8600M GT, really, how is it?

I would think this is a topic that would get a lot of discussion but really, I haven't come across too much let alone any real benchmarking. How is this cards performance in say WoW, Oblivion, Farcry and other games? I keep hearing this card is better than a 7600 Go GT, but then I hear about this card putting out <30 FPS is games like Farcry. Not he performance I would of expected. Also, compared to a X800XT PE(my old one) how is this card. I know I could run oblivion at 1280 max settings VERY playable/very smooth on my X800XT PE. Is the 8600M GT better? or worse. Also how about wow, i would guess the 8600 can play that at max everything(even AA) and maintain 60FPS constant with occasional dip to 30?
Basically, everyone who owns this card, what's your overall impression, I don't really care about benches, just the general opinion.

 

I have a 7900gt in my desktop, and the 8600m gt card is about 10-20 FPS slower than it. I am getting 78 fps max on the 7900gt and well over thirty on Far Cry. I just tried bioshock on my 8600m gt, and It runs decent on high settings except the resolution

 

I think the overall feeling is that its a damn good card for a) a laptop b) the money. What people have said is its more than capable of handling BF2 era games on normally high settings, and its able to handle Bioshock on medium settings.

 

I play wow with it all the time and it runs great. I've also played company of heroes and there are no problems.

 

to me, bioshock on high and on 1280x800 WS runs really good!

 

is there DirectX 10 capability for Biochock? did u turn it on?

 

i did have DX10 on but i didn't really notice enough to care, so i'm back on DX9

 

Even though 3D Mark may not accurately represent gaming performance; that is the only benchmark where you can find results to compare many desktop and notebook graphics cards. 8600MGT shipped with DELL notebooks (1520 & 1720) score around 3000 in 3D Mark 2006 while DDR3 version of the card scores around 4000. According to tomshardware guide VGA Charts 2007, the X800XT scores around 1400 (With tri linear filtering, not sure whether the default benhmark runs with or without it)

 

Right now I'm playing Far Cry on My Vostro 1500 and I can say I'm amazed.

Basically 1440x900 + Max Settings (Very High)

Outdoors in the jungle frame rate doesn't drop below 15fps, but normally 20-30, which is not so good but playable.
Indoors is better - very rarely drops to 20fps, but most of the time is 30-60.

I just love this card.

 

does any one have problem with BF2 crashing to desktop on vista? on again 8600M GT

 

this is a dumb question, but how exactly do you turn on/off dx10 capability for games?

 

It's pretty good, better than I expected. With every driver release the performance is getting better so I think there is still room for improvement on this card.

 

Should be in the settings.

 

This card is awesome!!! I've tried Bioshock demo, BF2 demo (online with my friends), FEAR, and Pacman with medium to high settings and it was amazing!!

 

it's nothing short of... marginal.

 

It performs as it should and as described. Not the best but by far not the worst.

 

I can say that I don't notice much difference gaming on my 2ghz, 2gb, 8600m gt laptop and gaming on my a64 3500+, 2gb, 6800gt desktop. So I'm quite happy with it, as it's roughly equivalent with the best gaming I had on my desktop, but in a portable formfactor.

 

It is the fastest video card for 15.4" notebooks. Easily overclockable to 7900GT performance. I am at 590 core / 490 mem that offers 4000 3DMark06 score and 20-25% increase in FPS in games in general. Stock 3DMark06 was about 3200. I can run rock solid stable at 600 core / 510 mem, but only lose a few %FPS, and drop temps by a few degrees if I run lower.

 

Second fastest

 

its ok. but because of its 128-bit buss + little more stuff, it dont run so good in higher resolution. example go7900gs run much better in higher resolution , but they get nearlly the same 3dmark06 scores.

 

How does it compare to an nvidia Geforce 7600 GS, which is what I have in my desktop?

 

Well seems good to me.

I have run the following with no problems. No OC at all. GPU sits at around 50-60 C while playing (using a cooling pad).

"Bioshock" native res, high settings. Pretty smooth game play.
"Gothic 3" high settings. Only slowdown is if you pulled out your torch.

Now "Medieval II Total War" ran on almost high settings on native screen res. However large armies in cities still slow things down. Turning off the units banners helps considerably.

I will be checking out "Rainbow 6 Vegas", and "World in Conflict" sometime tomorrow night.

MD

 

Only played World in Conflict, Bioshock and Company of Heroes so far. Very pleased with the performance. CoH did slow down from time to time so i changed the shaders to DX9. I couldn't spot much of a difference, and my fps got a lot better.

World in Conflict did not run very well however, might be because of the drivers I don't know.. I tried changing the settings but i kept getting low fps - everything looked very 'edgy' - except the explosions that looked great.

I'm using a 1.8 Ghz C2D with 1 GB ram, should get even better when i upgrade to 2 gb.

So, in closing - extremely happy with it so far.

 

What do you guys use to overclock it? Ive used Rivatuner, NTune, and ATITool and nothing is working. It doesnt save the overclock speeds I give it, it just resets it to default once I click okay.

 

I have a 7600GT in my desktop, it is very close performance wise. Very tough to compare because everything in my desktop is much more powerful than all of my notebook components except for the video card.

It seems to me that 8600 is much more visually appealing. World in Conflict and the Quake wars demo I was able to play at very high settings compared to the 7600. All other games, however, is a toss up. When I get down to 1024x768, the 7600 is sometimes smoother than the 8600 but not always.

Earlier on, the 7600 was outperforming my 8600 but with the latest driver release they are really close, and the 8600 seems to be pulling away just slightly.

I did have some "1 second" lag issues that are almost resolved on the 8600. The 7600 has always been really smooth.

 

I have been able to play enemy territory quake wars dem on my 1520 with the 8600 gt with all settings on max at 1280 x 800 resolution on vista. I am very happy with this card.

 

WOW! Pacman! This must be a really great card!

 

It is a great laptop card at this moment in time.

The only demanding game I've used is Oblivion IV, and it handles that very well, even without overclocking.

 

160+ drivers don't allow for overclocking. See the following two links for overclocking:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=124420

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=160237

 

Well just got done playing World in Conflict.

Now with normal high settings, the game bogs down quite a bit. Specially when there is allot of explosions and smoke. I was able to make it run pretty good on high settings by using the ntune utility.

I disabled everything I could in the World in Conflict profile settings on ntune and it ran at least 10x better than before! Profiles are located in 3D Settings>Manage 3d Settings>Program Settings

So my suggestion is when a game doesn’t run so well, check out the ntune profiles and edit them. It can make a drastic difference!

MD

 

8600GT runs fantastic for me as long as I keep the freaking anti aliasing off
world in conflict runs fantastic for me.
set default graphics to high
then just dull the resolution down to 1024 and lower water effects

 

Hmmm - what is the fastest GPU for 15.4" notebook? I thought 8600GT was it? Granted you have DDR2 version and GDDR3 versions, but same GPU.

 

True the 8600GT 'series' is the fastest, but not the DDR2 one in the 1520, IFL90, V1s, etc. And now it's not even the MBP or G1s anymore, the C90s just triumphed those two.

 

which drivers are you using?

Bioshock runs great for me

But i can only run World in Conflict on medium settings without making my laptop seem like it's going to explode

 

seeing as this desktop has a geforce 4 ti4600 (the comp is like 5 years old and going strong in terms of reliablity it's an evesham 2.2 gig p4) something tells me I won't be disappointed by my 8600M GT in my vostro1500 no matter how it compares to other new cards lol.

 

If you change the ntune settings you can run it nice on native res, with all water fx on.

Just so ya know.

MD

 

what is the fastest GPU for laptop? maybe 8700. i saw toshiba new model equipped with 8700 has a WEI of 5.1 for video card.