Mobile GPU - GTS 250 vs. GTX 260

[AndroidVageta]

Getting a new laptop soon and I have a question about the performance difference between the two GPU's.

From what I can gather online the GTS 250m is obviously going to be slower...its a 128-bit bus vs. the 260m's 256-bit and 96 SP's vs. 112 SP's...but will this effect gaming dramatically?

I know that they both come with 1GB of RAM with the 250m having DDR5 and the 260m having DDR3...will/could the DDR5 of the 250m make up for its lower bus speed?

The reason why I ask this is because the laptops I'm looking at have different CPU's...usually the laptop with the 260m has a weaker CPU whereas the laptop with the 250m has a better CPU...I just can't decide!!!

Thanks in advance!

 

[Denithor]

128-bit with GDDR5 is a wash with 256-bit and GDDR3

Therefore the only difference comes from 112SP vs 96SP - about a 16% advantage for the GTX over the GTS. So you won't see a huge difference between the two, at most probably a few frames difference, barely noticeable in most cases.

Processor is probably a draw - GPU is more important for gaming than CPU.

 

[AndroidVageta]

Well, CPU wise we are talking about either a i7 720m 1.6ghz quad core vs. C2D P8700 2.53ghz. So right off the bat I know that the P8700 would be faster for dual core applications...but the i7 according to the manufacturer has a "turbo boost" feature that can overclock it upwards and even past 3ghz which is what I'd be using 99.9% of the time as the laptop would always be connected via power outlet.

 

[JayBlay77]

While I'm not the expert on the subject I was able to pull up a little information on your question. Notebookcheck has both cards listed in their charts. The GTX 260m has a 3dmark06 score of 10037 and the GTS 250m has a score of 8310. While this doesn't exactly translate to real world performance I thought it might help.

Also it might be helpful to know what you're planning on using the laptop for as it would affect how people might advise you. Based on your worrying about video cards it's obvious that you're planning on gaming with it, but it might be good to know how much, what games and what else you plan on doing with it.

 

[AndroidVageta]

While I'm not the expert on the subject I was able to pull up a little information on your question. Notebookcheck has both cards listed in their charts. The GTX 260m has a 3dmark06 score of 10037 and the GTS 250m has a score of 8310. While this doesn't exactly translate to real world performance I thought it might help.

Also it might be helpful to know what you're planning on using the laptop for as it would affect how people might advise you. Based on your worrying about video cards it's obvious that you're planning on gaming with it, but it might be good to know how much, what games and what else you plan on doing with it.

Mostly for gaming...newer games obviously (Crysis-ie).

 

[Zap]

Mostly for gaming...newer games obviously (Crysis-ie).

You will obviously need the better GPU. If you can wait, then I'm sure new notebooks will come out (I'm predicting sooner rather than later, maybe a few months?) that will have the best of both worlds, a mobile Core i7 as well as a higher end graphics card.

The Core i7 720QM turbos up to 2.8GHz so it will pretty handily hand the P8700 its silicon ass.

The GPU is not as clear cut. The reason is that the GTX 260M is a G92b core with fairly solid performance. The GTS 250M is a newer 40nm core and thus will be a LOT more energy efficient, but I'm not sure it is as gaming-worthy. I've tested the new desktop cards such as the GeForce 210 and GT 220, and they aren't stacking up too well in gaming performance to the cards that they replace, which are the 9400 GT and 9500 GT. Most telling is the GT 220 to 9500 GT comparison. With the same type of memory (since they can use DDR2 or DDR3/GDDR3) the cards perform very similarly. However, the GT 220 has 48 CUDA cores (AKA Stream Processors or shaders) versus 32 on the 9500 GT, so shouldn't it perform 50% better? Well, it does not seem to for gaming. It will probably crunch better, but that is Nvidia's plan with GPGPU.

The other thing is that a company can choose what memory to put with the card, and that can make a LOT of difference with these lower end cards. Nvidia's page on the GTS 250M does not specify the memory types available to it. The lower end notebook chip such as the GT 240M is specified to be able to take DDR2, DDR3 and GDDR3 (with varying levels of performance, of course). I believe that the GTS 250M can take DDR3, GDDR3 and GDDR5, all on a 128-bit memory bus. Of course this can drastically affect performance. I can't say more at this time on these chips.

With the GTX 260M and GTX 280M, these will all have G92b chips with GDDR3 on a 256-bit memory bus. Gaming performance is assured.

A notebook that can take a P8700 can usually take a faster chip as well. The most powerful compatible CPU is probably the QX9300, a quad core at 2.53GHz. Alternately you can get dual cores up to 3.06GHz (T9900). There are also cheaper T9800 (2.93GHz) and T9600 (2.8GHZ) chips which are fairly cost effective. The best thing about these T9000 series CPUs is that they have 6MB cache, while the P8700 has only 3MB cache. If you opt for the GTX 260M with a Core 2, I would highly suggest bumping up to at least a chip with double the cache.

 

[AndroidVageta]

Well I know that the 250m will be equipped with GDDR5 RAM for sure...so we are looking at that. I mean I know that technically the 260m is faster but if we are only talking like a 5%-10% difference that's not too major, considering I don't use slow as hell graphic options like anti-aliasing and other settings lower (shadows on medium in most games is indistinguishable to high or extra...thinking Crysis here)...so even on higher end games I'm not looking for balls to the wall performance...

Plus if worse comes to worse can't I upgrade the GPU in a lot of these newer gaming laptops?

 

[bryanW1995]

good luck playing crysis on ANY laptop.

 

[Clinkster]

good luck playing crysis on ANY laptop.

Yeah seriously. Are you going to buy such a costly machine to run crysis at medium best?

 

[AndroidVageta]

Actually Crysis isn't that intensive as all of you make it out to be...Ive found gameplay wise that even at 20-25 fps on average is quite playable.

 

[betasub]

Sure it is intensive if you get 20-25fps on an otherwise fast gaming system.