Nvidia 7950 GTX Go or dual 8600M GT SLI?

Nvidia 7950 GTX Go or dual 8600M GT in SLI? Which do you think will be better from a strictly gaming point of view? I am not really sure, especially since SLI isn't perfect and doesn't double the performance of a single card. I'm just kind of torn, and was hoping maybe I could get some input. Thanks!

~Scott

 

2 8700M is SLI

 

from those two, I'd go with dual 8600's. u'll need dx10 support soon enough, and i think 2 8600's would out power single 7950. toshiba offers dual 8600's on one of their laptops....search for a review and then make a conclusion.

 

their mem bandwidth would equal one 7950gtx, so they would be pretty equal i think, leaning more towards the dual 8600gt's

 

Well, Toshiba is what I'm looking at with the 2X 8600M GT SLI's. It does look very appealing, but I'm not super psyched about the low resolution they provide. I looked at some benchmarks but couldn't find any SLI 8600M GT benchmarks. So what I did was I looked at the 8700M in SLI mode, and took the % that the 8700M's gained from grabbing another one in SLI, and then I applied that same % to the 8600's. Not sure how accurate it is at all, but It wound up being slightly better than the 7950 GTX. But I was reading some other posts and it sounded like some people were actually getting REDUCED performance from SLI, which makes no sense to me at all. Maybe I read it wrong but I literally know squat about SLI, soooo I'm pretty impressionable with information on it. I could either upgrade the XPS 1710 I have to a 7950 GTX or I could grab that toshiba with 8600M GT. It'd be nice to have DX10 but I'm not really a fan of the resolution of the toshiba :-(

 

SLi isn't perfect but GeForce 7950 is not DirectX 10 compatible.... So I'd go with 8600GT SLI

 

bump ...

 

it's not capable of running DX10
however, it's compatible with all prior versions of DX

 

My bad.. DirectX 10..... I edited it (I always forget to add "10" since "X" is already there.....)

*when life goes wrong....whistle like an idiot*

 

It all depends on what kind of SLI support the games you play have. If there is no native SLI support, then two 8600M-GT's in SLI are slightly behind a single 8700M-GT and pretty far behind a 7950GTX. If there is good SLI support, then two 8600M-GT's in SLI are up to 50% faster than a single 8700M-GT, so they could potentially be faster than a single 7950GTX. On average though, 8600M-GT's in SLI will most likely be behind a 7950GTX in performance at higher resolutions.

 

can anyone else confirm what odin is saying?

 

The Dual SLI 8600M GT's for sure. Even if it was a single card, the 8600M is better than the 7950, then with SLI, definetly. Direct X 10, also. You will be more happy with that. - -Hope i could help

 

but as a single card, the 8600M is much much worse than the 7950 GTX...

 

That couldn't be more wrong. I will admit, the 8600M GT is a good card but it's nowhere near as powerful as the 7950GTX (except for shading, is that it?), I know this isn't exactly a good benchmark, but look at 3dmark 05/06.

Single Card Performance Comparison
Card: 3dmark05/3dmark06
8600M GT: ~6000/~3000
7950GTX: ~10000/~5000

Dual 8600M GT extrapolation (best case scenario): ~12000/~6000

So the 7950GTX is about 33% more powerful than the 8600M GT in single card solutions. So, if the game is coded nicely to work with SLI, then the 8600's should beat out the 7950 by 10-20%

Based on this, I'd go for the SLI 8600's due to the fact that they *can* outperform a 7950, plus the bonus of DX10.

 

Are games usually coded to work with SLI?

 

If you want to play at higher resolutions and only the 7950 GTX laptop has the resolution you want, I'd go for that one. The 7950 GTX is your best bet for playing at higher resolutions anyway.

 

man, i beg u...never say such a thing again, please. it is quite misleading to people who don't know jack crap about vid. cards. a newcomer might have read ur message(assuming u knew what u were talking about ) and gone ahead and bought a laptop that would not satisfy him/her.

 

i agree with big V, know what your talking about before you tell someone else, it spreads so much confusion around this forum and we get stupid threads asking things like 8700gt vs 7950gtx or 8600 vs 8700gt when clearly there are stickies that can be read on either one!