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    Your opinion of GeForce 9600M GS?

    Discussion in 'Gaming (Software and Graphics Cards)' started by JongWK, Oct 29, 2008.

  1. JongWK

    JongWK Notebook Enthusiast

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    I'm getting an ASUS X83Vm-X1 from Best Buy, which comes with the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS (1GB GDDR3). I have a few questions:

    • I heard that the card's memory is in fact DDR2, and not GDDR3 as advertised. Is this true?
    • Is the 9600M GS a reliable card? I'm concerned about recent reports about defective GeForce cards, and at the same time there aren't many articles online about this card...

    Thanks for your time!
     
  2. wazoo76

    wazoo76 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I'm running a Asus M70 with a 9600m GS (512mb) with constant game issues.
    I experienced constant computer freezes with the following games

    -LOTRO
    -Warhammer Online
    -Half Life 2
    -Unreal 3 Demo

    I tried from Max settings to Lowest settings, the issue persists. Overclocking it doesnt help. My Lenavo T60 runs warhammer online better than the Asus.
    I recently opened a RMA case with ASUS regarding this issue and will be calling them now regarding this. I may want to have newegg.com refund my money even though they state that no returns on laptops. If worse comes to worse, a chargeback may have to happen.
     
  3. Tarentum

    Tarentum Notebook Deity

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    Do you have an option to get 512megs on the card with that laptop? If so, get that, as it will save you money and that card will not use the extra memory at all.

    But the real answer is: it's not that great, middle of the road, but not horrible, and if you can buy an Asus with the 9700M GT.

    wazoo76: It sounds like you have driver issues, and you didnt' mention anything about updating or messing with driver issues, or how you run those games, or what you have installed on your system etc.
     
  4. wazoo76

    wazoo76 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Tarentum,
    I'm currently running 180.42 drivers from laptopvideo2go.com

    my other post regarding this issue
    forum.notebookreview. com/showthread.php?t=314625
     
  5. Face_Jones

    Face_Jones Notebook Evangelist

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    if its from Best Buy you wont be able to customize it at all so he wont be able to save money by getting 512 instead of 1GB VRAM but you're totally right about 1 gig being a waste on that video card since its only 128 bit
     
  6. jacob808

    jacob808 Notebook Deity

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    In my opinion, since computer technology becomes obsolete very quickly it best to get the most recent state of the art. And I assume right now to the consumer 256 bit is state of the art. And having followed video gaming from pc to console the most important thing that distinguished power from each generation was the number of bits. 9600m gs i believe is 128 bit so if gaming is important to you go for the 9700m GTS not GT since it's 256 bit. Guaranteed noticeable performance increase especially in graphical intensive software.
     
  7. WILLY S

    WILLY S I was saying boo-urns

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    In regard to gaming consoles, when they were marketed as being 16, 32 or 64 bit it was in regards to the software which they ran on, not the ringbus of the gpu.

    A higher bus width will allow a higher memory bandwidth for outputting higher detail textures at higher resolutions. A 256bit bus gpu running at a lower resolution than 1440 x 900 is.. uneconomical... for a laptop purchase anyway.