nVidia 8600mGT vs ATI 2600HD

Hi!

Well, here is the deal, is it worth waiting 3 months for the ATI? because I have right in front on me the possibility of buying the 8600M GT, but I am not sure whether I should wait.

Is there going to be such a performance difference? any Benchmarks or tests that could possibly compare these both?

Thanks for your help.

 

Right now they seem to be pretty much comparable. If I were you I wouldn't wait 3 months just for the HD 2600XT. The golden rule is, if you absolutely need the laptop now, then just go ahead and buy it. However, there will be more laptops with either the HD 2600XT or 8600M GT three months from now, so you'll have more options to choose from when you ultimately buy a laptop.

 

thanks

does that mean that the Nvidia is same as ATI?

 

Yes, 8600M GT is comparable in performance to HD 2600XT based off preliminary 3DMark06 benchmarks.

 

I agree with FREN but these are synthetic benchmarks available just now. It will be interesting to see how the two cards compare against each other when actually gaming.

 

for which one would you bet in actual gaming?

Nvidia or ati?

i think that if ATI is taking so long to release his cards, it means they are gonna be better. dont you think so? when are we going to be able to compare them 100%?

 

HD 2600XT is 65 mn so i guess less heat problems

 

July, when ATI releases the HD 2X00 series

 

Been out of the loop on ATI's next gen GPU. Does the HD stand for high def? If so, what good is it displaying to non HD capable LCD's? Or are we gonna have to buy our own $800 HD monitors?

 

from pre-lim 06 benches and basically looking at the specifications...i would actually put the 8600 above the 2600 in terms of gaming

it has half the render outputs, half the texture units, similar bandwidth. theoretically it has more shader power, but ati's approach means that in order to make good use of this power their compiler has to be able to extract as many parallel very long word instructions out of the shader code....if they cant do that you wont get too much out of it.

Nvidia's approach is much more robust...it is able to take on all manor of shader code regardless of length or depth and output good speed.

as it stands however, both cards look to be heavy on the shader power as 3d 06 scores a quite high relative to older hardware, yet those increases are not so apparant in games.

i think so... it relates basically to the R6x0 ability to decode HD video and its related video codecs (H.264, mpeg 2, VC1 etc) and the ability to process Audio, combine it with the video stream and out put it over HDMI if the vendor choses.

however Nvidias 8600/8400 can also fully decode HD content, with the same codecs rather very well, the only thing they dont have is the audio processing capability, though they can still output video over HDMI.

obviously watching on a HD capable set is ideal, but screen size and res has no bearing on the machines ability to decode upto 1080p smoothly

im not entirely sure but i think 8600 is also 65nm. if not it is at least 80nm.

 

No one really knows how much better or worse the HD 2600 series is compared to the 8600M. Considering that they are designed to compete with one another as the X1600 and Go7600 were, I doubt one is going to blow the other away. So no, it is not worth waiting until July for the ATI card, especially if you need the laptop now.

 

I have great expectations of the 2600XT. Mainly I am hopeing for better battery life due to the 65nm. I hope I wont be disappointed. I never had a Nvidia graphic card before. Always ATI and I will try to be loyal.

I need a laptop delivered and in my hands by the end of August... So I will wait.

 

I personally prefer the 2600XT as well, but like most people, I don't think they'll be different enough to justify putting off any laptop purchase when I need one.

Just what is ATI thinking? Coming out with DX10 cards 6 months late, and even then not really having a high-end flagship comparable to NVIDIA.

As it is, the end of August is the deadline for a lot of people with back-to-school (you know, the people who would actually make up most of the market for gaming gpus) ...and it's still doubtful whether there will be more than a handful of laptops with the 2600 series for sale by then, or if people are even willing to wait until the last minute (which most people probably aren't)...

[SARCASM]I'd say, ATI is off to a great start in catching up to NVIDIA's lead in the market =P.[/SARCASM]

 

...not to mention ATI's stellar support of notebook video cards...

 

Wow thats crazy, what a lousy company.

 

Just use the omega drivers...
Not like nVidia is any better with laptop drivers.
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

It has always been like this. Use the Omega drivers for ATI and laptop2go drivers for nVidia or mod the desktop drivers.