In my opinion, the 8 series cards arent to good (minus the 8800s of course!). I think something like a 7950 will beat this card in most games (if not all) and you should get lag with the 7950, but you might with the 8600... The only reason I would get 8600 is for DX10, but then you would need Vista, and the dx10 games arent out yet, and chances are that the games are going to be so demanding (crysis) that the 8600 will lag like crazy!
cause im thinking about buying this laptop and it has this card in it i got a topic on it http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/545884#3306110
also im not going to do serious gaming cause i got a 360 just small games like aoe3 warcraft ect will this play these with no lag?
AOE 3 is very CPU intensive, I believe. The 8600 GS is not a very highly performing card, so any future games you might wanna play aren't gonna run that well.
Is this good enough to play warcraft and aoe3 game types not the latest games that need real powerful computer PROCESSOR – Intel Centrino Duo processor technology featuring Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7500 2.20GHz MEMORY - 2048MB DDR2 (2 Dimms) HARD DRIVE - 320GB SATA (160+160) 5400RPM OPTICAL DRIVE - LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD±RW with Double Layer Support COLOUR DISPLAY - 17.0" WXGA+ High Definition BrightView Widescreen Display RESOLUTION - 1440 x 900 VIDEO – NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS (NB8M⁄G84M GS) up to 1023MB TurboCache total graphics memory with 256MB dedicated for more than or equal to 2048MB system memory TV-OUT PORT – S-Video Output TV TUNER - HP ExpressCard Digital TV tuner with REMOTE CONTROL
In truth, despite its age, AOE3 requires a pretty powerful systen. I'd guess you'd be able to play it on medium settings at a lower res with that card, but you wouldn't be able to turn the detail all the way up.
