go 7600 vs 7900

now obviously the 7900 is a superior card, but what im wondering is if I shoudl expect to be able to play games like oblivion or fear with decent settings or am I just better off with dropping the extra money and getting a 7900. Also, (and this may be answered in a sticky, but I just htought of it), would it be possible to upgrade the 7600 to a 7900 later on down the line? Thanks.

 

Part of the problem is that 7900 is usually only offered on notebooks with much larger screens, essentially negating any performance advantage over the 7600 (assuming you like to play at native res).

7900 Go is essentially identical in performance specs to the 7800GT desktop card, so just look around the web for benches of that and make up your mind. To compare to widescreen resolutions, 1280x1024 is pretty close to being the same amount of pixels as 1440x900, so use that as your benchmark.

 

the 7600 shod run those games at good settings. Typically youll need 4000 3dmarks to use high settings on modern games and the 7600 256mb meets that. Like stated the 7900 is only offered in 17in notebooks, so that should factor in too. Yes the 7900 vs.7600 is like bringing a knife to a gun fight, but at the price of battery life and sheer size of the notebook.

 

You can run Oblivion with both cards. The 7900GS will run it much better. You can run Oblivion at 1440*900, with HDR, with high settings. It will look incredible.

I am not sure about the Go7600, because some score signifanctly better. I think you will be able to run it at 1280*800, Bloom, Medium-High settings.

Charlie

 

A good game will look fine even without native resolution -- a lot of it has to do with the fonts and texture quality the developer chooses to use.

 

I'll be using a 17' screen no matter what card I go with.

 

Which notebook are you looking at that has the Go7600? It is clocked differently in certain models, and it can affect performance signifigantly.

 

As for a possible upgrade...the answer, plain and simple, is no.

 

Dv8000t
1.73 duo core
100g 7200rpm hd
2gb of ram (would anyone know the clock speed of the ram in this, it doesnt say in the customization menu thing)

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/cto/computer_customize_components.do

 

The dv8000t has a properly-clocked Go7600, so it is a good choice.

 

If you're using a 17" screen no matter what, I'd suggest the 7900. I hate running at non-native resolutions (interpolation on LCD's sucks IMHO), and a 7600 pushing a lot of pixels will slow down a fair bit as compared to it's brethren in smaller laptops. A 7600 in a 14" will scream, but in a 17" will be just be adequate.

 

you have to look at the math of it all. the 7600 is a real nice card especially for a laptop. the only problem with it is that it's sorely underpowered for hardcore gaming (FEAR, HL2, Quake 4) at native resolutions online. the best equivalent would be an geforce fx series card because here are the specs of the cards that you guys are talking about.

GeForce Go 7600
Graphics Bus Technology PCI Express
Memory Interface 128-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 16
Fill Rate (Billion pixels/sec) 3.6
Vertices/Second (Millions) 550
RAMDACs (MHz) 400
*and for the record this is an 8 pixel pipe card. 5 vertex.


7900 GS GeForce Go
Graphics Bus
Technology PCI Express

Memory Interface 256-bit

Memory Bandwidth
(GB/sec) 32.0

Fill Rate
(Billion pixels/sec) 7.5

Vertices/Second
(Millions) 656


RAMDACs (MHz) 400
*this is a 20 pipe card! 7 vertex.

the differece between the 2 of these cards is night and day especially if you even mildly overclock the 7900 gs! the thing is a beast and being that it is based on the 90nm die process it runs cooler at only 19 watts and the 7600 is 16watts! It is quite an improvement. idle temps on the 7900 around 45c 73c max load.

In my experience the 7900 gs could really benefit from 512 mb of texture memory(ala 7900gtx go),but what can I expect for the great price.

this card runs great when playing any modern FPS game. Oc'd at 450/1150 and getting frame rates of
70 fps in lost coast at 1900x1200 w/ hdr!
60 fps average in fear on high quality 1440x900!
72 fps Doom 3 1900x1200 on high
7762 in 3d mark05
the overclock is free because there is no big difference in temps if you don't volt mod !!
get the 7900 gs or gtx in you lappy!!! you won't be sorry. If you get it from dell you can get a real good system for like $1500! Score!

 

The GeForce FX doesn't compare to any modern card . . they are horribly outdated and terrible performers in past and present DX9-based games. I assume you meant something else besides them?

Definitely agree there though.

 

yeah i meant a 9800 vanilla. I am dating myself here with the fx's.......lol



thanks for the heads up chaz!

 

Well, I will put it into perspective for you. Me and a friend have nearly identical laptops (same processor, same amount of ram, same HD, etc). Except I have a 7900gs and he has a 7800 go. In 3dmark 06 I get about 3500 3d marks (with stock drivers and no OCing none the less) and he gets about 3000 3d marks. So you can see the big performance leep between the 7800 and 7900. Now you can use that as a sort of modle for comparing the 7600 to the 7900. The 7900 is worth the price, I'll say that much.