ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 vs GeForce 8600M GS

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the rankingnot ratednot rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
ArchitectureTesla (2006−2010)Rage 9 (2003−2006)
GPU code nameG86M11
Market segmentLaptopLaptop
Release date1 May 2007 (17 years ago)1 June 2004 (20 years ago)

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores166
Core clock speed450 MHz450 MHz
Boost clock speedno data450 MHz
Number of transistors210 million76 million
Manufacturing process technology80 nm130 nm
Power consumption (TDP)20 Wattno data
Texture fill rate3.6001.800
Floating-point processing power0.0288 TFLOPSno data
ROPs44
TMUs84

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Laptop sizemedium sizedmedium sized
InterfaceMXM-IIAGP 8x

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeDDR2DDR
Maximum RAM amount512 MB256 MB
Memory bus width128 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed400 MHz275 MHz
Memory bandwidth12.8 GB/s8.8 GB/s
Shared memory--

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display ConnectorsNo outputsNo outputs

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX11.1 (10_0)9.0
Shader Model4.0no data
OpenGL3.32.0
OpenCL1.1N/A
VulkanN/AN/A
CUDA1.1-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 1 May 2007 1 June 2004
Maximum RAM amount 512 MB 256 MB
Chip lithography 80 nm 130 nm

8600M GS has an age advantage of 2 years, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 62.5% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between GeForce 8600M GS and Mobility Radeon 9700. We've got no test results to judge.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS
GeForce 8600M GS
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
Mobility Radeon 9700

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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4.5 14 votes

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4 11 votes

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Questions & comments

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