8800GTX or wait for 8900/8950GX2?

[Munson]

Money is no object. So opinions on the titular question please.

I'm currently running an AM2 7950GX2 setup but I want to upgrade. Would slamming in an 8800GTX see me into Crysis @ 1680x1050, or am I better off rebuiding with a Conroe heart pumping blood through an 8900GTX or even the rumoured 8950GX2. I've had a sliiiiiiiiiightly bad experience with the 7950GX2 regarding drivers, well under Vista anyway so I might go back to old an school single GPU card such as the 8800GTX, which frankly should show my GX2 a clean pair of heels anyway. But then...will my AM2 CPU strangle such a card?

ARGHH!! The upgrade bug has bitten already, and all that implies! :rasp:

 

[Bloooor]

I would go for the conroe mate and get the 8XXX card when it comes out. What is it you do? Gaming? Decoding? Rendering etc

 

[Munson]

It is 99% a games machine, with a fair sprinkling of PARing and unRARing if I happen to be on that PC doing some usenet shizzle. I use my laptops for everything else.

 

[Adam K]

i'd go for an s3virge or maybe splash some cash on an ati rage

 

[wozzaa]

Id say just drop an 8800gtx or go ati with there new cards coming soon hopefully will drive prices down anyway.

What im waiting for benchmarks are already floating about the net so cant see it being much longer till they are released.

Dont go conroe to be perfectly honest you wont see much of a difference not in games anyway as CPU power plays a lot less important part than GPU power. If you look at benchmarks you will see its only like 2 or 3fps differences really not worth the £500+ upgrade.

 

[Munson]

Id say just drop an 8800gtx or go ati with there new cards coming soon hopefully will drive prices down anyway.

What im waiting for benchmarks are already floating about the net so cant see it being much longer till they are released.

Dont go conroe to be perfectly honest you wont see much of a difference not in games anyway as CPU power plays a lot less important part than GPU power. If you look at benchmarks you will see its only like 2 or 3fps differences really not worth the £500+ upgrade.

Hmmm you may be right, it's not like my current setup is poor. M2N32SLi Deluxe with 2GB DDR2, AM2 4600+ 7950GX2

Perhaps slapping in an 8***GTX would provide a much needed boost and run Crysis at high res. I am UberFussy with franerates though so time will tell I guess. Either way I will end up with the GFX card, so I could easily upgrade the rest later.

 

[wozzaa]

Well your only running it at 1680x1050 not the highest resolutions known so cant see it being much of an issue. Especially considering that 1 8800gtx in a few games is still a lot more powerful than your current 7950GX2.

If you want some more CPU power you can always overclock as well. had my 4400+ to 2.8ghz stable which puts it as a 5200+ i think.

 

[Munson]

Done the OC thing, it made big big gains in benchmarks but not really a massive difference in games, so my mobo is currently running stock. My biggest issue really is that my 7950GX2 does not seem to be returning any performance under Vista. Although it appears to be installed correctly, it's offering roughly half the frame rates that it did under XP. This suggests that the Vista drivers simply cannot utilise both GPUs properly. It is also obviously only DX9, so now might be as good a time as any to upgrade, but I'm debating wether or not to wait for the 2nd gen 8900 Nvidia cards, or go 8800GTX right here and now

 

[Munson]

Perhaps I will go back to ATI. While my 6800Ultra and 7950GX2 have both been power cards in their day, each has always suffered from small artifacting or AA problems in sooooome games. My old ATI 9800Pro was flawless in this regard. I definitely feel that ATI drivers provide a more solid platform. I think of ATI as Honda, and Nvidia as Renault.

 

[David]

was on tomshardware the other day looking at the vg charts and it looks like ati are ahead the at the moment. i'd wait till you can get hdmi out dx10 on a single card setup. isnt' the highest only like 756mb RAm too, won't the next gen ones be 1gig?

 

[wozzaa]

ATI aren't ahead currently there new card isn't even out yet and the 8800 from nvidia is a lot faster than the x1950xt.

Doubt HDMI will come on graphics cards to be honest possibly might have it like they do on my current card where it breaks out with a wire that has component input / outputs. But its pretty pointless.

DVI is just the same as HDMI minus HDMI's ability to send sound.

And ignore the ram thing its a marketing tool 1gig of video ram is totally pointless right now.

 

[Clio_Matt]

get a 8800 gtx and then ram another one in, in a few months time when theyve come down in price, thats what im doing with my new system.

 

[Munson]

So the current thoughts are to keep my CPU/Mobo and add serious graphics hardware? LOL I only played FEAR & Prey on the 7950GX2, although it did totally own those games :approve: Bloody expensive games then really! lol

 

[Darren S]

Roy - you know my views m8 - keep what you've got and enjoy it. You're pretty much the same spec as me M2N32-SLi Deluxe, AM2 4800, 2x 7900GTX and with 4GB DDR2-800 under the lid.

I'm not even considering Vista yet - let alone the 8800 (and above) range of cards.

You're doing the equivalent of umming-and-arring about rumours of an upcoming Clio Turbo, when you've already got the keys to a perfectly capable 182 Cup already.

Enjoy what you've got now and make the most of it. Once the dust settles on the next gen kit, then it's time to have a rethink!

D.

 

[rich[182]]

New ATI DX10 card out in next 6-8 wks, maybe worth waiting to see what it's like, sounds very promising

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20070403235139.html

 

[David]

hdmi will be worth it though mate, if you get a high def drive, you won't be able to run 1080p through component....

 

[Munson]

Dazza, I am already running Vista though on TheBeast2, and I think I will stick with it now. I'm in no major rush so I will probably wait until Crysis comes out and see the lay of the land then

 

[Rasclart]

Munson your a pussy

 

[Munson]

You wish I was a pussy so you could f**k me

 

[wozzaa]

hdmi will be worth it though mate, if you get a high def drive, you won't be able to run 1080p through component....

DVI = HDMI without the sound. Hence no need for HDMI on graphics hardware. Most ocmpanies way of adding it is just stick a DVI to HDMI adaptor in the box simple and cheap.

 

[Darren S]

Dazza, I am already running Vista though on TheBeast2, and I think I will stick with it now. I'm in no major rush so I will probably wait until Crysis comes out and see the lay of the land then

LOL - you never know. By then, they may have got off their fat arses and sorted out a proper Vista driver for your 7950 and Crysis will run good enough - obviously, with DX10 of course.

D.

 

[Munson]

LOL perhaps, but since the 7950GX2 is DX9 only, I will definitely be upgrading to whatever is the best DX10 around that time. I have also decided to skip the Conroe generation and see what the future brings from Intel & AMD. I've only really played 2 games on TheBeast2 so a new gfx card in TheBeast2.1 makes more sense than building TheBeast3

 

[Darren S]

^^^^^ - lol, me being stupid. I meant "...without DX10 of course"

Personally, I think the whole 64-bit arena is one to keep and eye on. If they can manage say quad-core CPU, with true 64-bit support in games, then I think the results could be fecking amazing.

64-bit also has something like a theoretical memory address limit of 16 billion GB. Just a 'tad' more than we have in our PCs at the moment!

Keep us other geeks posted as to what you do though, m8!

D.