8800GTX or 8800GTS ???

[JimShady23]

Hey all, just finished all my christmas shopping and to my my delight I have $600 left over and burning a whole into my pocket.

I was going to upgrade to a core 2 duo platform, but id need a lot more than $600 and my currant setup is doing me just fine.

So I figure why the hell not get a nice top of the line video card for once.
(usually am a value minded type of guy when it comes to video cards ie 7600 gt kinda guy) I never actually spent more than $200 on a single video card and decided to take the plundge into the extreme market.

So the question is this, how much better is the 8800gtx compaired to the 8800gts ?

I can get a GTX for $619.00 or the GTS for $459 at newegg wich to buy though ????? Both cards are more than enough for any game in existance and the GTX for sure blows 2 7900GTX in SLI out of the water.

I for one would be the first guy to buy the cheaper of the two cards but for around $200 more is the GTX that much better ? And since I do have the cash for the GTX will I be kicking myself if I dont buy it ?

Although I will probably be kicking myself anyways when they will most likley release a 8900GTX in a month or so LoL

Any insight to help me make a choice would be great


Thanks Guys and Gals

 

[DonNagual]

Ah, the endless debate

I have a 7800GT. I bought it when the 7800 lineup was top of the line and had the option of the GT or the GTX. Same as you, the GT lineup was much cheaper. I have no regrets. The 7800GT is still an amazing card today and plays all games on high to mid-high settings.

Others may disagree, but I say get the GTS and save the $170. As you said, the GTS is still going to slice through any game out now like butta.

 

[agi_shi]

You're going to kicking yourself either way if you get an G80 chip from NVidia. ATI's R600 chips are going to blow the G80 chips out of the water, so I suggest you spend your money on them.

 

[agissi]

Show some proof or references agi_shi. Im not easily persuaded.

 

[JimShady23]

Thats what they always say pre release, plus ATI always releases with a huge pricetag especially if it does live up to the pre release hype, why ? Cause they can lol. In truth from their past "MONSTER CARD" releases they have only been a few FPS higher in CERTAIN GAMES than Nvidia's best offering. I can live with 5-6 fps difference.

And if this single card performs better than 2 7900 GTX in SLI then I am good for about a year and a half of gaming.....At the end of that year and a half I can buy a second for SLI at a big discount and be good for another year lol.

And I want to get one before they are sold out for christmas.

And The 8800 series is here in front of me, I can buy one....

Like I said I really dont care about 5-6 FPS difference in some game I will never play that ATI likes to reference with.

ALL I CARE ABOUT IS THAT IT SUPPORTS DIRECT X 10 AND I WONT HAVE TO UPGRADE FOR A LONG LONG LONG TIME !!!


My question was which card should I drop my money on and is there any major performance gain in the GTX over the GTS to justify the $150 steaper price tag.

NOTHING TO DO WITH ATI's New Cards.....YES, I READ THE HYPE AND TRUTHFULLY ITS PRE-RELEASE CRAP AS USUALL FROM ATI....

 

[TimeParadoX]

Like agi_shi said the ATI's R600 will kick the crap out of the 8800 because it has alot higher clock speed and I think it has like 60 or so pipelines, I saw a picture and a few reviews on it from ATI's website and it was said to be atleat 5-10x better then the 8800

 

[agissi]

Hahaha 5 to 10x, good joke! LOL

Im no fan boy for either side, bought both cards plenty times, but 5x-10x haha BRB while I go die.

 

[JimShady23]

LoL

May I join you for that death ---agissi--- ??? )

Ok, if the card is going to be 5-10x faster than the 8800's

1.) that means a $1000 price tag

2.) absolutly no market for new products in the future year. As I cant see any game in the next year needing more than a 8800GTS

3.) system bottlenecks even if it can preform that well most systems wont be able to cope with that kinda power cpu, and hd wise.

Got why the hell does everyone need to make a debate, I asked a few simple questions and just want a few simple opinions......

NOWHERE DID I ASK ABOUT ATI PRODUCTS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[wolfram]

I'd choose the 8800GTS. However, if you have the cash, why not pick the 8800GTX? It's gonna last more time than the GTS.

Regards :wave:

 

[TimeParadoX]

Lol knew you would get the joke ---agissi---

Well seriously though, I heard the new ATI card would be better then the 8800
but then again I wont upgrade to DX10 cards till I want to. For now I'll stick with my SLI 7900s

 

[nickslick74]

Here's my take.

Get the GTS, which cheaper and not quite as fast. But do you think you would really notice a huge difference? THG has them benchmarked on their VGA charts. The GTX is faster, but not by a noticable amount. Take the extra $170 and add some more case cooling and a GPU cooler. In 1-2 years slap in another in SLI and you'll be set.

 

[agi_shi]

Hahaha 5 to 10x, good joke! LOL

Im no fan boy for either side, bought both cards plenty times, but 5x-10x haha BRB while I go die.

I've read of a minimum 1GB VRAM and others 2GB VRAM, with a 512-bit interface. That sound better my friend =)? Specially with the super-high clocks and 60 pipes.

ATI had actually made the card physically longer than the 8800GTX. 13" I believe. Now they're revising that so that it's ATLEAST as small as the 8800GTX.

 

[sllewe]

I've read of a minimum 1GB VRAM and others 2GB VRAM, with a 512-bit interface. That sound better my friend =)? Specially with the super-high clocks and 60 pipes.

ATI had actually made the card physically longer than the 8800GTX. 13" I believe. Now they're revising that so that it's ATLEAST as small as the 8800GTX.

While the 512-bit memory interface is bigger, along with 2gb of Vram, I seriously doubt that those will give the card 5-10x the performance.

 

[Sharkfood]

I'd say go with the GTS.

On the R600 vs. G80 thing above... from the surface, dynamic branching in shaders already is around 5x-10x faster even on the X1900 series cards, so the G80 may have some architectural problems that current benchmarks are a bit misleading away from. How it may really perform in the first slew of DX10 titles with the newer raised limits and dynamic branching is a gamble. Can anyone remember the FX series? History is repeating itself... all the initial benchmarks made it look like the hottest thing going, several voices were trying to explain the serious register and architectural/shader shortcomings, then once shader/dx9.0 games came out, they were grossly underperforming.

We have no idea how/what the R600 will do as it still has to be put through it's paces. My personal opinion is the G80 is going to get a few early re-spins and the compiler/drivers need some help right now as to be expected for a new product. The GTS is a great card *right now* on DX9 games with the settings cranked-up, but I'd be a bit alarmed towards how new DX10 games w/ larger and more complex (and surely more usage of dynamic branching) shaders will function.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

The GTS is a great card to be sure but the GTX is a higher performing version of it. Get the GTX if u want bleeding-edge performance and future-proofing or if u just want to be future-proof, get the GTS and be done with it. In either case, you'll have a card that blows all of ours right out the window. Have a good one!:grinthumb

 

[MetalX]

While the 512-bit memory interface is bigger, along with 2gb of Vram, I seriously doubt that those will give the card 5-10x the performance.

Not just that. The memory bandwidth is 140.8 GB/s compared to the 8800GTXs 86.4GB/s. That means that the memory on the R600 (GDDR4 obviously) runs at 2200MHz on a 512-bit bus. 2200x64 = 140800MB/s or 140.8GB/s. Core clock is supposed to be somewhere in the 700-800MHz range. So compare:

8800GTX - 570MHz core clock, 1800MHz memory clock on 384-bit bus for 86.4GB/s of memory bandwidth.

R600 - 700-800MHz core clock, 2200MHz memory clock on 512-bit bus for 140.8GB/s memory bandwidth.

So maybe its not 5-10x faster. It's probably not even 2x faster. But it probably IS 30-40% faster.

 

[agi_shi]

Not just that. The memory bandwidth is 140.8 GB/s compared to the 8800GTXs 86.4GB/s. That means that the memory on the R600 (GDDR4 obviously) runs at 2200MHz on a 512-bit bus. 2200x64 = 140800MB/s or 140.8GB/s. Core clock is supposed to be somewhere in the 700-800MHz range. So compare:

8800GTX - 570MHz core clock, 1800MHz memory clock on 384-bit bus for 86.4GB/s of memory bandwidth.

R600 - 700-800MHz core clock, 2200MHz memory clock on 512-bit bus for 140.8GB/s memory bandwidth.

So maybe its not 5-10x faster. It's probably not even 2x faster. But it probably IS 30-40% faster.

Dont forget the larger amount of ram and pixel pipes.

 

[JimShady23]

Got both

Well to cut out the middle man I decided to order Both cards.

I had a past customer call me today and guess what, he wants a high performance game machine for his kid.

Baically I told him that I have the GTS Comming in and I might be able to get ahold of a GTX and explained the price difference and he was fine with that.

So that means I can test out both cards and see what the real diff will be on my machine between the 2.

From what I have heard is that the GTX might be a little overkill for me as some reviews say anything shy of a 6600 Core 2 Duo (give or take a little) may be a bottleneck for the GTX. Dont know if thats true, but I want to take it into concideration.

Im on a X2 4200 939 system at the moment and I really dont plan on upgrading for the next year or so. I may grab a X2 4800 and slap it in there if the price keeps getting right but other than that I dont see myself upgrading.
I want to see if AMD has a hot new platform up their sleeve or if Intel is going to hold the performance market for some time. I guess we will see in the next year......

 

[wolfram]

If you have a 4200 939 system, then the GTS would be the best choice. The GTX might be bottlenecked by the CPU and DDR400 RAM. I hope you have dual-channel enabled, that should help

 

[F1N3ST]

The new athlons have the same speed (Except for the 5200+ and higher) and I think maybe 1M of Cache Per core, but Im not sure, and 65-nm. So there may be like a 5% increase in performance due to the larger cache, and a better overclocker because of 65nm, but who knows lol.

 

[MetalX]

Dont forget the larger amount of ram and pixel pipes.

Yea well lots of people talked about the RAM so I didn't bother mentioning it again. But the R600 doesn't have pixelpipes. Just like the 8800GTX. They have a unified shader architecture, and from current info, the R600 has half the unified shader units that the 8800GTX has but they run at a higher clock speed.

 

[JimShady23]

Yeah

Im not expecting AMD to come out with anything astounding, but you never know if AMD is planning on releasing a huge silent but deadly fart on Intel

But in reality I think AMD is concentrating on working out any bugs with its newly purchased ATI. Also they are pushing very hard to get into more and more OEM markets.

 

[sllewe]

Not just that. The memory bandwidth is 140.8 GB/s compared to the 8800GTXs 86.4GB/s. That means that the memory on the R600 (GDDR4 obviously) runs at 2200MHz on a 512-bit bus. 2200x64 = 140800MB/s or 140.8GB/s. Core clock is supposed to be somewhere in the 700-800MHz range. So compare:

8800GTX - 570MHz core clock, 1800MHz memory clock on 384-bit bus for 86.4GB/s of memory bandwidth.

R600 - 700-800MHz core clock, 2200MHz memory clock on 512-bit bus for 140.8GB/s memory bandwidth.

So maybe its not 5-10x faster. It's probably not even 2x faster. But it probably IS 30-40% faster.

And to that I cant argue, I was just saying that 5-10x was absolutely off the mark.

 

[MetalX]

Sorry JimShady for hijacking your thread. Now I have some (hopefully) al least remotely useful advice. My personal opinion is that you should take the 8800GTS because tomshardware.com posted an article talking about how the 8800GTX is bottlenecked by pretty much anything slower than a Core 2 Extreme.