Very Confused over the 8600M GT/GS

Ok, I am looking at a laptop with an 8600M GT/GS in it--my question is about either. I know that theres 128/256/512 for the VRAM- I always belived and thought that a 512 card would outrun the 256 card noticably. Now, i'm hearing that I wont see much of a difference. and laptops are pretty hard to find with the 512 VRAM. Am I making a big unnessesary fuss over this? I found a notebook with a 512 in it that I like, but for the same price i can get a 256. Should I just get the 512 anyway? I do like the look of the PC with the 256 more. My Main Question is if i will even see a little more proformance with the 512 VRAM? Thamks for reading, i know its long

 

Video Ram means nothing, a 8600GT with 128mb will always be faster then a 8400GT with 10000000000000000000000000000000mb of Video RAM.

Having more Video Ram is one thing, actually making use of that Video Ram is another.

 

Yes but im not comparing an 8600 to an 8400, but will i see a difference between 256 and 512 on a 8600?

 

No, the added RAM only helps for much higher resolutions.

 

Which leads to the point that the 8600GS is slower then the 8600GT no matter what amount of Video RAM it has. Numbers confuse people, it's also a way to sell stuff as a marketing gimmick.

 

Yeah the GPU RAM is not a factor anymore when you have more than 128 MB.... It is the memory and core clocks which matter.... Better get one with a GDDR3 memory as it can be overclocked to quite a large extent....

 

The GT will outperform the GS even if the GS has double the VRAM (512MB)... unless you're planning on playing your games at extremely high resolutions with all settings turned down, then the GS may perform a little better thanks to the extra VRAM.

But I honestly doubt it. 256MB is more than enough to game even on 1680 x 1050 (but with settings all turned down... simple because the 8600M GT doesn't have nearly enough shading power to actually run new games at that resolution).

 

If video RAM is next to irrelevant, than why does the 640MB version of the desktop 8800GTS perform much better than its 320MB equivalent?

 

Generally because they test them at those incredibly high resolutions. Thats where the extra ram kicks in. If you tested both at the same settings at something like 1280x800 you wouldnt see more than a negligible difference.

 

I second that...

 

It doesn't. The performance numbers of the 320MB and 640MB 8800GTS are virtually identical.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

 

Ok, im going to post another thread about a similar topic, thanks for all the replies.

 

That is only true about 1600x1005 resolution. And 95% of videocards currently.

If we come higher up in resolution and add AA and AF filtering than the performance will rise anything from 5-30% depending on a game(when we speak of 640vs320 8800GTS).

Yes Antialiasing and Antistropic filter does indeed require large amount of vram.

But since it is not 1800xtx/7800gtx or a more powerfull card than it really does not matter if you have 256 ram or 512.. because as others mentioned you need a 256 busbandwith and a newer high-end card.

 

If you look at that link, even in a game such as FSX at 1920x1200 and ultra quality with AA and AF there is only a .2fps difference, or around 1%. In Oblivion at 1920x1200 with max quality there's onlny a .5fps difference. The only game which appears to show any kind of a noticeable difference at all is BF2142 at 1920x1200 and maximum quality, and even then it's less than a 4fps difference. The only tests I've ever seen that show the 640mb to be significantly faster were the initial ones, back when there were driver issues with the memory management in the 8 series cards.

 

Or when gaming at a 2560x1600 resolution.

 

But a slightly diffent question i have is how much slower is the gs to the GT, and how much of that is migitated by the DDR3 in many GS's cards (i'm referencing the ASUS vs2 here)
If its something like a 5%-10% difference then the greater choice available among the GS's might be advantageous.If the difference is 20% or more, then its a pretty clear choice.

obviously there is no one number. but for example, if i run bioshock at 1400X900. at medium settings, how much more FPS will i get on a GS compared to a GT?

 

3DMark06
8600m GS: ~2700
8600m GT DDR2: ~3300
8600m GT GDDR3: ~3700

 

ASUS V2S uses DDR2 - it is running at 500/400, where as Nvidia official specification for 8600GS is 600/700. Even worse, 8600GS in V2S has 64bit bus, which cuts bandwidth further, by half. As a result, 8600GS in V2S performs like a 8400GS.

If 8600GS has GDDR3, it can have pretty good performance. For example, when I run 3Dmark06 on my Vaio FZ with 8400GT overclocked at GDDR3 8600GS speed (600/700), it scored around 3200 in 1280x800, which is not bad at all. Real world performance of 8400GT (same hardware as 8600GS) at 575/700 seems to be comparable with 8600GT at 450/400 from what I saw, as well. However, there are very few laptops with GDDR3 8600GS right now - Hp 9500 and 15inch Samsung is the only ones I can think of.

 

It's more like 2900 for 8600M-GT DDR2.

The V2s is the only one I've seen using DDR2, most of the 8600M-GS' I've seen use GDDR3.

Also, to be clear, the 8400M-GT doesn't quite use the same hardware as the 8600M-GS, though it's very close.

 

And there are worse performing 8400M GT with 64 bit bus.

 

128MB ram version, yes. It seems the performance chart of current gen Nvidia mobile chips are all over the places, you cannot tell its performance just from its model.

 

I had written a half page about 64-bit 8600GS but after further research i can only agree with woodgypsy
that card 8600GS with 64-bit interface sucks and will very probably show same power as 8400GS.
So definitely a low range or entry level card, damn nvdia and ati for crippling the cards in that way.

 

Yup, the 8600M-GS in the V2s is nothing but an overclocked 8400M-GS.

Also remember that ATI and nVidia have nothing to do with crippling anything, they have absolutely no say in how their cards are implemented in laptops, that's entirely up to the ODM and/or OEM.

 

Than how stupid/arrogant can those(almost everyone except sager and alienware) companies be.
ati and nvidia does produce the cards right?

 

The physical chips, but the OEMs can do whatever they want with them.

 

I doubt it, the 8600M GS is the 8500GT, so the GT has 2x the shader power. the 8600GT takes hgih resolution better than the 7800GTX 256MB, and the 7800 has double the memory bandwith , due to increased shader power.

 

No, the 8600GT does not in any way handle high resolutions better than the 7800GTX. Shading power alone can't help mitigate the effects of increasing resolution. It may be that the 8600GT performs better at high resolutions than the 7800GTX, but it certainly does not scale as well as the 7800GTX.