Get the 8800 or stick with 7900GTX?

H

Hvatum

Gawd
Joined
Apr 21, 2005
Messages
882
Hi,

I'm looking to boost my performance, I recently invested in a Sony FW900 24" Widescreen CRT (Cost about $250, local pickup). Just want a quick answer, I play mostly BF2, FEAR, Prey and most other games once in awhile. Would it be more cost effective to go SLI with the 7900GTX, or sell it and get one from the 8800 line?

System:
X2 4800
2GB RAM
Raptor 150
 
Well I think two 7900GTX's in sli score about the same as a single 8800GTS. But with the 8800 you get DX10. It's still a hard decision though. I say if you have the cash I'd get the 8800.
 
I would say to get the 8800 because u get direct x10 just as Sta!nless said but if u are just looking for power they will both do you good.
 
Definitely go with a 8800GTX. Because later, when they get cheaper, you can add in another one for SLI..and like the others said, it has DX10 and performance very similar to 2x7900GTXs...
 
Personally I would hang off a month or two. "IF" ATI gets R600 to market this month, there will be new models and price drops to follow from Nvidia, terrible time to buy IMO.

Best games that will benefit aren't out to March anyway.
 
Another advantage of going 8800 is significant image quality improvements even in DX9--true HQ AF and new AA modes.
 
Meh, wait until nvidia releases drivers that work. THEN consider getting a g80. This will also conspicuously occur as the r600 is released of course.
 
stick with your 7900. I bought an 8800gtx and I regret it. Unless you feel like dealing with the 1000's of problems with the G80 series, stay away for about two months.
 
Battleneter2 said:
Personally I would hang off a month or two. "IF" ATI gets R600 to market this month, there will be new models and price drops to follow from Nvidia, terrible time to buy IMO.

Best games that will benefit aren't out to March anyway.
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Thanks! Based on your thoughts and J-M-E I think I'll wait around and see what happens with the R600, as it stands I can't really complain. I would really like to get some nice 1900x1200 running with the details cranked up. :D

The DX10 on the 8800 is a good point, I hadn't thought about that. That's pretty important as I'm planning on having this card for at least a year, and if games in March will really benefit from DX10 then I want to have a DX10 card, only makes sense. Thanks for the advice.
 
J-M-E said:
stick with your 7900. I bought an 8800gtx and I regret it. Unless you feel like dealing with the 1000's of problems with the G80 series, stay away for about two months.
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Your custom title fits you well!

"1000's of problems" ??? Hardly.....

Mine has ZERO problems. Faster than stink. I think maybe user error may be involved on your end....
 
Grayness in CS:S. I might care if I played CS:S a lot.. Works fine for B&W2, CoH, COD2, and M2:TW. I <3 G80.
 
J-M-E said:
stick with your 7900. I bought an 8800gtx and I regret it. Unless you feel like dealing with the 1000's of problems with the G80 series, stay away for about two months.
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J-M-E, your sig lists your 8800 as 756mb... would that mean that your card has somehow gimped 12 megabytes from the standard 768mb? :confused:

Um, OP if you already have a 7900GTX, I think now is a terrible time to buy (anything). Your current card should play all your current games at respectible quality. IMO the time to buy will be when NVIDIA releases their refresh card to compete with ATI's R600. Prices, performance, heat, size, everything will be better by then.
 
7900GTX still kicks ass. Keep it until Crysis. Then the GeForce 8's will be much cheaper because of the AMD/ATI R600's.
 
Battleneter2 said:
Personally I would hang off a month or two. "IF" ATI gets R600 to market this month, there will be new models and price drops to follow from Nvidia, terrible time to buy IMO.

Best games that will benefit aren't out to March anyway.
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly im sitting on my 7900 and waiting to see whats out when there are actually new games i want to play.
 
TheRapture said:
Your custom title fits you well!

"1000's of problems" ??? Hardly.....

Mine has ZERO problems. Faster than stink. I think maybe user error may be involved on your end....
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I exaggerated a bit. Im really just tired of these bugs with the card. You may not have any but I, and a lot of others do. I dont really see how this could be user error. Installing and configuring a graphics card isint hard at all. My XP install was just formatted about 2 weeks ago. You put the card in the slot, plug the power connectors in, and install the driver. Not much room for error.
 
TheRapture said:
Your custom title fits you well!

"1000's of problems" ??? Hardly.....

Mine has ZERO problems. Faster than stink. I think maybe user error may be involved on your end....
Click to expand...

Presumably you don't use yours to play games lol? Seriously, there are many documented issues with these cards - I kinda wish I'd waited now. As I have linked to in another post, you only need look here to realise that this is happening:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=82074

Personally I have issues with UT2K4 & Q4 (stuttering). Kind of annoying given I've saved hard & my old rig (P4 2.8/2GB RAM & 6800 Ultra) worked smooth as butter!

Ah well. :)

p.s. to the OP - I say stick for now.
 
im not making the mistake again. WAIT 6 months the price on the 8800 should drop a few hundred and hell dx10 isnt even out yet not worth it a whole lot right now.
 
Why not get a 8800GTS? cheaper plus getting another 8800GTX later for SLI isn't exactly that simple- you mostly likely would have to spend another $200.00 to upgrade your power supply to handle 2 8800GTX cards in SLI- you may not have to upgrade you power supply to run 2 8800GTS' in SLI.
 
At least you guys HAVE cards to hold you over until R600 comes out. Until then, I am video card-less and my new build will sit in a box to avoid any blemishing. Hopefully price drops / R600 kicking G80 arse will make up for all of the waiting.
 
reswob said:
At least you guys HAVE cards to hold you over until R600 comes out. Until then, I am video card-less and my new build will sit in a box to avoid any blemishing. Hopefully price drops / R600 kicking G80 arse will make up for all of the waiting.
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you know if you're always waiting for the next release, that build will sit in a box in your closet for the next 400yrs
 
sumofatguy said:
you know if you're always waiting for the next release, that build will sit in a box in your closet for the next 400yrs
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On the contrary, I'm just waiting for this upcoming release. There's no way I'm just going to keep waiting for new refreshes. Once R600 hits and a good comparison is made, I will make my decision then.
 
reswob said:
On the contrary, I'm just waiting for this upcoming release. There's no way I'm just going to keep waiting for new refreshes. Once R600 hits and a good comparison is made, I will make my decision then.
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There's ALWAYS "this upcoming release!" :D

For every k, there's a k+1 at any given moment in time.
 
I would at least buy a 50 buck card to put in it to make sure everything I bought works.
 
jellyhead said:
Presumably you don't use yours to play games lol? Seriously, there are many documented issues with these cards - I kinda wish I'd waited now. As I have linked to in another post, you only need look here to realise that this is happening:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=82074

Personally I have issues with UT2K4 & Q4 (stuttering). Kind of annoying given I've saved hard & my old rig (P4 2.8/2GB RAM & 6800 Ultra) worked smooth as butter!
Click to expand...


That's mostly ALL I do with my 8800GTS, and ALL of my games play fine. The ONLY issue I have is with CS:S and the silvery/gray characters at long range. Q3A works fine, no stuttering. UT2K4 works fine as well. Also, Quake1, Quake2, Quake4, FS2004 and FSX, MX vs. ATV, and Call of Duty 2 work wonderfully with no issues at all. Sorry to hear you have problems, but again, I would check into your methods of driver installs and setup. Just because YOU have issues does not make the entire line of product bad.
 
turbolude said:
WAIT 6 months the price on the 8800 should drop a few hundred and hell dx10 isnt even out yet not worth it a whole lot right now.
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DX10 aside, the 8800's are the fastest out for DX9 titles as well. Keep on waiting six mnonths for prices to drop, then when that time is here, wait another six months because you know what, prices are going to drop again and new stuff is on the way. Then in another six months you can go ahead and wait again. Something faster/cheaper/bigger is ALWAYS a few months away, stop procrastinating and actually BUY something. Shit or get off the pot man....:p
 
TheRapture said:
DX10 aside, the 8800's are the fastest out for DX9 titles as well. Keep on waiting six mnonths for prices to drop, then when that time is here, wait another six months because you know what, prices are going to drop again and new stuff is on the way. Then in another six months you can go ahead and wait again. Something faster/cheaper/bigger is ALWAYS a few months away, stop procrastinating and actually BUY something. Shit or get off the pot man....:p
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Damn right. I get sick of reading "Wait xxxx time for the prices to drop". The prices are ALWAYS going to drop. Something newer will ALWAYS be around the corner. Buy what you want when you can afford it and when you feel you need it.

This type of thinking astounds me. If you wait one year to buy an 8800GTX, it will probably be equal to next years mid range part. So rather than plan on a 8800GTX after it's been discontinued, why not just plan on buying mid range cards once a year.

The 9800XT was only about as fast as the X700Pro that replaced it six months later. The 6800Ultra is only about as fast as the mid range 7 series card of the day. The 7800GTX is probably half the speed of the 7950GX2 and so on. So just buy mid range parts instead every year. If you don't want to constantly upgrade buy the high end card when it's new.

Upgrading yearly=$200-250x2=$500!
Upgrading every two yearrs=$500!

Wow it's the SAME!

On the other hand, you could buy an 8800GTX when the 8900GTX comes out or 8850GTX, or 8800GX2, or whatever, and the price may not actually drop and the performance may be significantly lower than the card that replaced it. Plus availability may be another factor you haven't considered. Trying to find 7900GTX's after the 7950GX2's came out wasn't the easiest thing and they were too expensive compared to the card that replaced it. Go out and price check 7950GX2's. The 7950GX2's are STILL almost the same price as the 8800GTS. In fact they are usually more expensive than the superior 8800GTS. (We did this in another thread already.)

So don't count on pricing situations you can't count on. All you can count on is that guys like me will be unloading their 8800GTX's when a card 25&#37; faster comes out and we'll sell our 8800GTX's for around half their original price price just to get them the hell out at the time. So then you are buying something used, and that adds many other variables to the situation.

The only thing you can count on is the fact that the next years mid range card will likely be very close in power to the highest end card now. NVIDIA and ATI have been pretty consisant over the last couple of years.
 
TheRapture said:
That's mostly ALL I do with my 8800GTS, and ALL of my games play fine. The ONLY issue I have is with CS:S and the silvery/gray characters at long range. Q3A works fine, no stuttering. UT2K4 works fine as well. Also, Quake1, Quake2, Quake4, FS2004 and FSX, MX vs. ATV, and Call of Duty 2 work wonderfully with no issues at all. Sorry to hear you have problems, but again, I would check into your methods of driver installs and setup. Just because YOU have issues does not make the entire line of product bad.
Click to expand...

The UT2004 bug only happens in certain levels- I think it has something to do with the lighting. The Quake4 stuttering is due to the dual core optimizations- if you turn them off in Quake4 the stuttering should stop.
 
Diseaseboy said:
The UT2004 bug only happens in certain levels- I think it has something to do with the lighting. The Quake4 stuttering is due to the dual core optimizations- if you turn them off in Quake4 the stuttering should stop.
Click to expand...

I've experienced the UT2004 problem. You are correct too, it's only certain levels. The Quake 4 problems I have not encountered so far.
 
As far as I am concerned it depends on the monitor and the resolutions you are playiing at as to whether or not you'd see a large enough increase to make the upgrade worth while.
 
skadebo said:
Meh, wait until nvidia releases drivers that work. THEN consider getting a g80. This will also conspicuously occur as the r600 is released of course.
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Do you have a G80 based card? People are blowing the driver issue way out of proportion and with the most recent 97.92 there is only esoteric bugs remaining. Also, I personally don't think that the R600 will be available until Q2 at the earliest.

jellyhead said:
Personally I have issues with UT2K4 & Q4 (stuttering). Kind of annoying given I've saved hard & my old rig (P4 2.8/2GB RAM & 6800 Ultra) worked smooth as butter!
Click to expand...

So you primarily play UT2K4? Why would you need an 8800 for that?


@OP: I sold both of my 7900GTXs and got a single 8800GTX and I am glad that I did. When comparing both setups the 8800 uses less power, creates less heat, less noise, and runs faster. Not to mention the various improvements in filtering.

It is a no brainer IMO.
 
8800 series is worth it just for the better image quality, IMHO. Add in the fact that you have DX10, and it is even better.

I do agree, however, with the statement that right now is a terrible time to buy. It has been hard as hell for me to hold off from buying, but I think once R600 gets release and Vista finally rolls out in retail to the masses, I will be glad that I did. With R600 out, I think we will at least see more competitive prices, no matter how it performs. At the end of this month, Vista will finally start rolling out to the masses in retail. Then you will have DX10 drivers if you choose to go Vista, and undoubtedly you will have better DX9 ones if you stay XP for a while.

The next couple of months should be exciting for video cards.
 
Why is everyone talking about the r600 when there has been no solid evidence of even a good spin yet?
 
J-Mag said:
Why is everyone talking about the r600 when there has been no solid evidence of even a good spin yet?
Click to expand...


I'm not, and could care less about it. when it hits, I still won't buy it, this card will hold me for a year. But to be sure, at that time I will be buying a new card, right on schedule.....the fastest one I can afford at that point in time :p
 
TheRapture said:
I'm not, and could care less about it. when it hits, I still won't buy it, this card will hold me for a year. But to be sure, at that time I will be buying a new card, right on schedule.....the fastest one I can afford at that point in time :p
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You have always got the option of picking up a second GTX... I think I have been on a 9mo GPU cycle myself, but this is the first time since SLI's debut that I haven't bought two cards (well technically I bought two on launch day but I realized one was enough for the games I am currently into)
 
TheRapture said:
I'm not, and could care less about it. when it hits, I still won't buy it, this card will hold me for a year. But to be sure, at that time I will be buying a new card, right on schedule.....the fastest one I can afford at that point in time :p
Click to expand...

You mean that you COULDN'T care less. If you could care less, then you must care about the R600 to some degree, implying that it is possibility to care less about it.

If you couldn't care less, then you are at the minimum level of caring and obviously don't care about the R600 to any degree.

It really is maddening when people get that expression wrong.
 
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