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8600GT is it worth it?

Big.Wayne said:
Hi,

what is the difference between the 8600GT and the 8600GTS?

Is it just clockspeeds? so maybe possible to overclock a GT to GTS speeds?
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yes its the clock speeds.

the gt's core will easily clock to gts speeds and beyond even on stock cooling. memory will not hit gts speeds since its usually 1.4ns ram used on a gt and 1ns ram used on a gts.

gts is over priced for what it is, and a gt is the best bet. a little overclocking goes a long way on a gt, and if you want i can post the benchmarks of my old 7600gt, 7900gs and my current x1900xt and compare them to a 8600gt and you will be surprised at the results.

actually i will post the results up, just gonna upload them to my web space. give me few mins i will have the screenshots up.
 
Tooks said:
Does that really matter if they do the business performance wise?
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I think they'd do a hell of a lot more business considering their clocks and shader power if they had a 256-bit interface. That's what I was getting at, it's giving them a performance hit like no other. :)

Edit: Almost no other. :p
 
Yeah, true, but then where do they stop?

If they increased the memory bandwidth, gave it a few more ROPS and Stream Processors, some more memory etc, then they'd have to call it a 8800GTS and charge us accordingly!! :)
 
Tabasco said:
Is it worth me buying this the price seems good and at the moment i have a 7300GT .. im guessing it would make a massive diffrence

8600GT OC
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just to add, the trick with the 8600gt is to buy the absolute cheapest one you can find. since they all are from the same silicon they will clock more or less the same, either way i have yet to see one that will not do 650mhz on the core with stock cooling and stock volts.
 
Tooks said:
Does that really matter if they do the business performance wise?
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it doesn;t matter really, i mean they are faster than 6800ultra/x850xt cards which have 256bit memory interfaces.

as the generations get newer the internal memory bandwidth efficiency gets better. thats why cards like the 7600gt and now the 8600gt get more and more performance out of their 128bit memory interfaces.

there is no real need for 256bit interface because where the additional memory bandwidth is needed the core runs out of fill rate power.

its a good match between the core and memory bandwidth limit, like how a cars engine and gearbox need to be mated properly, 256bit mem interface is like having a massive high gear ratio where the engine is not powerful enough to make use of that gear.

let me get those benchmarks up.
 
Tooks said:
If they increased the memory bandwidth, gave it a few more ROPS and Stream Processors, some more memory etc, then they'd have to call it a 8800GTS and charge us accordingly!! :)
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No no no. :p Just more memory bandwidth and nothing else, keep it at the same price, and it'd probably be an awesome competitor to the X1950Pro to be honest. :)
 
Cyber-Mav said:
it doesn;t matter really, i mean they are faster than 6800ultra/x850xt cards which have 256bit memory interfaces.

as the generations get newer the internal memory bandwidth efficiency gets better. thats why cards like the 7600gt and now the 8600gt get more and more performance out of their 128bit memory interfaces.

there is no real need for 256bit interface because where the additional memory bandwidth is needed the core runs out of fill rate power.

its a good match between the core and memory bandwidth limit, like how a cars engine and gearbox need to be mated properly, 256bit mem interface is like having a massive high gear ratio where the engine is not powerful enough to make use of that gear.

let me get those benchmarks up.
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Interesting, cheers Mav. :)
 
right the benchmarks, these are done on my old opteron 146@ 2.9 ghz or 3ghz where it shows in the screenshots.

please note the 146 cpu is a single core. system ram is 4 gigs crucial value stuff running at 196 mhz odd with 3-3-3-10 timings 2T command rate.

first up is the stock 7900gs:
7900gs%20stock%203dm05.png


as you can see its 7350 odd marks, not too shabby, i can;t find my 7600gt scores but i think it got around 6500 in 3dm05 with clock speeds of 615core and 840ram.

next up is the overclocked 7900gs, clock speeds can be seen in the screenshot at the bottom left.
7900gs%20oc%203dm05.png


not bad at all, 9140 odd 3dmarks in 05 good increase from overclocking.

now is the stock x1900xt's turn on the same 146 opteron cpu.
x1900xt%20stock%203dm05.png

10480 3dm05 score, not to shabby for stock, thse are old benchmarks by the way, done when i first bought the card so drivers i think were either cats 6.8 or 6.9.

now its the overclocked x1900xt's turn, as usual i made a note of the clock speeds in the bottom left of 3dm05.
x1900xt%20oc%203dm05.png

11118 marks on 05 onced overclocked, not as big a boost in overclocking as the 7900gs saw.

now need to find some 3dm scores on the 8600gt so can compare it to these. results, im sure its not gonna be too far off and will probably be on the heels of the 7900gs which is still a good card.

will post 3dm06 results up in next post.
 
Ulfhedjinn said:
No no no. :p Just more memory bandwidth and nothing else, keep it at the same price, and it'd probably be an awesome competitor to the X1950Pro to be honest. :)
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think it will beat the x1950pro in everything then.
 
ok here are the 06 scores. do note that the x1900xt had the cpu advantage since the opteron was clocked 100mhz higher than when the 7900gs was run.
also note i can;t find the stock scores for both cards so just the overclocked speeds will be posted:

first up the 7900gs:

7900gs%20oc%203dm06.png


4840 odd marks in 05, not too bad with single core cpu i guess, but im sure there are more people out there that got over 5k im 06 scores with this card easy.

and the x1900xt:

x1900xt%20oc%203dm06.png


5040 odd marks. not sure how good that is but with a single core cpu i could not get any more points out. do note that the cpu speed was 3ghz for this card, not the 2.9ghz that the 7900gs worked with.

hope these scores help people out in getting a rough idea on how these cards perform and compare to 8600gt't out there.

good thing i took extended screenshots to show the fps score in each of the tests that way you can compare them to results from other cards with a bit more meaning.

yes i know overall my scores are very low, probably due to 2T command rate and single core cpu. although i could run 05 and 06 again now with my x1900xt with dual core cpu but dunno its of any use to people out there.

who ever is gonna be getting a 8600gt is probably using lowish end dual core or pretty high clocked single core cpus so it shoudl be a good match.

hope this has helped you guys. now all i need is to find 8600gt scores, unless someone else can help out and post screenshots in this thread.
 
ahh, thats a good one, looks like when the AA is set to 4x the 7900gs pulls away, looks like memory bandwidth or fill rate limitation may be kicking in, probably memory bandwidth limit though.

but at stock 1280x1024rez its not that bad at all, better than 7600gt.

now what really is interesting is that there is only a 2fps difference between the 8600gt and the 7600gt when AA is set to 4x, the only thing these 2 cards have in common is that both their memory runs at 1.4ghz.

looks like memory bandwidth is a limiting factor at higher AA levels.

although the good thing with the nvidia cards is that you can run 2xQ, a AA mode which i run all the time on my 7600gs, less of a hit than 4xAA.

not too bad a showing for a card thats 30 quid cheaper than an x1950pro.
 
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