Overclocking the 8600M GS

Written by Andrew Chapman

Thursday, 12 June 2008 10:00

As gaming on notebooks becomes more popular and component prices come down, some bargains can be had in the 'mid range'. One such example is the GeForce 8600M GS 256Mb Notebook Video Adapter. In this article I am testing how far we can push it via some simple overclocks, and how much 'real-life' preformance increase we can expect. In particular I will be comparing it to documented results from the 8600M GT Notebook Video Adapter.

The Notebook being punished today is my much loved BenQ Joybook S41-V36 this is an inexpensive 14.1" Notebook with some cool features for the price :

Intel Centrino Core2Duo T7500 2.2Ghz 4Mb Cache 800Mhz FSB
4Gb DDR2-667 Ram (Standard is 1Gb)
14.1" Widescreen Ultravivid 1280x800 Screen
160Gb SATA HDD, DVD-RW/DL
GeForce 8600M GS 128-bit 256Mb DDR3 up to 1Gb Turbocache
HDMI, VGA Out
Vista Ultimate 64 Bit w/SP1 (Standard is Vista Business 32 Bit)

Firstly I fiddled in RivaTuner, this is a program for overclocking your video card, and it works just fine in Vista, even in the 64 Bit version. After several runs to see what the best balance was I ended up with these settings:

The Core (GPU) Clock has gone from the default setting of 500mhz up by 24 percent to 620Mhz! This puts the Shader Clock at a whopping 1240Mhz!

Memory is a more modest yet respectable gain from 700Mhz to 800Mhz up 14 percent.

I then set these clocks to kick in asWindows boots. I have only tweaked the Performance 3D clocks, as there is no real advantage in overclocking the 2D and Standard3D settings, and wewant the card to run at stock speeds when we are just using Word or the Internet, so it has a chance to cool down!

Now that we have the clocks in order, it is time for some benchmarking! Firstly here are some screen grabs of GPU-Z Showing the status of the card:

Anda screengrab of the NVidia control panel system status (Notice I am using the 64 Bit 175.12 modified inf drivers from LaptopVideo2Go):

The first Benchmark tested was 3DMark 2005. This is a DirectX 9.0 Benchmark, and according to NotebookCheck's write up on the 8600M GS we should expect an average score of around 4165 at the default setting of 1024x768....Well here's what we got with the overclocked beauty:

Damn! thats a whopping 2473 (59%) 3DMarks above the average score, and 1744 (35%) 3DMarks above the Maximum score on this site!

Next comes the newer 3DMark 06, this test, although still based on DirectX 9 incorporates both Shader Model 2.0 and 3.0 Tests. Our result is below:

As you can see, all tests are in the default 1280x800 Resolution this time. A respectable score of 3650 3DMarks!! NotebookCheck has the Average and Maximum score for this card at 2445 and 2878 3DMarks respectively....so far so good!

So, i hear you ask, how does it stack up against it's big brother the 8600M GT? Well, as you may know this card is not very available in the 14.1" form factor, and is hyped as far more powerful, but can it stand up to our OC'd 8600GS...

Card:	8600M GS OC	8600M GT Standard
GPUMhz:	620	475
Memory Mhz:	800	700
Pipelines:	16	32
3DMark 05:	6638	6086(avg)
3DMark 06:	3650	3299(avg)

Even with it's 32 Unified Pipelines the 8600M GT Falls short of our OC'd 8600M GS!!! Please note this is indicative of only one sample, and only in a DX9 Test Suite situation. As I am currently unable to run 3DMark Vantage, I cannot provide a synthetic DirectX 10 result today, but as soon as I can I will revisit.

To summarise, if you cannot afford the 8600M GT, and are looking for a compact laptop with good graphics, the 8600M GS is your best bet, overclocked in this fashion it gives the 8600M GT a whopping in 3DMark 05 and 06, and it is available in the 14.1" Format.

*The model tested today is the GDDR3 Memory model, which is superior to the 8600M GS supplied with GDDR2 (Most HP variants)

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