Would a 8600m GS be enough?

I'm looking into buying my first laptop and was wanting to use it for gaming of course and school work and other little stuff like photoshop and maybe some media storage. The games I will basically be playing are CS: Source and Madden 2008 and Starcraft 2 when it comes out. Thats basically all of my gaming there with maybe a view exceptions. Now, I've been looking into the new DX10 cards and have been wondering on which one I should get. The GT or the GS. Would the GS be good enough for what I want to do?

Starcraft 2 might have some directx10 features and would like to be able to use them so these are my choices.

 

Yes I think the GS is fine for you. CS:Source and all other HL2 games are not a problem I dont really know Madden but I think it doesnt demand much. Starcraft 2 is unknown right now but I dont think it will demand that much more then C&C3 and I am sure the GS can handle it and more. The GS is a very good mid level card.

 

The 8600GS would rock with these games. Go for it. It will also future proof you for the upcoming years. GT is good, but you'll be fine with the GS.

 

Alright great..thanks. I'm looking at both ASUS models at new egg right now and about to pull the trigger hehe.

 

Will the 8600m GS be able to run Crysis in low settings?
and how good is it compared to 7700?

 

The 8600M GS is faster than the Go 7700 by several hundred 3DMark06 points.

The Go 7700 will definitely be able to run Crysis at low settings. So will any of the 8600M series, just not with eyecandy enabled.

 

Yes it meets the Crysis minimum requirments. The 8600m gs is scores about same in 3dMark06 as the go7700. Hopefully the 8600M GS will get better with better drivers. I have not seen any real game benchmarks.

edit:*** the only benchmarks of the 8600M GS I have seen is the Samsung R70 review at notebookscheck.com.
There the score was 2743 3dMarks06 at 1280x800. The Asus A8Js with the go7700 review on this site scored 2665 3dMarks06 at the same resolution.

 

There are two ASUS laptops avaible now with 8600m GS's right now at new egg guys. Just FYI. Yes you can buy, not preorder.

 

Where did you get that information from because notebookcheck says only a difference of 43 points

 

Basically, the 8600 series is a midrange card for future games. So if a game feels like a midrange game in terms of graphical requirements, then it will perform quite nicely.

 

IMHO, its not worth futureproofing a lappy, at this time. If we were talking about desktops, yeah go for it, the top end geforce8800gts and even better gtx cards are out.

I could be wrong, havent done alot of homework into lappy version of dx10 cards, mostly because I didnt bother since there is no eta release date of high end dx10 cards.

You are going to future proof your lappy with a low end dx10 card. It's not worth the wait. Also, there's not a ton of games to be released for dx10 until next year. Yeah, theres crysis everyone is talking about, fancy eye candy and all that if you play it with a dx10 card. But next year when better games then crysis come out your low end 8600 dx10 card probably won't hack it. The 8600 is equivalent to a go 7700, its even slower than top end dx9 cards. If you're a gamer, youll want a top end card, dx10 or not. Imo, buy now, upgrade in 1.5-2.5 years to dx10 years. If the card was equivalent to a 7950geforce card then yeah, I'd wait a month or 2 for it too myself.

Imo, when it comes to lappys, get one that can play this years games (and the ones that are coming out at the end of 2007) at least, futureproofing a laptop isn't worth it much, leave your budget for that to your desktop rig. Lappys still have their limitations, by a big margin. I'm a gamer myself..but thinking of futureproofing a lappy, at this point in time, the wait will be very long as to when the top end dx10 cards are going to be released, if they can be oc'd, etc.

If you're going to futureproof something do it to your desktop at this point in time, for $2,700 you can build yourself a geforce8800gtx x2 in SLI rig with e6700 intel cpu's clocked at 2.66ghz, 2gig667mhz ram, a mobo with a 1033FSB, 160gig 7200rpmhd cd/dvd burner and a 1 kilowatt supply etc. I dare you to find a lappy at that cost =p If you got the money..sure..go ahead and futureproof your lappy, I would, but not with low end dx10 cards when it comes to us gamers, that's for sure.

 

i dont know, the GS isnt that powerfull by the looks of it.

3d mark really is useless at this point in time because the 8600's seems to shine really well in shader intensive games, yet are really not an improvement over the old 7600GT's when it comes to games making more use of texturing etc.

honestly i think the 8600GS might do you for CS:S but maybe not starcraft 2.

i would personally go for the GT, but its really a compromise between power usage and performance when it comes to laptops.

 

Starcraft 2 looks pretty non-graphics intensive. I have no doubt even a GMA X3100 would be able to play it.

 

I agree with FREN the graphics on Starcraft II aren't much of an improvement from Starcraft I. I have a Dell Dimension 4600 that has integrated graphics and it could handle Starcraft I

 

Of course it will, I ran CS:S on mid-full settings on my Inspiron with 768 MB RAM, 1.6 GHz Intel and ATI X300 128MB card. My friends runs it at maximum settings with a 7400 Go, a 8600m GS should run it like a beauty.

 

He speaks the truth about CS:S.

I have no clue about Starcraft 2's graphics requirements, but I have got to imagine that they wouldn't make them too graphically intensive so that most gamers couldn't play it unless they upgraded their cpus. So I would say that if you don't mind not having all the eye candy in Starcraft (if there turns out to be nice little eyecandies floating around in it, that is; I don't know that there will be, but the point is, if there were, you might not get'em with the 8600 GS). If you don't mind that chance, I think 8600m GS would suit you beautifully.

*Cough, *Cough, most of us college students wouldn't be able to fit that beast in our dorm rooms... that's why we want a nice little, tame laptoppy instead... one that we can cuddle with and won't bite us the first chance it gets (i.e. a bluescreen when we first boot it up) ...

 

I can run cs:s on Maxed out graphics perfectly smooth whit the 8600m Gt 1gb sharedmem