Choosing A Graphics Card

[turbopowerdmaxsteel 0]

I have finally decided to get a dedicated Graphics card for my PC. My budget is around 300 USD. I have been going through the models at nVidia's website and found the models (8600 GT & 9600 GT) to my liking. My friend suggests that I should go for 8800 because it provides greater performance than 9600 GT. To me, perfomance is not as big a factor as compatibility, in terms of being able to play the latest games, is. In that respect is it better to go for the chip which offers higher memory? My motherboard is Intel 915GAG which supports PCI Express. Will a model stated as being PCI Express 2.0 compatible, work on the same?

[faulty.lee 0]

I have finally decided to get a dedicated Graphics card for my PC. My budget is around 300 USD. I have been going through the models at nVidia's website and found the models (8600 GT & 9600 GT) to my liking. My friend suggests that I should go for 8800 because it provides greater performance than 9600 GT. To me, perfomance is not as big a factor as compatibility, in terms of being able to play the latest games, is. In that respect is it better to go for the chip which offers higher memory? My motherboard is Intel 915GAG which supports PCI Express. Will a model stated as being PCI Express 2.0 compatible, work on the same?

I would recommend a 8800 too. I just did the same recommendation to another friend of mine 2 weeks back. He was really happy with what he's got.

 

My reason for getting the 8800 against the 9600 is that 8800 is a better built chip, and proven to be stable in all aspect. If you looked at NVidia's numbering convention, the initial release will be x800(6800, 7800, 8800, 9800), then subsequent mid range and lower range cheaper version will be release under x600, x500 and x400 (8600, 8500, 8400, 9600, 9500, 9400). These are what we called stripped down variant of the high end version. To really compare, you also need to look into whether you're getting the GT, GS, GSO, GTX, or X2. All these confusing suffix also means diff hardware specs. Some are even "rebranded" version. Such as the 8800 GS vs 9600 GSO.

Geforce 9600 GSO

The Geforce 9600 GSO is essentially a renamed 8800 GS. This tactic has been seen before in products such as the GeForce 7900 GTO to clear unsold stock when it is obsoleted by the next generation. Just like the 8800 GS the 9600 GSO features 96 stream processors, a 550Mhz core clock with shaders clocked at 1,375Mhz, and 384MB memory clocked at 1,600Mhz on a 192-bit memory bus.

QUOTED From : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_9600

 

I did some comparison of pricing vs chipset. 9600GT (512MB DDR3, 256bit) is priced slightly higher then 8800GS and lower than similarly spec-ed 8800GT. GS is out of the question as it's memory interface is only 128bit. The 8800GT is 30% more expensive than 9600GT. The price would tell the story.

 

Here is the spec comparison for stock 8800GT vs 9600GT(taken from NVidia website 8800, 9600GT)

 

8800GT		  9600GTStream Processor		112			 64Core Clock(MHz)		 600			 650Shader Clock(MHz)	   1500			1650Memory Clock(MHz)	   900			 900Memory Bandwidth(GB/s)  57.6			57.6Texture Fill Rate(b/s)  33.6			20.8Performance			 75.9			65.7

The performance figure is taken from tomshardware : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidiagt,1780-20.html. Check out the article as well, it had some good recommendation as well. It did prefer 9600GT (512MB) to the 8800GT (256MB), which should have very close pricing. As far as I know 8800 GT 256MB is out of the market already.

 

You might argue that 9600 has higher clocks, but the performance figure tells most of the story.

 

Another reason to get the 8800 is it's "premium-ness". 8800 is considered high end, thus usually has better quality parts and more goody from the box.

 

Anyway, these are just my recommendation. The decision is still yours to make. Let me know what did you get towards the end and how you like it.

 

Good Luck

[darasen 0]

There really is not much to add to what Faulty Lee has posted. Great response Faulty, kudos to you. I will add though that since you asked about compatibility that both cards are equally compatible. This biggest issue in computability will be the OS. XP uses Direct X 9 whereas Vista uses Direct X 10. Some current games require DX 10 and thus Windows Vista. I believe, with out looking at the specs, that both cards support DX 10. The PCI express 2.0 specifications require 2.0 cards to backwards compatible to the previous version. As far as price to performance goes I would choose the 9600.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Well, I would actually stay away from NVIDIA due to this flaw in their hardware: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/


Right now ATi has a really crazy offer. The 4850 squashes both the 8800 and 9800 (not w/ 2 GPU) with ease for only $200.

xboxrulz

[faulty.lee 0]

Well, I would actually stay away from NVIDIA due to this flaw in their hardware: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/Right now ATi has a really crazy offer. The 4850 squashes both the 8800 and 9800 (not w/ 2 GPU) with ease for only $200.

xboxrulz

That flaws only exist for the mid/low range 8600 and 8400 series. That's why i mention the "premium-ness" of 8800.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

True, and I'm saying how the 4850 (let alone the 4870) can kick the 8800's butt ... lolxboxrulz

[Atomic0 0]

I have a Nvidia 9600GT-powered graphics card at the moment. I prefer Nvidia over ATI because of past problems with the ATI drivers and software. The reason I chose the 9600GT over the 8000 series graphics cards is because I don't play games a lot and don't want to spend an extra money for the other card.

[Quatrux 4]

I still have a geForce 7600 GS and I'm quite happy with it, as I'm not a gamer, only play sometimes to relax and waste some time But my friend was buying a graphics card and he also mentioned something that he really wants a 8800 and mentioned some others too, but he will still choose a bit later.. The problem with graphics cards is that when I changed to 7600 GS I didn't really feel any difference from my previous graphics card, well only Winamp with modern skin support started working much better, I mean faster and maybe transparent modes aren't so slow.. :DI guess I need a new motherboard and not only a graphics card to upgrade my computer..

[turbopowerdmaxsteel 0]

Thank You everybody for your advice. After reading faulty.lee's reply and the article regarding the over heating problems in the low to mid range chips of 8 and 9 series, I decided to go for 8800 GT. I wouldn't have chosen an ATI model because it is said to be less compatible than nVidia's cards. The salesman at the store made some calls to make sure that the 8800 GT would run with my PC. He recommended against buying 8800 GT priced at 10,000 INR because that would require an additioanl overhead of 2,000 INR for an "SLI SMPS". I don't think there is anything like an "SLI SMPS", considering the fact that its a technology to enable two cards to work together. Perhaps they refer to high wattage SMPSs with this name. I had read in a review of 8800 GT that it required only a 400 W SMPS, mine being 450 W. But, the salesman was pretty sure that it would require atleast a 600 W one. This power issue and the worry about compatibility led me to 8600 GT, which was also, the highest model in the shop.I am not sure if his recommendations were so because they only had 8500 GT and 8600 GT models at that time. Apparently, the store is one of the biggest seller of Computer peripherals in Kolkata. But, it did appear that he could have got me a 9600 GT or a 8800 GT by calling the local nVidia store. Anyways, I bought 8600 GT for 4,000 INR. At first I was unhappy of being tricked into buying whatever was available. But, it all seems for the best now. The 8600 GT lags behind the 8800 GT only in the performance department. As I mentioned before, compatibility with latest games is what I prefer, even with a bit of lower performance. The 8800 GTX has been tested to be 5-10% faster than 8800 GT and it costs more than its double (23,000 INR). How better could the 8800 GT would be (over 8600 GT), anyways?I played the demo for the PC version of Direct X (which I previously could not). The game ran extremely smooth at 1024 x 768. Vista's performance index increased to 4.2 from 1.0 and I was able to experience Vista's Aero look. The translucent title bar and Windows Flip 3D looks really awesome.All in all, I am pretty happy with what I got.

[faulty.lee 0]

Good to hear that, as long as you're happy with it, that's most important.The SLI SMPS is actually higher wattage power supply with multiple rail options of output. Mostly 12V. Since high end graphic card generally require more power, having independent rail does help in terms of stability. The power pulling from the graphic card will not effect the voltage on the motherboard.One thing I don't like about power supply manufacturer is the way they cheat consumer. your 450Watt power supply, if it's from a non branded company, most like it's only 250 to 300Watt. 450Watt is quoted as peak wattage normally sustainable for much less than 1 sec, or even 10ms. Then some actually quote another figure called "real power" in fine print, which is the 250 or 300Watt figure. These power supplies is selling for less than RM50 here, around USD15. Branded one with the same wattage of 450Watt "real power" would cost you more than RM200 or USD57. So you can imagine the kind of scam that's going on.Now back to your power requirement. If you did get a 8800 GT, it might runs happily at the moment, but after say a few months down the road, your power supply will degrade more (probably due to higher stress), then it will show sign of failing, such as hanging and reboot by itself. I notice that normally power supply itself degrade about 10% per year. A "real power" 400watt power supply would be only be slightly more than 200Watt after 4 years.Also, branded power supply is more efficient. Well only matters if your electricity tariff is high.

[turbopowerdmaxsteel 0]

The 8600 GT drains a lot of power as well. The UPS is unable to provide more than a minute's backup. I had to remove the 17 inch monitor from the UPS and put it on direct AC. Now, whenever there is a power cut, the monitor gets turned off and I have to blindly hibernate the PC. I use hibernate because its much faster and has the added benefit of saving my workspace. The power and sleep switches have been configured to do a hibernate. Sometimes, though, especially when I have been gaming, the PC just refuses to Shut Down or go into hibernation.I am really surprised to know that the companies would cheat us by reporting the power to be higher than what it actually is. Its kind of like the misreporting of disk space that the manufacturers do. (1 GB = 1000 MB and not 1024 MB)

[RGlubbe 0]

There really is not much to add to what Faulty Lee has posted. he sayd everything...nice work

[iGuest 3]

Help me select the best

Choosing A Graphics Card

 

I'm hoping to buy a vga card nd I have selected several cards..But it is difficut to select one...

Here are the cards I have chosen

 

Asus en9800gt 128sp's - 725 core clock - 2ghz memory clock

Asus en8800gt 112 sp's - 600 core clock - 1.8ghz memory clock

Asus en9600gt top 64 sp's - 720 core clock - 2ghz memory clock

 

The 9600gt top has low sp's but high clock speeds...

Is it better than the 9800gt or the 8800gt?

 

-question by Adrian

[iGuest 3]

does intel915gag support core 2 duo processorsChoosing A Graphics CardI have intel915gag board with 3gig processor.I have recently bbought a asus 3650 1GB video card and I have installed 1GB RAM.Now I was willing to get a core 2 duo processor but if it is being supported by my borad.So Please tell me if my board can handle the burden of a core 2 duo processor.I hv no much budget buy a new board which really supports core 2 duo.Thanks hoping fair replies. 

 

-reply by imran