Nvidia 8600M performance, general discussion

i use 1680*1050 and its wounderful, you know why? You NEVER need AA in games because there are plenty of pixels, so its greaaaat (Tiger cereal lol).

 

Frosted Flakes.

 

which drivers should i use to oc 8600m gt in xp-32.Ihav tried a few but they dont allow oc (the sliders revert back in rivatuner and ati tool when i click apply)

 

I dont know much about drivers but you could try http://laptopvideo2go.com/

 

Hi. I just ordered a Dell 1520 with the following spec's. Will I have a problems running games or playing movies??

Inspiron 1520, Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, 2.0GHz, 800Mhz, 4M Cache 1
Jet Black Color with Matte Finish 1
2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm 1
High Resolution, glossy widescreen 15.4 inch display (1440x900) 1
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 1
160G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive 1
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition

 

In a word, "no."

 

depends on the games you want to play?

 

Command and Conquer 3, CIV 4 Beyond the sword, and Call of Duty 4 (when it comes out) are some of the games I looking forward to

 

C&C3 and CIV4 shouldn't be a problem
CoD I don't know

 

I have basically the same specs as Docsmith1504, and those are the games I'm going to want to play too. Just throw in Far Cry, and Starcraft 2 when it comes out. As long as i can play SC2 i'm good

 

All the games in the next 2 years will run for sure....

 

well, i'm not sure you can "just" say that
if you want to run, 2 years from now, the latest game in 1900 x 1200, you might have to downgrade the quality to medium or even to low
nobody knows what tomorrow will bring, let alone what 2 years will bring

 

Well he did say run, not run at 19x12 with high settings

Personally I expect:

Existing games- Max or high @ reasonable res
Next 6 months (ET:QW) - High or med/high @ reasonable res
Additional Year (Crysis, Starcraft 2 (?)) - Med @ reasonable res
Another year (???) - Med/Low

 

You actually need a 8800GTX to run 1 1/2 years old game at reasonable framerates on 19x12

 

Not at all. That might be true if you crank up the settings all the way, but on 1900x1200, some of the settings are unnecessary, such as AA. A 7900GS can run 1-2 year old games at 1900x1200 just fine, with perfectly playable framerates (min30-35, average 45-50).

 

Yeah I meant maxed

 

I don't see the point with AA and AF. At the highest resolution I play [1680X1050], I don't see the need for it. The images are still pretty sharp, and I see no "jaggies".
But then it may just be me.

 

At resolutions like 1280x800 and 1440x900, AA is quite noticeable. I can very easily tell the difference between AA off and 8x or even 4x AA. However, I agree that if you always play with AA off, you wouldn't necessarily think your image quality is "bad," it's just that when I compare a game playing with AA and then play without AA, it's pretty noticeable.

As for AF, that's pretty noticeable on any resolution to me.

 

Lenovo Thinkpad T61p
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz 800MHz 4MBL2)
Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate
Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate US English
15.4 WUXGA TFT
NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M (256MB)
2 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
Keyboard US English
UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad) with Fingerprint Reader
100GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer, Ultrabay Slim
PC Card Slot & Express Card Slot
4 in 1 Media Card Reader
Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
ThinkPad Wireless USB Adapter
9 cell Li-Ion Battery

Capable of Crysis and similar on high settings?

 

Depends on what you mean by high. Not on max settings, no, nor anything close to max settings. It's a powerful laptop, and with gaming drivers would probably be able to turn next-gen games out at playable fps on 1280x800 or maybe 1440x900, with AA turned down (maybe off), and medium to medium-low settings. It'll definitely look good, though.

 

What about at full wuxga resolution?

 

That high of a resolution will really feel the memory bandwith bottleneck in your video card. I would expect it to run smoothly, but probably on quite low settings. Though to be honest a display with that high of a resolution should scale nicely, especially in a game such as Crysis.

 

You can't see the jaggies until you try AA lol

In 1680x1050 2x would be good, 4x perfect.

In 1280x1024/1440x900 2x makes a really BIG difference. 4x is almost perfect, 8x is perfect and higher than that you don't see the difference

 

Scaling...you mean by scaling nicely down to lower resolution?

 

hi all, I am currently choosing a notebook, after doing some research and shopping around, I've came down to two options:
Asus G1
and
Dell Inspiron 1520

both has GeForce 8600 GT, except, asus one uses DDR3 Ram.
would there be a huge performance difference?

and i also heard that not all 8600 GT came in standard clock speed, some are faster and some are slower.

after seeing that comment it scares me a little bit, since i dont want to get a "slower" 8600GT

any suggestions?

thank you!

 

the Asus G1 would definitly be your best option
you WILL notice the difference in GDDR2 en GDDR3

 

I'm using the 8600m gt and its using 512mb memory, but 256 of that is being borrowed from system RAM. Would the card perform better if I disabled the shared memory because of the latency involved in using the system RAM, or is the added memory boost helpful? Ill be running BF2/2142.

 

Yes, in general the more pixels your LCD has, the better it will scale. You're monitor running at 1280x800 will look nicer than a WXGA+ monitor running at 1280x800. I would suggest trying to run your games at 1440x900 (the highest resolution I usually recommend if you have a 128-bit card) with the settings turned up, and see how it looks.

 

The added memory boost is very helpful. I wouldn't turn off the turbocaching.

 

thank you for replying, i think G1 would be my best bet, but that green lights on the sides are kinda cheesy... can you turn them off?

and i was looking into the Asus C90, it uses 8600GT as well right? how much is it?

 

The Asus C90s uses a 512mb DDR2 8600M-GT. It also uses MXM-II, so the video card should be user upgradeable when Asus releases new cards for it (hopefully the HD2600XT). However the Asus C90s uses a desktop chipset, which causes it to be cheaper (~1600 with a good config), but it's batter life is pretty bad (80-90 minutes, max).

 

thank you for your help, one more question tho, 512mb DDR2 vs 256mb DDR3, which performs better?

thanks!

 

ddr3 hands down

 

256mb GDDR3 will perform better.

 

Yeah the c90s driver site already has a driver listed for the ati 2600. But not sure whether it is it the xt or regular hd yet, hopefully the xt. I suppose we will find out soon enough.

 

Where could I order one? I currently lives in Hong Kong and going back to Canada in Sept. Figured that it would probably be cheaper to buy computers in Hong Kong.

It says on the site that it supports up to 3GB of RAM, So I'm guessing 2GB+1GB RAM?
Would Dual-Channel be not available if using 2 different ram? I was told that both RAM would have to be the same in order to run Dual-Channel.

thank you so much all the responses

 

Yeh 2 +1 usualyl doesn;t support dual channel but its not a big deal.

Hmm well ask gentech (1toppc.com) or btotech if they ship internationally, i know they definitely ship to canada or one of them does because they are the most trusted asus reseller. If you have circuit city stores in canada they are selling the c90 udner the brand name velocity micro for a good price.

 

In Canada we got "The Source by Circuit City" but it's a radio shack. Radio Shack Canada was bought by CC. They don't have all the stuff CC has.

 

So the Hd2600xt is better 8600m gt, dang ati does it again. Also, what makes it better.

Lol. 90mins, that's not a real laptop its an enraged bulldog that's chained to the outlet and keeps breaking free, but has to come back cause it dies halfway across the room.

 

The HD2600XT is meant to be a high end card, similar to the 8700M-GT. I believe that the Mobility Radeon HD2600XT is based off of the HD2900 core, rather than the desktop HD2600 core (though this is unconfirmed).

 

C90 is more then 90 minutes Mine maxed out at 1 hour and 55 minutes and there is a new bios which should improve the battery life a good amount. Its cpu blows away any other santa rosa laptops.

 

Holy moly, based off the Hd2900core? Think of all the overclocking one can do.
I also heard it might support dx10.1. Man, I quess it was worth it to wait for ati's gfx card. Rejoice, ati worshipers u still get the best on the market.

 

Is that on a 9 cell or a 6 cell. I get about 2hrs 30mins on a nine cell.
I bet the cpu kicks ass, shoot its a desktop CPU, bet it runs hot though right?

 

Its a 6 cell. The fans in the back make a 9 cell impossible. Nah the cpu runs fine mine was like 53-57 idle and whenever the cpu gets hot the fans kick in and the cooling is quite impressive I've seen the fans drop the core temp by 8-10 degrees in under a minute. But yeah it gets hot enough that you can't put it on your lap unless you are in power saving mode or are wearing jeans.

 

It's still limited by memory bandwith, so overclocking might not be that good. Reviews of it are already floating around, as it's in the HP HDX.

 

Dude, Hp HDX is a 20" beast. Could the card fit in a 15"?

@Forerunner
Gotcha......what's your 3d mark 06 score?

 

Couldn't find a screenshot thread for the 8600, is this thread as close as I'm gonna get?

 

There was one a while back, but I think it was locked. I guess this is the next best thing. It would be nice to make a new thread w/ screens and game settings.
Oh I forgot, the merged it into the general 8600m thread, which sucks of course because not only does it include the ddr2 and gddr3 cards, but also a gs. So in the end there a lot of varience

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=125246

Is that what you are looking for?

 

as soon as it gets more commonly available, nVidia will probably sweep it off the table by releasing its 8800M
besides, 8600M is on the market for a while already ... not hard to beat something 6 months old, with new stuff imo
compare it against the 8700 or 8800 when it's released (since it apparently is based on the best desktop card, not on the second best)