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ATI x1600 128 meg vs the ATI x1600 256 meg?

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PuNkErX

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 16, 2004
38
0
Hey,

I've been searching for a while and I cannot find any good benchmarks showing the advantages of the 256 over the 128. Does anyone here have any?

The main reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to justify spending the couple hundred extra to get the 2.0 vs the 1.8, and so far the only thing that is catching me is the videocard. Mainly because I don't think the CPU speed difference is a whole lot, and I can upgrade the other components, HD, RAM, etc on my own.

Thanks for the help,

PuNk
 
PuNkErX said:
Hey,

I've been searching for a while and I cannot find any good benchmarks showing the advantages of the 256 over the 128. Does anyone here have any?

The main reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to justify spending the couple hundred extra to get the 2.0 vs the 1.8, and so far the only thing that is catching me is the videocard. Mainly because I don't think the CPU speed difference is a whole lot, and I can upgrade the other components, HD, RAM, etc on my own.

Thanks for the help,

PuNk
Click to expand...

The vram won't matter much except for stuff that uses extremely large textures (say, Doom 3 on max settings).
 
The only advantage of larger vRAM in games is that you can set higher texture quality.

In OS, however, more VRAM means overally smoother quartz extreme performance with lots of windows on the screen.

The CPU difference is not very big (1.8 vs 2), but is definately noticable in rendering/encoding apps

If I were you, I'd get the one with 256 MB, just becasue of future cool games like UT2007 with awesome graphics.

BTW get at least 1 GB RAM, Intel-based Macs LOVE RAM even more than PPC Macs

Hope this helps :)
 
I decided to go with the 1.8, for a few reasons, since it's a little bit cheaper, etc, lol.

Thanks for the quick responses.
 
I would go and look at the Bare Feats tests on this. Note the part where the iMac 128MB VRAM beats the MacBook 256MB VRAM on game refresh rates. What's going on with that? Well, the iMac has the desktop X1600 chip which runs about 1GHz or so, and the MacBook's Radeon Mobility X1600 is clocked at about half the speed. Add to that only having a 128 bit memory bus, and it adds up to a card where the extra VRAM is simply wasted on gaming.

I suspect it would be marginally useful for Core Image stuff (I note that the BareFeats MacBook very slightly beats the iMac on Imaginator) and significantly useful for Core Image in combination with dual displays. I think this is the real reason for the VRAM -- keep the dual display folks happy and unnecessarily (but profitably) bring everyone else along for the ride.
 
I will be getting the MBP with 256MB of VRAM because I want to be able to use it with my 21" monitor using an extended desktop. If I do that, then I will have 128MB per screen (which is important at high resolutions). If you never use more than one monitor, it won't be an issue at all. Even if you do, it may still not be an issue for you.

When I use my iBook in extended desktop mode, everything becomes painfully slow because I only have 16MB of VRAM per screen, and the GUI must then be done in software....I really like the extra desktop space though, so I put up with it.
 
Kingsly said:
I have no problems running Halo, Splinter cell, etc. on my 1.8 MBP with full graphics settings.
Click to expand...

I really don't think that those old games are good examples for how the MBP handles games. Go install Doom 3 or UT 2004 and try that out on full graphics settings. I know that UT 2004 has Universal Binaries out, dunno about Doom 3. I would be a little sad if they didn't run well since they came out over a year ago, so that wouldn't be good for games that have yet to come out.
 
jrk07 said:
I really don't think that those old games are good examples for how the MBP handles games. Go install Doom 3 or UT 2004 and try that out on full graphics settings. I know that UT 2004 has Universal Binaries out, dunno about Doom 3. I would be a little sad if they didn't run well since they came out over a year ago, so that wouldn't be good for games that have yet to come out.
Click to expand...

A stock 1.83 MBpro reached 37FPS on universal UT2004, not bad for a laptop with minimum RAM.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Apple_MacBook_Pro_1_83GHz_Intel_Core_Duo/4505-3121_7-31736778-2.html?tag=nav
 
dblissmn said:
I would go and look at the Bare Feats tests on this. Note the part where the iMac 128MB VRAM beats the MacBook 256MB VRAM on game refresh rates. What's going on with that? Well, the iMac has the desktop X1600 chip which runs about 1GHz or so, and the MacBook's Radeon Mobility X1600 is clocked at about half the speed. Add to that only having a 128 bit memory bus, and it adds up to a card where the extra VRAM is simply wasted on gaming.
Click to expand...

Does iMac has the desktop variant? No, I doubt it. All previous iMacs had Mobility modifications of GPUs, even underclocked mobility ones :eek:

For example my rev. B's radeon 9600 is clocked at 200 MHz Core, while it should be 300 :eek: :confused: :eek:
 
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