Graphic Cards. The essential question

Latest or cheapest ?

there seem to be a overwhelming trend in favour of getting the latest once your current one dies out. Possibly because it will last longer or play better games. But when crysis came out, I played it on high with my 256 mb Nvidia 7900 GT.

Now it's dying, and I have a choice between 256 Nvidia 9600 GT or a 8600 GT 1GB. Which should I get ? the 8600 is cheaper but will it last longer ?.

 

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Information for your specific dilemma:

The 9600GT's processor is far better than the 8600's.

9600GT with 256MB is like weighing a cheetah down. It'll still run faster than most, but it's not optimal.
8600GT with 1GB is like giving a naughty chimpanzee a gourmet meal. It's a waste.

I believe your 7900GT still performs faster than the 8600GT. The 7900GT was in the top-tier for the 7000 series while the 8600GT is in the lower tier of its series. The 9600GT will be faster than your 7900GT while the 8600GT will be a downgrade.

By the way, the 8800GT with 256MB has a better processor than the 9600GT despite the lower model number. The price difference between them may be marginal enough for you to consider the 8800GT instead. In fact they have the same processor, but the 8800GT has more shaders and texture mapping units enabled while the 9600GT is a cut down version. Look into the availability and price of the 8800GT with 256MB. ​

Out of those two, go for the 9600GT. But a card with 512MB and a mid-tier processor is more future (2+ years) proof.

 

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Right, So latest not necessarily greatest.

 

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Remember to look at the FSB, front side bus, to see the speeds. A 256 with a 800 FSB will be faster than a 512 with a 400 FSB so don't get fooled!

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I say neither. The mid range is usually the best bet, stuff that's not new but not old either. I stay away from the value line of cards (like the Radeon X1600 for example), and the latest and greatest cards are usually too expensive for my liking. So I'll usually buy the card that was top of the line about 6+ months ago.

I second the 8800GT, it's an older card but still one of the best deals out there.

 

88oo GT is kick ass. Best card you can buy for you're money.

 

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&pgno=0

Check out the differences. I think specs such as 'texels per second' and which directx/shader versions it can support are of importance.

I have a 8800GTS 640MB which does 24,000 Megatexels per second. Oblivion can be easily maxxed out. Crysis is great, though can't be maxxed out (early in the game it can, until the point where the game developers felt that they'd just double the ambient poly count). I felt this was a rocking compromise at the time I bought it. Who knows which is most economical now?

 

8800GT is the best buy as of this second...

 

I'm very happy with my 8800GT, which was also pretty cheap.

 

they have, look up phase change cooled air systems.

just a few examples (not the best, just first few that came up, dig around to find more)

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=80
http://www.frozencpu.com/cat/l1/g41/Phase_Change.html

 

pelts, ah I posted about this somewhere else. You can get them too, or build one. Just get decent psu (like a meanwell 200w, NOT a pc psu) and pelts and you can DIY. Better performance if you put direct onto cpu/gpu/northbridge etc. The latter option takes more preparation though.

 

I also have heat problems. Is 1.6 years a little young for a graphics card to die ?.

 

yes. most heat comes from the CPU so if you are using AMD i would monitor the heat of the processor. Not sure about newer ones but old AMD's were much hotter than Intel.

 

The newer AMD's are much better with heat than the older ones. Best bet I think is to use an after market heat sink/fan on the CPU. I've got an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 on my Core 2 Duo that blows the hot air straight out the back of the case, instead of sideways. That helped a lot with everything else. The heat sink is so massive that the fan doesn't even run when the CPU is near idle.

And some graphics cards just have shoddy cooling. The Sapphire X1950 Pro's (the older ones) had a horrible cooler on them, they'd overheat all the time.