ATI 2600 vs 9600m GT

[Gata]

How does the 9600m GT stack up against the ATI 2600 that was in an earlier version of the iMac? Better? Worse?

 

[mikeo007]

They are fairly similar in overall performance, but that's only because the 2600 XT was junk (read: cheap) even when it was released

 

[Ice Dragon]

Hmm... I want to say the ATI is better but probably by a slight margin.

 

[Gata]

Would the "slight margin" be noticeable?

 

[Ice Dragon]

Would the "slight margin" be noticeable?

After reading mikeo's post, I say 9600M GT. Sorry for any confusion.

 

[Gata]

That's okay. Thanks!

 

[Markov]

9600m GT. I hate ATI, I've always the worst luck with their products. My dads iMac cannot handle anything graphic intensive well, and the damn thing crashes if you try to even use anti aliasing.

 

[Gata]

I had a feeling that was the case. Never hurts to make sure, though.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

My parents have an iMac with that card, and it plays WoW quite respectively. I don't know about anything else, but it's never given us any trouble at all.

 

[ayeying]

That card actually played games BETTER then the 9600GT when I had my 17" uMBP.

I personally like ATi cards more then nVidia. However, I want nVidia's CUDA ability. It's a love/hate thing right now. The ATi X1600 in this Core Duo runs slightly better then the MacBook Air's 9400M.

These are just all my experiences. I have changed the thermal paste on all these before too.

 

[Gata]

The processor difference may have been a factor, as well as the resolution. You might want to take that into account.

 

[ayeying]

The processor difference may have been a factor, as well as the resolution. You might want to take that into account.

Okay, comparing the iMac to the 17" uMBP.

iMac: 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB Ram (Back Then), 256MB ATi X2600, 1920x1200
MBP: 2.93GHz Core 2 Duo, 8GB Ram, 512MB nVidia 9600M GT, 1920x1200

Back then, the most intensive game I played was CoD: WaW. I was able to run the game at 1920x1200 @ all low and get over 30-45+ fps stable on the iMac. I got ~15-30 fps on the MBP with a few frame drops around.

So maybe it wasn't a entirely fair comparison here. So lets go with the MBA Rev C, iMac and Core Duo MBP. Specs as followed:

MBA: 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB Ram, 256MB nVidia 9400M
iMac: 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 6GB Ram, 256MB ATi X2600
MBP: 2.16GHz Core Duo, 2GB Ram, 256MB ATi X1600

The game I played mostly recently on these systems (before I sold the air) is Star Trek Online.

MBA, 1280x800 w/ all low and ~20 fps.
iMac, 1920x1200 w/ all low got ~30 fps
MBP, 1680x1050 w/ all low got ~35 fps

From my experiences, the mid range cards, the ATi models seems to perform slightly better then the nVidia counterparts.

Note: This is from my personal experiences.