with the v5600 very soon anyways (X2600-based).

 

perhaps the perfomance is the same but with a 1inch thick chasis, how long can a mbp last after a good deal of gaming?
and early indications say theres a lack of xp drivers.

 

Good question; generally the fans will kick in to keep things running at least within acceptable levels.

As for XP drivers, I know Apple just released Boot Camp 1.3 with updated drivers. Not sure if some components though are only Vista drivers though.

-Zadillo

 

Isn't apple overpriced, though?

 

Not really so much, no.

I'd argue that the current MacBook Pro is actually very competitively priced; especially considering it is also so thin and light (1" thin, 5.4 pounds) compared to similarly spec'd machines.

Not saying there aren't cheaper options, but when comparitively configured, the MacBook Pro price (both the $1999 and $2499 models) are pretty fair.

-Zadillo

 

Without a doubt go with the macbook. I have owned several macs and I can not begin to tell you how happy I have been with them. I am going to buy the newest version tomorrow.

To give you an idea of not only how great the hardware and software is check out the site my 10 year old daughter made while we were on vacation at disney world this past week http://web.mac.com/iusandman/

This was done with a macbook (not even macbook pro) and iweb

The service is incredible. Whenver I've had a problem with any hardware Apple has been great about turn-around times.

I was all windoz up until a few years ago. I'll never look back.

Good luck. I'm sure whatever you get you'll love.

Cheers

 

If you're a serious mobile gamer, you're going to buy a new laptop at least every 2-3 years, right? You certainly won't wear out an MBP in 3 years. Heck, it'll still be under AppleCare the whole time.

MBP Santa Rosa drivers for Windows came out on the 7th. They work fine.

When I want to game, I option-boot into XP (BTW, option-boot is much faster under EFI than it was on PPC). When I want to work, I boot OSX, and I can still use XP via Parallels if I need it. Literally the best of both worlds.

Regarding prices: the key to remember is that Apple doesn't sell low-end Macs. Compared to other similarly equipped brand name PCs, they're priced quite well. But if you don't need all the bells & whistles (or OS X), then you'd pay less for a stripped down white box.

Regarding the title of this thread: anyone considering Fire GL or Quadro GPUs for gaming clearly has way too many dollars and not nearly enough sense.

 

To be fair, the Mac mini is technically a "low end" Mac (albeit in a small form factor).

The only thing Apple doesn't do, particularly, is sell things like $499 laptops with a Celeron M, for example.

 

The Macbook is fairly low end as well, or at least low-mainstream (Definitly not a premium laptop like the Macbook Pro) and it's quite cheap for a 13.3" laptop (if a bit heavy).

 

definitely the 8600m GT. It has better performance as well as dx10 compatibility. Plus, the fire gl is a workstation-class card designed for 3D modeling and such, not gaming.