Anyone tried the 8600 go?

[inthere]

I'm forced to use a Macbook Pro for business reasons and when I 1st switched, I noticed a HUGE drop in graphics performance after switching from a Geforce 7600M card to the Ati X1600 that was in the Macbook.

I've read several reviews that say the desktop version of the 7600 was faster than the 8600 desktop version, and I was wondering if the same was true for laptop versions. Anyone tried both? I've been waiting over a year for crap Apple to upgrade their graphics cards, and now they may be coming out with something that may not even be faster than the X1600.

 

[bluntside]

8600m 128 or 256mb?
I am going to get a MBP by the end of this month, as for gaming, there is a huge performance increase compared to the x1600, the last gpu for last gen MBP. The 8600m has more performance,
core>475mhz
mem>1400mhz Bandwith>22.4 Gbps
Shader>950 Mhz
along with PureVideo HD with VP2, BSP Engine, and AES128 Engine
Its a much better card, but benchies show that the 128 compared to the 256mb version, there is barely a performance increase, only by like a couple of FPS.

 

[inthere]

I'm thinking of getting the 17inch, the graphics card for that will have 256mb of RAM. I know there is a theoretical increase in performance, but then again, theoretically the 8600 desktop version should be faster than the 7600 desktop version, and that's not the case.

If the 7600 is faster than both the 8600 and the X1600, I just want to know if the 8600 is even faster than the X1600. My only reason for buying a new laptop is a much better graphics card because it seems Santa Rosa isn't even that much of an improvement performance wise.