Choosing A Graphics Card

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?

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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.
QUOTED From : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_9600#Geforce_9600_GSO

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)



The performance figure is taken from tomshardware : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia...gt,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

 

 

 

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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.

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Well, I would actually stay away from NVIDIA due to this flaw in their hardware: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/new...dia-g84-g86-bad


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

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

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

xboxrulz

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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.

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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..

I guess I need a new motherboard and not only a graphics card to upgrade my computer..

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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.

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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.

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