which geforce 8600M GT should i get?

dell has the 256 geforce 8600m GT on it and over here, the notebooks there have a 512 geforce 8600m GT on it, its a bit more expensive, but i think its worth it

but why is one 256 and the other is 512? they have the same name "Geforce 8600M GT". are they the same? even alien ware doesn't have a 512 mb 8600GT! is this real?

 

cheap DDR2 ram on low end cards like the 8600GT dont make any difference except maybe in price. this is like how there were lots of 7600GT with 512mb of ram. some people liked to believe that brought it closer to the 7900GS with 256mb...........NOT THE CASE

for example. a GDDR3 8600GT with 128mb of ram will still beat that 8600GT with 512mb of RAM.

 

what about this barebone laptop's GPU, it's a 256mb 8600M GS..
which of the three should i get? the asus one is much cheaper

 

GS is much slower

 

it's just that i never knew a 512mb geforce 8600m GT graphic card existed, so its 512 dedicated right?

so compared to the dell's 256 geforce 8600m GT, it would dominate it

 

I just said it doesnt. or do i have to be more specific?

 

No, and even if it was significantly faster, "dominate" would never be the word I would use to describe the difference. 512MB graphics cards are more for marketing purposes to trick people into thinking they are twice as good, or at least much better than their 256MB counter parts.

 

Yes, it's 512mb dedicated. And no, it won't "dominate" the 256mb version. Amount of video memory has little or nothing to do with the power of a GPU. Please read the sticky, all of this is explained in the GPU Guide.

 

It is dedicated, but wait a moment.

Macpod answered this, but I think he was being a little too abstract in his explanation.

There are a few versions of the 8600m gt.

The 8600m GT with 128 ram runs at GDDR3 speeds. (MacBook Pro)
The 8600m GT with 256 ram runs at GDDR2 speeds.
The 8600m GT with 256 ram runs at GDDR3 speeds.
The 8600m GT with 512 ram runs at GDDR2 speeds.

The 8600m GT with 512 ram is not fast enough to properly utilize 512 ram, maybe only 300 ram total can be actively utilized. It will only perform VERY marginally better than the 8600m GT with 256 ram running at GDDR2 speeds. If the price bump is less than 50 dollars, I'd say it isn't a bad upgrade. But when I say upgrade, I mean the 8600m GT with 512 ram at GDDR2 speeds is 5% better than the 8600m GT with 256 ram at GDDR2 speeds.

If you want the best 8600m GT, you should try to get the 8600m GT with 256 ram running at GDDR3 speeds. That card is found in MacBook Pros, Asus laptops, and I have no idea who else.

 

Yeh. I keep forgetting im speaking to 12 year olds

 

im sorry for being unclear with "512" i was referring back to the 512 geforce 8600m GT that are found with these laptops

which 256mb 86 GT does the dell 1520 inspiron have in it?
it has a 128 bit graphical memory interface, what does that mean?

which one should i get? (tight on money)

 

You weren't unclear, we understood which 512mb card you were talking about.

The Dell has a DDR2 8600M-GT, it will perform essentially the same as the Compal (the 512mb version you linked to). If you're tight on money, get which ever one comes out cheaper.

 

The 8600m GT with 256 ram runs at GDDR2 speeds.
The 8600m GT with 256 ram runs at GDDR3 speeds.

how do i know which 256mb 86 GT i have?

 

What laptop are you talking about? As I stated before, the Dell has a DDR2 video card.

 

My Macbook Pro with the 256MB DDR3 8600GT plays F.E.A.R. with 1440x900 resolution with everything 100% maxed out!

thats pretty good espescially seeing as it's under Vista.

 

All 8600M GT as far as i know has only 128-bit memory interface.

The difference of DDR2 and GDDR3 is voltage consumption, the later one consume less voltage, generate less heat, thus its cooler and can be clock higher than DDR2 ver.

But as far as i know, only Mac and Asus offer GDDR3 ver of 8600M GT but that's quite some time ago so there might be some other brand that i miss out.

And lastly... check from the notebook official website/reliable websites/Google if you're unsure which ver. of 8600M GT you have... and please, at least tell us which notebook you're refering to.

 

The 256mb GDDR3 one is the best one for performance.

Its about 30% faster than the DDR2 512mb version 4000 pts 3dmark06 vs 3000 pts 3dmark06 average as a baseline, but I dont think we have alot of data on performance in game yet between the two. Still from what data I have seen the 3dmark scores dont lie and the GDDR3 version of the card is better. The DDR2 version can get very close tho with a decent overclock if your lucky enough to get a card that can overclock well.

 

I ve heard about 8600 GTS ...what does the extra 'S' mean?

 

That's a desktop card; the GTS is a higher-clocked version of the 8600GT.

 

More VRAM is good if you actually HAVE apps that can utilize it by saving data into it (ReflexVision, for example, supports saving window pre-view data into the VRAM to save space on your main RAM).

Otherwise, there's no performance difference between the 256MB DDR2 and 512MB DDR2 8600M GT (Hmm, the only expection is if a game uses more than 256MB of VRAM for its textures... but that's next to impossible right now).