Upgrading from a 7900 GT

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Darksaber11

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I'm looking to sell my "old" XFX 7900 GT to a friend and upgrade to a DX10 video card. However, I'm more interested in spending as little money as I can than in getting the biggest boost in performance (it's partially a charity thing for the friend, whose card recently fried for no reason). I've been looking at both the 512MB version of the Nvidia 8600 GT and the ATI 3650. As far as I can tell, these both look a little better in performance than my 7900, but I'll admit that I get a little lost when it comes to stream processing units and all that.

My system is as follows:
CPU: AMD 4600+ X2 2.4 GHZ
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI-S4
RAM: 3 GBs Corsair XMS2 (I may upgrade to 4 GBs because my two 1 GB sticks have a lower latency than my older 512 MB sticks)
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit
 
Acclamator said:
The GeForce 9600 GT is only $150 if you look. It's performance is roughly twice that of your card.

I recommend: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130334

Thanks, but I really meant it when I said I want to spend as little money as I can. I don't really feel like I need a big upgrade right now, and I'm going to college this fall, so it's hard to justify spending any money I don't "need" to, but I figure if I buy a DX10 card then I'll get a small performance boost just from that, and also NVidia's purchase of Aegia could provide an interesting use for a "weak" GPU in the future.
 
the 8600GT is a waste, and I do not like the ATI cards personally, u will have 10 times the driver problems with them. get the GeForce 9600 GT and u will be proud of it.
 
Acclamator said:
The 8600 GT and Radeon 3650 is worse that your current card.

Could you elaborate please?
the 8600GT is a waste, and I do not like the ATI cards personally, u will have 10 times the driver problems with them. get the GeForce 9600 GT and u will be proud of it.

Yeah, I'm almost definitely not going to go with an ATI card. I like the cards themselves, but the driver issues that I've heard about (especially with Vista) are not something I want to deal with.
 
the new chip designs of the 9600GT will OWN any 8600GT. at LEAST double the performance. I have it :)

EDIT:
sorry i said "OWN any 9600GT"

oh and also direct x 10 compatibility is really not the factor that makes it more expensive. Also please tell us what the power supply is. I think it should be fine but just making sure. Im running mine on an antec earthwatts 380 and somewere like 17 amps or somehting

The GeForce 9600 GT is only $150 if you look. It's performance is roughly twice that of your card.

I recommend: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130334
oh you already mentiond double the performance.

look at this. This is the one i bought, its 140 with $25 mail in rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814134038

really, the 9600GT is a GREAT all around card, for all but extream gamers. Oh and also, the 8600GT actually has a much lower bang for the buck ratio as the 9600GT and their are no other good cards with anygood performance. Also yeah the 8600GT will hardly increase performance.

Here is an even cheeper card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150275

I remeber Evga had a version that was cheeper or maybe the same but it was alot better except it only had 256mb of memory. They still have the superclocked version though:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130333
 
Be sure you get the EVGA version. They are the best brand of NVIDIA cards, and would technically be considered the "TRUE" NVIDIA card.

Also yeah the 8600GT will hardly increase performance.

Actually it will diminish performance.
 
Acclamator said:
Be sure you get the EVGA version. They are the best brand of NVIDIA cards, and would technically be considered the "TRUE" NVIDIA card.

I've always sworn by XFX. What makes eVGA the "True" NVidia Card?

Acclamator said:
Actually it will diminish performance.

Could you explain why this is? As far as I can tell the hardware is better than the 7900's and I've always understood that DX10 is more efficient than DX9, so why would I not see a slight increase in performance.

I'm not trying to be obstinate, I just really like to understand things. Thanks.
 
direct x 10 might be better in the future, but right now, it acually lowers framerates.

Be sure you get the EVGA version. They are the best brand of NVIDIA cards, and would technically be considered the "TRUE" NVIDIA card.

i have no idea what he means by "True" mabye he means the best and closest to what nVidea recommends or something but yeah i think Evga is the best. Xfx isnt bad but, given the choice, i would go Evga withought hesitation.
The only reason i went with ECS is just because its cheeper and what i ibuild was as cheep as posible. I gues thats what your going for isn't it?
 
I'm looking at this because it's a little more in the price range I'm comfortable with, and you guys are successfully convincing me (but I'm not convinced yet) that I probably don't want an 8600.
 
that card is great for the price, and yes, you don't really want an 8600GT. might as well get something like a 7950 or somehting.
 
Yes the 8800 GS. I forgot about that card. I say EVGA is the true NVIDIA card because they are the number one selling NVIDIA card here in America. They are also one of the closest partners with NVIDIA.
 
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