DX10 card Benchmarks VS current M1705/1710

The interesting thing about Santa Rosa is not DX10 but rather the higher FSB, faster wireless, and other in system speed improvements.

Bob

well I will have 2 new 8800 GTS 640 meg cards to compare to my 2 7900gs cards in my desktop

We'll see how the two benchmarks compare

If i remember my 2 7900gs cards benchmarked around 11k on 3Dmark06

Thats shameful....except luckily the high end cards are better than current ones ^_^

Please do!!!

The 8600 has been pretty darned disappointing so far. It costs as much as the X1950 from the previous generation, while being slower at the same time. A next-gen card that doesn't beat the performance of similarly priced previous-gen parts should be considered at least partial failures. The thermals for notebooks are probably the only saving grace, but in a desktop, the 8600 just doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, on the one hand you get DX10 support that the X1950 series lacks, but on the other hand, just how fast will such a slow card run DX10 games anyhow? Besides that, ATI's drivers have been quite a bit better than nVidia's for quite some time now, so you've got to factor that in.

So, to sum up, I suppose we can be excited that the 8600 is going to bring in more performance for the same thermals into notebooks, but there's not much to be excited about other than that.

Well a quick comparison between my 2 7900 GS cards in SLI mode
scored 9000 with 3DMark06 with Stock drivers

My Single BFG 8800 GTS OC 640 Meg Card scored 9200 with 3DMark06

SO when the second card comes in this week we'll see how the pair score, than I OC the crap out of it and see how high we can get it.

lol Yeah I now, but it does give you some Ideal how much better the 8800 Series are over the 7900 series.

and after tuning things my last 3DMark06 score came upto 10,062 on a single 8800 Card

well the 8600 beats out the 7600 in 3dmark but lost in real world game performance. so while the score is good i wonder what the ingame scores will be

I'm almost decided on M1710. If I'd really need DX10 I could get myself desktop later. Th question is - to get it now, or there will be considerable price drop soon ? I could probably live with my current laptop month or two...

Yeah but it would be very stupid to buy the xps m1710 then, let alone now. While the differences aren't massive (faster fsb, faster ram, nand caching, higher clock speed, single core overclocking, other power consumption improvements), they are certainly significant and will thus much reduce the resale value of the current laptops. Especially considering that any new G80/G81 cards probably won't be compatible with the m1710.

Every consumer will realise that Centrino 'Pro' will be better then Centrino and that DX10 is better then DX9.

Hopefully it doesn't take dell long to update the m1710 after the release of santa rosa/dx10 video. Otherwise they will face a period of poor sales and a lot of confused consumers wondering why dell is selling obsolete technology in their top-of-the-line range.

Besides I can always sell my M1710 and buy the newer platform when it comes out, the re-sale value of the XPS line has been and I expect always will be good. And having the XPS level support with Complete Care adds to that value.

I agree with your statements.

DX10 is here but honestly I don't expect it to be mature until at least Mid 2008, my reasons are:

1. Lack of games.
2. Today's most played games are based on DX9 and unless they get a DX10 upgrade people won't see nedd for a DX10 card.
3. Vcards have are too power hungry so fitting a high end part on a 17in laptop is impossible unless they move to 65nm or maybe less.

It's going to be a long time yet before games require DX10 exclusively without robust DX9 support. There simply isn't the market for it. Even after mobile cards are available, developers have to wait for sufficient market saturation and we don't even have anywhere near that yet in the desktop market.

Well... benchmarks from zeptoforums show the 8600M GT to be around 3/4 as fast as the 7800go gtx. Which means that the graphics improvements are at least 50% (over 7700go) and probably higher for the higher end models. So far they certainly do compare, although I would have liked a greater then 50% improvement.
Anyway, DX10 is only one (albeit large) new feature. Santa Rosa will probably be just as important, offering a whole list of improvements (which I mentioned before).


DX10 will still probably only be available under vista, DX10 games will include DX9 modes for a looong time to come, which allows games to be compatible with Vista (DX10/9) and XP(DX9) at the same time. The reason microsoft only includes DX10 with vista is to try to force gamers (who want the visual/graphics improvements) to upgrade. It would unlikely for microsoft to backtrack on this.


The improvements in DX10 graphics cards aren't *just* for DX10 - DX9 games will run much much faster as well. The benchmarks at zeptoforums (which show as much as a 50% improvement) are all DX9.
Your not going to have to use DX10/vista to see an increase in speed.

Anyway If you buy a new Dell before an update, your going to be stuck with slower ram, a slower fsb, a lower clock speed and a more power hungry processor then if you had waited for a Santa Rosa inclusive update.


Neither do I. Dell putting a 15" design card in a 17" laptop would be horrendously stupid, considering that the main reason people buy 17" Dell laptops is for the desktop level performance.
IMO Dell will either update their laptops to Santa Rosa and continue to use 7900's, or they will simply wait until mobile 8800 chips are available to do so.