8600m GT GDDR2 vs GDDR3 versions, will it make a difference?

[Maximilian]

Ive been all over various notebook forums and theres people stating the same damn thing "ooo i hope mines the GDDR3 verion i reaaallly doo!" with noone answering any questions. Or if they do then its a flakey maybe its aye maybe its no type answer...You can see from the 8600m GT specs here that the memory bandwidth for GDDR2 is almost cut in half. So anandtech! Tell it like it is! will there be any noticeable difference in actual games with GDDR2 instead of GDDR3?

 

[Maximilian]

Aww, no one knows??

 

[shadowofthesun]

My thread died also... I first read about this on the Notebookreview forums, there is probably more information there.

 

[firewolfsm]

There will be a noticeable difference. I can't really be sure how much but expect at least 15% and depending on the resolution and settings, I think it could go up to 30%.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: firewolfsm
There will be a noticeable difference. I can't really be sure how much but expect at least 15% and depending on the resolution and settings, I think it could go up to 30%.

Fantastic! If i play mostly at 1024 by 1024 or 12xx by 12xx The difference wont be that much at those resolutions huh?

@shadowofthesun, its notebookreviews im referring too in my first post lol, everyone there just seems to be guessing what the difference is. Some say it will be noticeable, other say only benchmarking software will show differences, others say they will be the same and some are convinced GDDR2 is a lie and its GDDR3 really.

As long as the 8600m GT GDDR2 outperforms the 8600m GS GDDR3 i will be satisfied.

 

[ArchAngel777]

I wish the industry didn't accept this BS. I am not sure who is the blame, nVidia, ATi, or the Notebook MFG's.

The huge problem with notebook graphics cards are pretty much the lack of specifications. This is no accident, though some might try and convince you of this.

GDR2 or GDR3 is somewhat meaningless unless we KNOW the clock speeds. Dell does NOT have the clock speed of their GDR2 8600m listed anywhere, so who knows how fast it is! Frustrating, honestly. Is it clocked at 800Mhz? 400Mhz? Memory bandwidth on 128bit interface is a SERIOUS problem, so proceed with caution BEFORE you buy any laptop with a supposed graphics card. If a deal is too good to be true on a laptop, it probably is! They castrated the card in some way, you can be sure of it.

Edit ** Well, the best educated guess I can give you for an answer is that Dell uses GDR2 at 800Mhz (not 100% sure, since they can clock it however fast they want, but 800Mhz is spec for GDR2 version).

With that known, also with the core clock and shader speed with 32 stream processors, we can pretty much subtract about 25-35% performance from a desktop 8600 GT card. I would be willing to bet some money on this too...

8600 GT - 8600m GT
32 Stream Proc - 32 Stream Proc
540 Core Clock - 475 Core Clock
1.2Ghz Shader Clock - 950Mhz Shader Clock
1400 Memory Clock - 800 Memory Clock

Looks pretty clear to me that the desktop card is going to be about 30% faster on average than the 8600m GT laptop card.

So, I would advice you to just check out the anandtech.com review on the 8600 desktop line and compare your results to an 8600 GT, then subtract about 30% off of that.

 

[imported_Equinox]

This is yet another attempt to brand technology as "new", and sell it for a higher price while they are still using old tech and old RAM. It is going to make a very big difference in performance, and more importantly to the manufacturers, a very big difference in their margins.