Which laptop card should I get?

Should I get...

Nvidia Geforce 9600M GT with 512Mb GDDR 2

OR

ATI RADEON 3650 with 512Mb GDDR 3

????

 

the ati card with the GDDR3 memory will be a little better than the 9600, but the similarities are very close, id say base your decision off of other factors in this case cause the gpus are too close to tell

 

What laptop has a GDDR 3 Mobility Radeon 3650?

 

I would take at least a HD3850 instead of a HD3650. The 9600GT is about as similar to the 8800GT. In this case the NVIDIA will perform better in terms of performance.

 

Right now NVIDIA GeForce cards are having issues and driver updates aren't all working as they should be. Although I myself use NVIDIA, I wouldn't recommend it now. Maybe wait a while until NVIDIA addresses the issues.

Both cards' performance are almost the same, but the ATI might give a bit more edge with the GDDR3 and I'm not sure about ATI update/driver issues, but I can assume they aren't as bad as what NVIDIA users are going through now...

 

Not all drivers are going to be impeccable. ATI used to have trouble themselves, but maybe less than NVIDIA with all of these driver updates every two weeks or so. Remember, if it's not broken, don't fix it (updating drivers).

 

Yeah... That's very true. I'm not sure about ATI's current situation (but they also used to have problems), but I'm pretty sure they have less problems compared to NVIDIA. But I read an article that NVIDIA was responsible for the biggest percent of notebook crashes last year or something. And driver updates every two weeks are just an annoyance.

In fact, I haven't updated my NVIDIA card since I puchased my new notebook a few months ago...

 

Actually, that depends on the GPU-intense softwares that you want to run (be it 3d games, 3d modeling tools, etc.). If you want to run games like Crysis good enough to be playable (and enjoyable, that is), I'd recommend the 9600. From what I heard, the 9 series from nVidia are basically powered up 8 series. So I kinda agree with Shaythong that the 9600 is somehow similar to the 8800 (we all know 8800's reputation, right?).

BUT, I reckon that the 3650 is cheaper. Plus, like you said, it has a GDDR3 vs 9600's GDDR2, which is another factor why it would be a pretty decent card. Not to say that the difference in price is huge too. With a discrete card, you could get a 3650 for about 80 dollars. The 9600 on the other hand, costs more than 200 dollars. These are, I think, the price when they were launched. But still, the difference is big, and remember that while 9600 may be better at playing high-end games, I'm not saying that 3650 can't play them at all.

 

No, that's incorrect. The 9600M GT is a mid-range card with 128-bit interface and its DDR2 version has similar performance to the 8600M GT GDDR3.

The HD 3650 GDDR3 and 9600M GT DDR2 have similar performance, the ATI card will be better for overclocking since it has better memory.

As posted, you should base you decision on other factors such as build quality, battery life, support, price etc.

Business-class notebooks such as the ThinkPad T500 and HP Elitebook 8530p.

 

thank you was about to post the same thing...

THIS IS NOT A DESKTOP FORUM BTW!

 

9600m gt=9500gt
9800m gts=9600gt

Notice the friggin m's.

 

Thanks! I'm just so un-updated

Personally, I'd get the NVIDIA, especially if it's the HP DV5T. I like that laptop But if you're into business class notebooks, as mentioned by Dreamer, then just go for the ATI.

And I trust them when they say they're about equal in performance. Why does ATI have a different way of counting shaders anyway? Is there some kind of way to translate their number into "NVIDIA counting" [which I find a lot simpler]?

Also, maybe it'd help if someone posted the specs of these two cards...

 

divide by 5, ATI shaders work in groups of 5, and when their drivers are working effectively, almost all 5 of the units in each block of shaders are being used.

And when the drivers sucks(sometimes inconsistent performance on ATI cards) only one, or maybe two of the shader units are being utilized. If the game is shader intensive and depending on whether the drivers are good or bad, will depend on how well the game plays compared to Nvidia.

 

WEll the computer which has the ati card is a sony fw... the stupid sony pp listed it as having 256mb online but i went in store and it said 512
the nvidia computer is HP... the difference in total price is 500$ but the sony has a smaller but higher resolution monitor, blu ray. The HP is cheaper i think.... the hp is 17" and sony is 16.4"....

 

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