MPB 8600M GT 128mb ram

[ryokinshin]

ok before u have a heart attack at the topic hear me out, getting the new santa rosa macbooks all of them as most of u prob know hav 8600gt's in them

the lowest end having 128mb, then 256, then the 17 inch with faster clocks. i like apple over pretty much any windows laptop, but i dont $600 more like them so im gona be sticking with the 128mb card if this question is answered the way i hope it is

if i am playing games at a res of 1024x768, i shoudl be fine with that memory amount rite? considering ill also drop texture resolutions down

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yes, and remember the GF8600 128MB has additional access to more memroy via TurboCache should it absolutely need it. And you can either hardlock that or adjust it dynamically.

If it truely needs it it will take it, but of course it's best to have it locally than to have to access it off of the system due to latency.

It won't crap out the way some cards do that have no hypermemory or turbo cache, but the other thing is while it opens up higher settings you're gonna want to kep them low to avoid unnecessary slow-down.

 

[ryokinshin]

actually theres no caching so its straight 128mb. they did that so it wont hit the system ram of lik 2gs. id rather play on lower res and texture res then hav it cache anyways

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Where are you reading that?

Everything I've seen sofar says that the Macbooks also have access to TurboCache.... when using Windows. Under OSX they might not have access, but I didn't look into OSX gaming. I'll check in the Motion forums about it, because it's actually quite impactful for Motion having extra memory.

Remember TurboCahce is dynamic so it doesn't lock up the 128MB of extra space it just uses it when needed, and can be dynamically balanced between host and graphics depending on need.

I agree that I prefer just VRAM, but if you're at a point that requires it in DX10 you may find that not allowing the 8600 to take the strain off the CPU will result in even slower results.

Anyways, all I'm saying is you don't have a hard limit, so you will have the flexability should it be requred.

 

[ryokinshin]

ic so its a windows thing had no idea, but that helps then if its not limited to 128 only its not lik im against it or anything if it needs it it needs it

any link you could give about this, i men the turbo caching bein a windows related issue, cause that would really help thanks a lot for clearing this up

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

No I don't have anything about the OSX portion, but the shared memory (which is Turbocache) is coming up for people with them. NoteBook reviews' forums mention them, I haven't looked into them enough (was initially going to buy the 17" when it was mis announced by the press as also having the LEDlit screen).

I'll check when I get home later (just leaving work now).

Interestingly enough a quck search brings me this page which starts with the comparison of PREY with 128MB versus 256MB on OSX and XP, unfortunately they don't have the same CPU speeds so it's not that scientific, but there is a noticeable hit between the two confirgurations, unfortunately we don't know whether CPU has much effect;

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=130879&page=6

Nothing solid, but there's a few other discussions in the forum about the new MacBooks, and a few mention the Turbocache setting, so it's obviously coming up when using XP for gaming.

 

[ryokinshin]

alrite, well i wont really be using mac osx for anything cept maybe parallel smacking

the mac is mainly for the looks, its good to know my gfx card wont be limited to 128mb

i probably should hav said ill be using vista, im pretty sure the reason behind a lot of performance problems can be attributed to the fact that bootcamp is in beta