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X1600 128mb vram vs 256mb vram

post #1 of 15
11/1/06 at 5:29pm
Thread Starter 
Does anyone know where one would notice a difference between the two versions? Would it be in the fps? Would the 3dmark results be lower with less vram despite same clock speeds? Im curious because im aiming for the entry level MBP c2d!
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post #2 of 15
11/1/06 at 6:47pm
less of course will not perform as well. even the 256 version isnt a "great" performer.

if your getting it for ocasional gaming, and for games that are a little older, youll be fine. if your getting it for gaming, get the 256, but youll still be unsatisfied.

i too am looking at the entry level 15 mbp. but im coming from an intel 950 to a x1600
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post #3 of 15
11/2/06 at 6:20am
You won't see a huge difference between the 128MB and 256MB versions. kgeier is right that neither system will be killer gaming machines...but I'm not sure you'll be disappointed. It depends what your expectations are. Games like Guild Wars and WoW will run fine - games like Oblivion and F.E.A.R. will only be playable at lower resolutions. I'd recommend 2GB of RAM if you're going to be doing much gaming.
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post #4 of 15
11/2/06 at 8:56pm
The X1600 in the new MBPs can be overclocked pretty high. I was experimenting a bit last night and took mine to 480/480 with no problem at all:




I'm pretty sure I can hit 5000+ once I start tweaking it. That puts it at or above a 6800 Go Ultra with respect to performance which is very respectable. You have to keep in mind that some Dell and AW gaming laptops ship with high resolution screens which impact their gaming performance at native resolution. So even if they're scoring 8-10k in 3dmark05, at native resolution their performance goes to shit in games like FEAR and Oblivion. Take for example my Dell M1710, even with the GPU clocked at 600/600 and scoring ~9000 in 3dmark05, my panels native resolution is 1920x1200 which is 2x the amount of pixels the MacBook Pro's panel has (1440x900) so it has to do twice the work at native resolution in a game. So if the MBP is scoring ~4600-5000 pts and the M1710 is getting ~9000 pts the difference between the two becomes negligible when run at native resolution. Of course the M1710 will slaughter the MBP if the resolution is dropped but then you end up with a blurring which sucks.
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post #5 of 15
11/3/06 at 2:26am
480/480 is almost the native speed of the card, IIRC.
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post #6 of 15
11/3/06 at 2:40am
Thread Starter 
5150 Joker, do you think my results will be lower than yours with a 128mb card? If so, how much lower should I expect?
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post #7 of 15
11/3/06 at 3:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kakaze
480/480 is almost the native speed of the card, IIRC.
Not for the Mac, its about 60 mhz above default. I think default is 450/450 for the PC version. Prism, keep in mind everything is soldered (CPU/GPU) for the Mac so if you buy a lower end model, you're stuck with it for good. It's not like Dell where you can change out the parts later on.
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post #8 of 15
11/4/06 at 2:16am
Hence my use of the word "almost" as I wasn't sure the speed of the card. I thought it was 470/450 or so.
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post #9 of 15
11/4/06 at 3:41am
Thread Starter 
well according to the macworld benchmarks, there is a 14% gain between the two versions which IMO is substantial!!!
http://www.macworld.com/2006/11/firs...ench/index.php
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post #10 of 15
11/4/06 at 4:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by prism
well according to the macworld benchmarks, there is a 14% gain between the two versions which IMO is substantial!!!
http://www.macworld.com/2006/11/firs...ench/index.php

One computer (2.33ghz) has a faster CPU as well as twice the RAM (2GB vs. 1GB) as compared to the other (2.16ghz). Therefore this comparision is not valid.
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post #11 of 15
11/4/06 at 4:53am
Who in their right mind would spend all that money on a mac and then cripple it by getting the 128 MB version of the X1600? Seems idiotic to me.
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post #12 of 15
11/4/06 at 1:44pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by bsmit007
One computer (2.33ghz) has a faster CPU as well as twice the RAM (2GB vs. 1GB) as compared to the other (2.16ghz). Therefore this comparision is not valid.

It is a valid comparison because they test the 2.33ghz both with the standard 2gb and also 1gb, so when you do the comparison with the 2.16ghz, the only difference is the processor speed (which in this case is negligible) and the the 128mb difference in vram which explains almost 100% of the difference in benchmark performances!
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post #13 of 15
11/4/06 at 1:48pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by 5150 Joker
Who in their right mind would spend all that money on a mac and then cripple it by getting the 128 MB version of the X1600? Seems idiotic to me.

I dont know about you but I find spending an additional $500 for 1 meg of ram, 128mb of vram and a couple of mhz of processor speed is a bit steep! What do I get for $500? 14% increase in gaming speed (which I agree is not insignificant) and the ability to run more apps at the same time!
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post #14 of 15
1/22/07 at 8:39pm
HI Joker what drivers did you use when you overclock the ati x1600 with 256MB and what ATI Tools version are you using?
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post #15 of 15
1/22/07 at 9:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by 5150 Joker
Who in their right mind would spend all that money on a mac and then cripple it by getting the 128 MB version of the X1600? Seems idiotic to me.


my baseline c2d is anything but crippled. come on now.
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