Nvidia 8600M performance, general discussion

Hi,

I'm new to this site but I wanted to post. Hopefully this post is not too old nobody will see it. After playing email tag with a Dell rep. since Saturday, he finally confirmed that the 1720 notebook comes with DDR3 in the 8600M GT and the 1520 notebook comes with DDR2. I can post the entire email if someone would like.

 

if you get ddr3, then you will be the first one

LOL


go check the clocks of the gpu

if it's memory speed is 400, than its ddr2, if its 700, then its ddr 3

 

It had better be DDR3, he actually confirmed it on three occasions. Not only that he spoke to a represenative from nvidia, and brand manager at Dell, and did his own research to get the answer. He specifically said "no worries" several times. I'd have to edit out my order number and names but if you would like I'll post the entire email tag.... I won't recieve the laptop until 8/8/2007, at least that's the estimate. Why hmmmm do you have a 1720?

 

the turbocache marketing feature seems to have worked.

you know it doesn't affect your performance, right?

 

The next MBP which has the 256MB graphics card is at $2299 which is way out my budget. This MBP itself is pushing my budget quite a bit, I was supposed to get a notebook within $1500. Anyway, just out of curiousity, would I be able to change/upgrade the graphics at a later time if I felt like? Also, I just thought about this, getting 4GB RAM would be pointless because I would be installing 32-bit Vista/XP & I would not be gaming on OSX & from what I remember reading online, 32-bit Vista/XP only support upto 3GB RAM, is that right?

 

Yeah. Again, honestly, unless you absolutely need to game at 1440x900, there isn't going to be much of a problem with the base model MBP.

Of course though, you might be better off looking at an Inspiron 1520, which you could fit into your $1500 budget, and would have 256MB of VRAM (although GDDR2 instead of GDDR3). That would also save you from having to worry about buying a Windows license, etc.

The one area I think where 4GB of RAM would come in handy would be if you did plan on also running Windows apps inside of OS X (using VMware Fusion or Parallels), since those are very RAM heavy applications (as they need to use memory for the virtual machine).

 

This thread is where to ask a question like this.

We are getting so many threads on this card and its gaming performance that I'm going to combine many of them so the forum doesn't get cluttered.

 

About time we had somewhere to point people when they ask this question... Good call, Chaz.

 

No I think I will stick with the base Macbook Pro if I get the Macbook Pro at all. To be honest with you, initally I was looking for a "portable" 13"/14" notebook with a decently powerful dedicated graphics card. Then decided I don't need to game on the notebook since I've got the Xbox 360 for that & thought I'd get the Macbook (black) once Leopard is released, had stuck to this decision for the past 2 - 3 weeks. Recently, going through the PC games list I thought there were a bunch of games available on PC that just could not be over-looked, they aren't available on the 360 & RTS games IMO are much better played on the PC. This got me to change my mind from the Macbook to the Macbook Pro though I do still feel a 15" notebook is rather too big to be called 'portable' & that is what I believe a notebook primarily should be. The Dell 15" notebooks are rather heavy & very thick, making them barely portable, the only reason I like the Macbook Pro with a 15" screen & would take it is because it's 1" thick & weighs about 5.5lbs compared to the Macbook which is abought 5.1lbs. So, if the Macbook Pro hadn't given me good gaming abilities I wouldn't have changed from the Macbook to the Macbook Pro.
I will install Windows only for gaming, everything else will be done on OSX, besides I've already got a license for Windows XP Home, if at all I will buy Vista to take advantage of DX10 when Crysis is released.
Off-topic, does the wireless card of the Macbook Pro support a/b/g/n or b/g/n?

 

Gotcha. Yeah, that's one of the nice things about the MBP........ outside of its larger footprint (as a 15.4" machine), it is nice that it is only 5.4 pounds and 1" thick, which does at least make it fairly portable (in fact, lighter and thinner than some 14" notebooks even).

Yeah, I don't know, I think the base model MBP should work out fine for you - already stuff like Supreme Commander and C&C3 and Company of Heroes run pretty well on that.

Looking at the tech specs, it looks like it is abgn:

-Zadillo

 

How is the game play for NFS:carbon at max setting on 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT. Pictures would help alot. Just curious. Thanks guys!

 

im gonna go ahead and say it'll look amazing - and will run fine on high settings. they did a really good job with the graphics engine in that game so it runs great

 

im estimating around 30 fps on all max id like to know

 

Since this is a 8600M GT topic, i was wondering how Battlefield 2 would run on my notebook. Would i be able to max. settings?

Cheers

 

BF2 will run well. Ken from Gentech PC has some screens/benchmarks in this thread. http://forums.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=125246&highlight=8600gt

 

it depends on the resolution you want to run the game on.

1440x900 or less should work with max settings for both aforementioned games.

 

how would it compare playing it on the ps2 or even the ps3? I do have the game on ps2 and it runs okay on medium setting but not on the max settings.... I am likely to buy it for PC if NSF: Carbon runs well on my GPU b/c I won't have my ps2 in like a month


aanny pics? sorry for being a pain in the ass but I would love to see some pics of the gameplay


Thanks again!

 

the 8600m gt gpu is really close in power to the newest consoles. for all practical purposes, you can call them equal.

it is leagues ahead of the ps2.

 

Hey...

I'm getting quite the opposite response here

 

Not to put down that forum or those members, but those responses appear to be fairly uniformed. It's been a while since the power of a GPU was dependent on the amount of dedicated memory it had. Nvidia's Turbocache has been shown to be quite effective, and benchmarks in the Apple forum on this site show that the 128mb 8600GT is more than capable. Also, FYI, a 120GB 5400RPM hard drive is actually fairly decent for a notebook.

 

Fair enough. I thought the hard drive spinning at 5400RPM would only worsen the load times and not affect performance of games all that much. Is that incorrect? I'm coming from a computer with pretty outdated specs, Pentium IV 3.00GHz w/HT, 2GB DDR 400MHz RAM, 160GB 7200RPM SATA HDD & ATI Radeon X800XL (AGP 8X). So, compared to that configuration I'd be hoping/expecting a significicantly better gaming performance with this new notebook. If not, then I guess I'd stick with the Macbook & save myself some money =) What do you reckon?

 

plus, hard drive speed isn't going to affect your gameplay. if it IS coming into play, you WILL experience hitching and the speed of your hard drive isn't going to save you. you need more ram at that point.

edit: agree with above.

also, manu08, my desktop is very similar to yours, just with a slightly faster x800 and only 1 GB of ram. the laptop is certainly faster in every department. however, it wasn't quite the same feeling as coming from a desktop geforce 3 ti card to an x800. thats a solid 3 generations away. now i am moving 2 generations up, but also taking a slight hit from moving to the notebook and another slight hit from going to the performance sector from the high end.

its definitely considerably faster though.

 

Yea... afterall the GPU for 8600m GT was made by the same company as the PS3... Thanks for your reply! Pictures will be great if anyone has them!

 

wtf...

how can you compare the 8600gt to the xenos in the 360?


the xenos has 10mb edram = free 4x AA for the xbox

the xenos has 278.4 GB/s memory bandwidth compared to 22.4gb (with ddr3 ram) on the 8600gt

and the xenos has 48 shaders compared to the 8600gt's 32

there is NO WAY, a 8600gt can run games as well as the xenos in the 360

 

Ok this may sound weird but I'm trying to determine if my current graphics card on my desktop 7800 GTX 256mb is better than the 8600 GT 256mb laptop card. Any idea which will be able to perform better? I'm trying to pick out a new Laptop that will be similar to my desktop's specs. I'm trying to go for the Dell Inspirion 1720 since the XPS series has crappier Graphics cards/last-gen stuff. Thannks!

 

Your 7800gtx would kill the m8600gt. An overclocked go7900gs or stock go7900gtx would be pretty close.

 

yea... i think its alil stretch you can get new gen x360 and ps3 graphics with a 8600gt..ddr3 even. unless you want to overclock to like dangerous levels haha =)
still, 8600gt..especially the dd3 model can pull some nice graphics, depending on the developers. i cant wait till i play gears of war on my new laptop =)

 

oh, there is a way...

i knew that was going to make some console fan argue.

you made me do this!

I was writing out a really long numerical answer to "hmmmmm's" comment when i realized you could just read about it on wikipedia. xbox360 --> go to the hardware section. a long summary follows:

the xbox 360 gpu just so happens to have 22.4 GB/s of actual video memory bandwidth. the 256 GB/s difference is due to microsoft inflating their numbers. read all about it on wikipedia, don't just take my word for it.

Still, the edram (which has 256 GB/s connection to *itself only* - hah) is a nice feature. it does 4xaa and a few other things which do have some computational cost on the 8600m gt. however, the 8600m gt can also do 2x quality aa which has low cost and similar image quality to 4xaa. The fast edram has a 32 GB/s connection to the GPU, but even that is very limited because it is only 10 Megs of memory.

Also- the real 22.4 GB/s of memory bandwidth is shared memory bandwidth. Both the gpu and cpu share that resource because of the unified memory architecture.

The 32 shaders on the 8600m gt are much better than the 48 on the xbox 360. as far as i can tell, they are MUCH better. the mobility hd 2600 xt has 120 shaders, and the 8600m gt is going to be comparable to that card. ati and nvidia implement significantly different shaders.

nvidia specifically decided to peg the 8700m gt as "better than the xbox 360 xenos gpu"- and the 8700m gt has very similar performance to the 8600m gt. if the 8700m gt is better, and the 8600m gt is close... its not crazy to think that the 8600m gt is approximately equal to the xbox360's xenos.

one final down to earth explanation:

have you ever played a game with the 8600m gt in 1280x720? any game available today runs GREAT at that resolution maxed out. that includes unreal engine 3 games like rainbow six: vegas. how does rainbow six: vegas run in 1280x720 on the xbox? pretty darned good, right?

in summary, if you analyze the hardware with a keen and perceptive eye, you will see that microsoft inflates its numbers. this is no surprise to anyone. just a practical assessment will bring most people to the correct conclusion here. Run an xbox360 game on an xbox, and a pc game on the 8600m gt, both in 720p, and see what happens. If you don't believe me, just ask nvidia.

i have made both a numerical argument and a logical argument, to please both types of individuals! Please enjoy the read.

 

It wouldn't be a drastic difference, but the desktop 7800 GTX is the clear winner. The closest mobile equivalent would probably be the Go 7900 GTX.

 

In a game like FarCry, and and at similar resolution and settings (all maxed), the 7800GTX would win by about 20-30%

 

by the way, xbox360 isn't exactly new tech. its over 2 years old at this point. in hardware years, that makes it very very old. the 8600m gt came out about a month ago.

skepticism is a good thing, though.

 

We'll see when BIOSHOCK comes out... and gears of war.... lost planet was a poorly coded piece of crap so that doesn't count.

 

The key to the Xbox360, and the PS3, for that matter are that they were using Next-Next-Gen hardware 2 years ago (1 year, I guess, for PS3). They were using stream-style GPUs a year before the Nvidia 8000 series, they are beyond even dual core processors. All games for them are optimized for their hardware, etc.

I'd say that the Xbox360, in the context of 2007, is current-gen tech. By year's end it will THEN be old.

 

8700m GT would be closer, and it would support dx10. Check the toshiba x205... 8700m GT for 2k.

 

8700M GT wouldn't be that much closer, remember its just an overclocked 8600M GT, i.e. an 8600M Ultra

 

either way, free 4x AA, which i'd like the 8600gt do with most games and not kill the fps due to 128bit bus

LOL

how can you compare the xenos shaders to the r600 shaders?!?!?

THEY ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT despite being both designed by ATI and are unified. 1 thing is that the r600 was made DX10 compliable and with memory virtualization (which nvidia had problems with and MS made it optional when ATI thought it was manditory and continued with delaying the r600, etc...)

let see the 8700m run GoW at 1080p with 4x AA and look as good as it does on the 360.

(lets not forget that you can't compare the code for games on PC and console)

ONLY way you can compare is picture quality wise, and i doubt the 8700m can do better than the 360 (especially playing at 1080p)

oh yes

i mean, nvidia must have LOTS of reservation about saying their chip is better than ATI and is 100% truthful as the 8700m is also claimed by nvidia to be their top performing card, besting even the 7950gtx (just ask undesputedd, he spouts that crap like a nvidia CEO)

uh, have fun playing that at 1280x960 at max quality on the 8600gt at 17 fps (and thats saying the 8600m gt is EQUIVALENT to the DESKTOP 7900gs)

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2895&p=4

as i see it, run it at 1080p res (looks MUCH BETTER) and compare the quality of the pic, you will see the xenos trounce the 8600gt

 

Actually I do have fun doing that. It looks much better and runs much smoother in 720p than its X360 counterpart. While on my 8600M GT the framerate seems consistently above 40FPS most of the time and in most of the levels I've yet to see the X360 version push even 30FPS most of the time which to me is just horrible for a console.

Yes because so many X360 games run in 1080p [/sarcasm]. GoW may have been a great looking FPS almost a year ago when it was released but come on, you can't seriously believe it's all that with its dithered textures and extremely blurred scenery. I hope the PC version gets some extra graphics treatment which I'm sure it will.

It's nice to see you defend the X360 as it's a great gaming machine but come on it's nearing its two year anniversary you can't expect it to have to best graphics forever. The rate at which PC graphics cards are catching up to the graphics current-gen consoles can pump out is an increasing value as can be seen from the previous years.

 

so you claim your 8600gt can max rainbow 6 and maintain 40 fps...

i am a supporter of PC gaming. i KNOW that the 8800 ultra is MUCH MUCH more powerful than the 360 and will produce better looking graphics

but i CANNOT agree with the fact that you say 8600gt is as good as xenos.

and whats wrong with 1080p?

 

damn, i really hope Dell comes out with a card soon thats better than the 8600 gt 256MB. I don't want a crappy Alienware again because I had to send my back because it couldn't even run City of Heroes.

 

I think everyones going a little over bored here, but lets break down some simple facts. Only about 30% of America has an HDTV, and at that, it probably a 720p and not a 1080p, of course that is rising but still. Most people don't have a 1080p TV, and aren't playing at 1080p, so using 720p is a good justified resolution to test at.

Not only that most console games, until recently, are capped at 30FPS and have absolutely no settings. So you could argue that the 8600m GT is somewhat equal to the Xenos in some games some of the time, overall the technology in the computer is greater and more powerful then the technology in the 360, but thats an entirely different argument.

 

Well I had a 7800GT for awhile, and I would say that the 8600mGT performs just as good as that did at 1280x800. Above that resolution I couldn't say really. The 8600mGT is a lot better then people are painting it, for some reason everyone thought it would be the killer of the Go7950GTX, and it was only meant to replace the 7600Go which is it does quite well.

 

You gotta realize that the card that he is talking about is the DDR2 version clocked at 400. Knowing this, the 8700m GT will be ALOT closer.

 

I think in about a year or two, around christmas of 2008, games will perform much better on the 360 than the 8600m GT. Right now you could make the argument that they are about equal, but down the line, nvidia is going to come out w/ better GPU's and developers are going to understand the 360 hardware better and optimize their games for that platform.

 

You could say that, but you still forget that drivers for the 8m series will also improve, and you can only improve the 360 so much. It is true that games will run better, but generally that is true for computers as well, you are getting down into the nitty gritty of how good a developer is at optimizing their game for whatever it is running on.

So yes the 360 will have games running better if the developer makes it so, but so will computers with 8600m GT, especially if drivers are improved.

 

time will tell. but there are always a select few developers (valve, crytek) who manage to do awesome things with pc that not only pushes boundaries but scales well and takes full advantage of a lot of hardware. the great thing is, once one of those companies builds their engine, a bunch of games can take advantage of it. think unreal engine 3, cryengine 2, or the source engine a few years ago. now that there are established platforms that can take advantage of hardware, games will come out on those platforms that really take advantage of hardware.

 

Drivers can be updated and improved, but the lifetime of a video card is not as nearly as long as a lifetime of a console. The lifetime of a console on average is 4 or 5 years. During those 5 years, the graphics only got better and better. (think halo vs. halo 2/ninja gaiden) I believe 4 years ago, the video card that was popular was the 5xxx series. The 6xxx had not even launched. Even though the driver support had improved, the 5xxx is not nearly enough to push even last years games at acceptable graphics. This could be attributable to developers optimizing their games for the newer graphics cards by using different shaders etc etc. But the same can be said about now. In a year or 2, the new nvidia line, probably the 9xxx will be launched and developers will start optimizing their games for that line. I think the bottom line is, you guys can say the 8600m gt and the 360 is equal now, but video card hardware is phased out much quicker than console hardware, and it will probably be true for this generation as well. But again... time will tell.

 

I just merged two threads regarding the 8600M into this. Please do a thread search before posting a new thread.

 

I think it's pretty much been established that most of these 8600M GT's are DDR2 (the NP2090/IFL90, C90 etc.).

So basically, my question is, how far removed is the DDR2 GT from the DDR2 GS? I thought the main reason the GT was so much better was the fact that it supposedly had DDR3 (along with a few other differences).

For current gaming, and for gaming in the near future, how much better is the 8600M GT?

 

You should definately search this site for the Asus F3SV-B1 vs Asus G1S and you will find a 40+ page comparison of the two cards and their specs (3Dmark scores and such).

 

this isnt going to help but the np2090 is ddr3