Is 128MB vRAM insufficient for today's games?

With the prolonged delays of the IFL90, V2S, and even the XPS M1330, I think I'm going to come back to my first choice, a MBP. However, I'm going to be doing a fair bit of gaming and I wanted to know if the 128MB of memory is enough for today's (and maybe tomorrow's games).

I don't have the money to get the 2.4GHz 256MB model, so that's out of the question unfortunately.

 

It depends what quality you want to play and what games you plan to play. Starcraft II will require significantly less resources than say Crysis would.

But I'd say if you really want to have the best FPS, the best quality gaming experience, then I wouldn't call 128 MB of dedicated video RAM "insufficient", but you will most likely have to either lower the graphics quality or have a not-as-enjoyable gaming experience.

Once again, depends on what you consider "tomorrow's games". Crysis is a heavy resource drainer while Starcraft II isn't.

 

The amount of RAM really is not significant unless you're comparing the exact same model of video card to another. The model of RAM is far more important and from what I know, the MBP has a very decent graphics card.

 

VRAM seems to really show itself when you're powering dual displays or pushing really tough effects. All that said, the 128mb model of the m8600 GT seems to be benchmarking around 5-10% lower than the 256, so take that for what it's worth. Personally I just got the more expensive model anyways, but certainly the 128 is no slouch and will very rarely really fall behind a 256.

 

Yeah I understand. Well I'll be playing Battlefield 2 and Oblivion right now, and maybe both Crysis and SC2 down the road. I'd like to be able to play at 1280x800 or better.

Well the IFL90 also has an 8600GT, albeit one with GDDR2 RAM. The V2S has an 8600GS and the M1330 an 8400GS, both with GDDR3 RAM. From a GPU standpoint, the MBP is the best. However, the IFL90 and V2S both have 256MB VRAM, which I believe is important in an era of texture- and shader-intensive games. Maybe the MBP's GPU superiority won't be enough.

 

i have another related question, what would preform better a DDR2 512mb 8600m gt or the MBP 128mb DDR3 8600m gt? at 1280x800 and 1440x900 resolutions.

also for graphics intensive apps like 3ds max and such would the 128mb be alright or would i likely run into problems?

thank you in advance

 

Just think of this: bigger VRAM usually translates into better texture quality in games and less swapping back and forth between VRAM and RAM (Direct3D 10 supports paging of VRAM). You may experience lag if you are in games with a lot of heavy textures. If not, then they'd be pretty much equivalent.

With that being said, I got the 256MB one ;p

 

I can do NFS Most Wanted and Carbon at native res on my 128MB X1600 pretty well, but I don't know how much more intensive other games like Oblivion or Crysis would be.

And if the 8600GT in the MBP can do TurboCache, it shouldn't be a problem at all, since nvidia's TC is actually really efficient with VRAM. I don't know if it can though...Anyone want to answer that?

As far as 3DMark scores go, the 256MB slaughters the 128meg by a good ways...

 

Isn't the MPB GPU underclocked because of the late heating issues?

 

It has a varying speed. When you're not using it, then OSX underclocks it a lot. Then once you start stressing the gpu, it speeds back up(though I don't know if it gets back to the "standard" or not).

 

I saw the other overclocking thread, and with some decent OC'ing you can get the 128MB 8600GT to match the 256MB in performance.