How much of an upgrade is the ATi 5650 over the Nvidia 8600M GT

Boring back story:
Looking to buy a laptop, keep "um'ing and ar'ing" about what to buy, switchable graphics for extra battery, gaming powerhouse for raw power or somewhere between the two (power and portability), I owned a Dell 1520 which died months ago that had the 8600GT in.
End of boring back story:


So can someone tell me, in plain black and white, how much (if any) of an improvement the 5650 is over the 8600M GT...and by that i mean largely in terms of gaming but also heat output or any other features, anything really.

This is just so it's one less excuse I can give myself for not purchasing a new laptop lol!
Im one of these people that likes to talk themselves out of a purchase

Cheers guys and gals

 

Judging 3Dmark06 scores from notebookcheck.net, I would say double. A worthy upgrade, I think.

 

It beats the snot out of it. Not really sure quantitatively, it really depends on what games you're thinking of playing and what settings/resolutions?

 

yes and close to half the heat as well depending on what chasis its in

 

Thats good to know

Um in terms of games it's Team Fortress 2, Company of Heroes, Mass Effect 2, Bad Company 2, Dragon Age origins
I was thinking of getting a 1080p full HD display but im not expecting the 5650 to beast any game on highest settings at that native resolution

Thats good to know, my old 8600GT ran pretty not but it never really bothered me that much.

 

Just grab a nice CPU with the card and it should handle gaming quite nicely.
(Not as good as a HD 5870 but you know what i mean, performance to price ratio)

 

well demon I am getting an envy 14. I think this laptop right now is the overall best laptop money can buy. starts at only 1099 and that includes the amazing radiance display which is the best display in the market right now and the 1GB radeon 5650 and 4GB of ram and intel wireless N with bluetooth and a backlit island style keyboard. The laptop is also a magnesium chassis and all aluminum body. Small and light and powerful. For a couple hundred more dollars you can get a top class processor and a nice large 640GB HDD.

There is nothing on the market that comes close to this one at this price range. The all metal build construction. Totally solid construction. Switchable graphics that give it a nice long battery life. New Q3 dual core and quad core i series processors with the faster DMI speed. Look into the envy 14 it has the card you are thinking about and is an amazing price.

The Radeon 5650 has enough horsepower to run 98% of the stuff out there on high settings. Some games you will have to turn down some settings to medium. But for the majority you should be able to run most everything at 1600 x 900 on high settings.

 

The Envy 14 does seem like a bit of a beast in terms of components and size but im not sure how available it'll be in the UK, also I need a DVD-RW if possible and I don't fancy having to carry one around separately (It's a small bug bare but i'd rather not have to think about making sure I have my DVD drive with me when on the move).

I was thinking about getting a Sony Vaio with the 5650, it seems to be one of the only laptops that uses the card (besides Acer and i've never heard good things about there build quality)

 

If you can't get the Envy 14 (which does have a built-in DVD-RW, btw), you could look into the DV6t: SE. It's something of a poor-man's Envy 14 - cheaper, some plastic rather than all-metal build, bit bigger (including screen size), inferior screen, but still a tremendous machine for a terrific price.

 

I'll definitely check the DV6t out and thanks for the info about the Envy, hearing it has a DVD drive has increased my interest somewhat, saying that I dont want to get too excited and then find out it wont be released for 6 months (if at all in the UK) or something silly like that. I dont think we even got refreshes of the Envy 15 over here (though someone may be able to correct me on that)

 

Well check your options in UK first, not all US laptops are available everywhere or with similar price differences.

Like stated, going from an 8600m GT to a mobility 5650 is a worthy upgrade.

As for the envy 14 starting at 1099.... the MSI 640 for the same price goes with a mobility 5850, quite another leap from the 5650. But all in all, like in my first paragraph, check first what you can get around.

 

It will be 2 times over DDR3 8600M GT but 3 times over DDR2 one but it can run games at 1080p... it will be low-med details..

yup MSI GX640 will be cheaper and better... Actually if u have a budget of about 1200-1300 quid , u can get a full size Asus G73 imported from US with shipping and all.. it will ace all games... u don't even pay import duty Get one from Gentechpc.com...

 

It's in exactly the same performance class, but time adjusted for a little over 3 years so Moore's law gives you about double the performance with about half the heat (the 8600M GT uses an 80nm process while the 5650 is 40nm). The lion's share of the improvements comes from the above; there have not been any radical changes (a-la the unification of shaders in the GeForce 8 series). You do get DX11 (which will have only minor impact since the consoles can't handle it) and a bunch of more advanced GPGPU features (which are likewise unlikely to be useful to most users).

One comment: be absolutely sure to get a decent display or you will be wasting most of the card's power. It doesn't make sense to get a 5650 if you are limited to 1366x768 resolution.

 

Do you realize how much the performance drops using that card at 1080p? At that resolution, many games will be choppy on high settings, like Crysis 2 and CODMW2. The lower resolution helps this midrange card achieve a higher level of performance. There are several laptops that offer the HD 5730 that are mobile. You should also consider some of these. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything with a 5850 or 5830 that's very portable.

 

I have not seen the 5650 used with 1920x1080, but I have an old laptop with an 8600M GT and a 1280x800 display. For the overlap of games I play and games demonhotrod plays (Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age), the 8600M GT is capable of high settings (not everything maxed out, but close) at 1280x800. Since 1366x768 is almost the same as far as the GPU is concerned, going to a 5650 will mean merely a few extra bells and whistles. The greatest advantage of the 5650 is the ability to play at higher resolutions.

That said, I would not pair the 5650 with a 1920x1080 display as the latter doesn't go well with laptops under 17" in size and the former is rarely found in large laptops. I was thinking more along the lines of 1680x1050 or its inferior 16:9 counterpart, 1600x900.