Nvidia 8600M GT Benchmark Review

This is a mini-review of the Nvidia 8600M GT with Benchmarks. Pictures may or may not be added later.

SYSTEM: Dell Inspiron 1520|2.0GHz|WSXGA+|8600M GT 256MB DDR2|2GB RAM|160GB 7200rpm.|Vista 32bit|NVIDIA Forceware 169.28 driver
GAMES: Crysis, Command & Conquer 3, Oblivion, Call of Duty 4, World in Conflict
PROGRAMS: Fraps


3DMark06 Scores (All scores listed below are at 1280 x 1024 except the second one) :

Factory Clocks- 3128
At 600/460- 4125 (1280 x 800)
At 650/512- 4040



Real-World Games (All games are tested at factory clocks) :

Crysis-
Resolution: 1024 x 768
Settings: All High except for Shaders and Shadows on Low
FPS: 20-30 (But occasionally drops down to 10's)



Command & Conquer 3-
Resolution: 1280 x 800
Settings: MAX
FPS: Around 30 (Capped at 30)



Oblivion-
Resolution: 1280 x 800
Settings: HIGH
FPS: 45-60



Call of Duty 4-
Resolution: 1280 x 800
Settings: HIGH
FPS: 50-60

For more Call of Duty 4 Screenshots and Tests, go to http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2931024&postcount=1937.
Thanks to Crash!

World in Conflict-
Resolution: 1280 x 800
Settings: MEDIUM in DirectX 10
FPS: 45-65



Any reader input and benchmarks is appreciated and may be added to this post.

Thanks,
Leon

 

Good review.
Please post pics

 

Pics added for Crysis and Call of Duty 4. I'll see if I can find sometime to do the others.

 

Good review. I have the same system but Vostro 1500. Could you specify some of your settings? For example Oblivion and World in Conflict have many settings that can be varied. Also I guess no AA/AF, is that right?

 

Nice review. The 8600M-GT is a solid midrange card for notebooks and is very popular. You definitely need a card of this caliber to enjoy the visuals of this game - anything lesser like the 8600M-GS and below and you really need to start lowering settings.

 

I think this will be a memorable mobile GPU for years to come. I was floored when the ATI x800m came out...but this little guy has really put things in perspective. Plus, I'd say it is more likely than not that the development work that went into this card resulted in the also praise-worthy 8800GT!

And fairly low power draw too!

 

Nope, I never use any AA/AF. Oblivion, I just set everything to max except grass. Thanks Chaz and StormEffect, I'll also add more games and pictures later.

Also, does anyone know how to align the pictures side by side with a space between them?

^^^
Never mind, figured it out.

 

Nice review, kinda short but it's good.

I personally got a little better succsess with Crysis btw.
(1200x800) everything high, shadows low, shaders low. [Around 20~40 fps]
But if you will lower some other settings and put shaders to med, you'll get much nicer picture with around : 18~35 fps.

 

I think the main reason that you have more success with Crysis is because:
A) You're running Win XP Pro.
B) I'm on stock clocks.
C) I'm on DirectX 10.

 

Oh..o.o
Right.

Didn't notice the Vista..
My bad. : D

 

With some overclocking you can achieve much better results.

 

Yep, but I can only get up to 600/460 stable. Also, what settings should I turn down in Crysis and what settings should I turn up? I turned up shaders to medium and took a small hit in performance, but it looked so much better.

I will soon add Call of Duty 2, Bioshock, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, and GRAW2 to my review.

 

Added Oblivion Pics too.

 

Added WIC screenshots.

 

You mean Direct X 9 as Vista can only use Direct x 10. Good set up though. I also have the vostro 1500...Mine is a 1.4 dual core. Same video card. It supposed to be 256 megs. But when I check my internal system and also from systemrequirements lab it says it's 512 and also running xp. When I get some more money I plan on upgrading the processor.

 

Oh, actually I mean DirectX 10, but it can be overridden to use DirectX 9. Yep, it is 256 MB, not 512 MB. The readings are wrong.

 

Nice mini-review! Now I have somewhere to link to when everybody asks about the 8600m GT performance

BTW I posted some COD4 benchmarks @ 1440x900 with my overclocked 8600m GT here if you'd like to link or include them.

 

But if your running XP only how can you have direct x 10. It's not possible. You have to have vista for that. There was a rumor that the next sp update for XP will allow for direct x 10 but again this is a rumor.

Are you saying your readings were wrong on the amount of ram or mine?

 

Wait... This is really confusing. You said that... To clear this up, I'm running Vista with Crysis on DirectX 9.

 

Suggestion: Maybe include a GPU-Z screenshot?

 

Ooops sorry. After re reading this from the beginning you were pointing out that someone had better results by having xp and not you. My apologies. But on the video card. Does your system and everything else show 256? Cause mine is showing 512. Just trying to see since we almost have the same set up.

 

Added some other stuff...

 

Which driver are you using?

(Also, your card is DDR2 right?)

 

I'm using the 169.28 drivers, as stated on the top of my review, and yes, it is DDR2, just like any other Dell Inspiron 1520.

Yep, mine's showing 512 MB too. It's a misreading.

 

8600m gt ddr2 with the 169.09 driver updates I can run CS:Source at max, with an fps between 50-70 in combat, near 100 when I'm just walking around.
(AA and AF at max as well)

The only thing I noticed was unless I change the resolution, lowering the video settings doesn't make much difference on the fps.

 

Nice, I played CS:S on my 1520 as well. I OC'd my 8600gt to 600/500 and noticed a substantial increase in fps.

 

maxed, 2xaa 4xaf, 1440x900, 114 FPS in the stress test.

 

Same here, All maxed out i'm getting an average FPS of 130-150. The 169.09 driver is great. I have not yet OC it, idk if i should or not, probably bets to leave it alone.

 

wish i got a GT instead of a GS :'(

i got almost maxed settings, but i do believe AF is on trilinear and im only getting ~60fps (about the refresh rate of my monitor so its no big deal )

im using the 169.28 drivers though, and i just finished downloading the 169.61 driver, so ill be giving that a go tonight

 

8800GTS using stock Gateway drivers runs everything like butter. I only see very slight stuttering when I play a 32 player bot match, and that is probably due to the CPU in my gateway more than anything.

 

What resolution are you running this at?

 

@ fittser

the newest 169 series drivers are for quadro cards. they wont be the best for gaming, as they favor precision to speed. use 169.32, they are the fastest available imo.

 

you mean anisotropic filtering!

 

alright, ill give it a shot someday (soon)

haha, thanks my older post is edited

 

i get 4074 @ 600/500 @ 1280x1024
Using driver 169.04
Can't seem to push it more than that

<a href ="http://service.futuremark.com/orb/resultanalyzer.jsp?projectType=14&XLID=0&UID=13930527">Link[/URL]

 

That's a good overclock!

 

Yeah, my "stable" overclock (tested for 4 hours) is 600/440. Will be pushing to 625/460 later on.

 

Man, it seems like you guys got a sub-par batch .

Mine can be pushed to about 510-ish for the mem clock (and being that the DDR2's biggest bottleneck is the memory clock, pushing this higher can lead to better FPS than just pushing the core clock higher!).

I tried 520 for mem clock, but that just gave me random artifacts and whatnot in Gears of War.

Maybe it just so happens that my ambient temp around my place is pretty cool (I'd say it's around 15-18C inside my room right now--a bit chilly).

 

Lucky, Triple_Dude. But just to make me feel better, I have a better processor, hard drive, screen, and I OC'ed the core clock higher than you! As I said, I hit 512 in Mem Clock, but it wasn't very stable...

 

Thanks a lot for the review. It has given me a sense of how gaming on Bootcamp (XP) will be.

 

what's the recommended drivers for the 8600m GT now?

im still using 169.01, but I can't overclock it because I can't get RivaTuner 2.06 to work for 64-bit Vista

 

How much of a dip in performance do you think you would see if your processor was 1.4 Ghz C2D? For Crysis and WiC... Estimate I'm not looking for exact.

 

Not much, maybe by 2-3 FPS. The graphics card is the bottleneck, not the CPU.

 

umm wait.. those screenies are from after you OC'ed right?? because i cant even hit 30 with mid-low settings in crysis and you can hit it with high??

also, side question, do i need to uninstall my current driver to install the new one? it has been a long time since i updated driver ..

 

You can follow these simple steps.

To install new drivers (assuming you have already downloaded the driver with the .inf file [for compatibility with mobile GPU's]):
1) From the Control Panel uninstall current driver and restart.
2) Install new driver and restart.

 

Will update entire review this weekend!

 

^ yup, agreed. I have a 1.4Ghz C2D with 8600M GT, and it plays my games just fine (BF2, HL2). But I suspect that on more CPU intensive games (such as RTS games like World in Conflict) we may start to see faster CPUs getting significant FPS increase.

 

Can't wait intil I order my lapping kit and lower temps than I think i get some higher clocks.
Also I getting my 4GB of ram tomorrow which will be sweet.
Will bench when i get them.
Highest so far is 650/1300 which is scoring me 4194.
Hoping the more ram will give some sort of boost.
also the better timings.
But I going to try going higher.
Memory is stuck at 540 anything higher and the driver fails.

 

Did you order the 4-4-4-12 RAM set?

 

I must be doing something wrong. I got a 2,6 T9500 Penryn, 3 Gig of ram, Vista 32 bit and a 8600 GT 512 GDR2!


I am struggeling with WIC, Quake Wars Witcher and Crysis on Low. Particularly Witcher runs not as well as I would have liked.
I was surprised that WoW didn't ran aswell either... I tried doing a benchmark in sisoft, and I really couldn't understand what was going on. It seemed pointless to compare my laptop to some crazy over the top quad-core desktop:/
I also tried 3d mark 06. Got 3300 points.

Half-Life 2 runs great though. As do BF2!


I don't know if my vista settins am wrong. there is not really any stuff that can be changed in vista.


For some reason I cant change my refresh rate. its stuck at 60! I wonder why or if its the only refresh rate that 8600M GT supports! Or is that something to do with the monitor driver?(its currently using a generic PnP monitor. hmmm..


Or can it be vista that slows my performance? I disabled indexing. I tried messing with the paging file but its not really working. I dont understand it either really.
I also tried disabling aero and turning of many of the visual things off, like vista sounds, background images and so on. Still really can't get a better performance.

my driver is 169.56 but I tried many others. I find it strange that Nvidia.com does not seem to have drivers for the 8600M GT. But only the regular 8600 GT for desktops. meh.