The old 8800GTS, and the new G92's.

[skool h8r]

Hi all,
I'm currently considering changing over to an Nvidia 8800GTS. However, i'm seeing the 640Mb "old" 8800GTS is about half the price of the newer G92's. Beside the obvious clock speeds, amount of memory, and pricing, what's the other major differences?

Is it worth spending the extra and getting a G92, or should i just save my money and go for the older one, despite having lower clocks and such?

I do want to get back to NV, and i'm hoping it'll improve performance in Crysis.

Cheers,
Scott.

[cloasters]

Are the new 9800GT(?) multi espensivo?

[dsio]

the 8800GT is cheaper than both the new 8800GTS and the old 8800GTS, AND the 8800GT is faster than the old 8800GTS.

The new 8800GTS is about 5-10% faster than the 8800GT, if that, and costs like 40% more.

[cloasters]

Are the 9600's and 9800's available yet? According to a review 9600's rock for their price.

[skool h8r]

Yeah, the 9 series are available, but the verdict on them isn't quite. The 9600GT' have less Shader Pipelines (64) as opposed to the 8800GT (Which has 112). The price on them is similar. However, the 9600GT doesn't cope as well in "Shader intensive" games as the 8800GT does. Since games are only going to get more and more shader intensive (Think crysis intensive, but with "better optimisation") i'm still planning on getting the 8800GT. Saying that, my current 3850Pro should (theoretically) outperform the 8 series in shader intensive games.

However, in real-world performance, considering i play games that have a lot of textures and objects loaded (Think how many different textures WoW has loaded even if they are pretty low quality, or how many different objects Supreme Commander has to display), i need the extra memory on the card more.

All in all though, i'm basically looking to the future, when i want to stretch WoW across 2x24" widescreen LCD's. I've tried stretching them on a 24"+19" combo, but i have to choose either bad quality or panning on the 19". I don't like either. A panning UI is bad. Bad quality and unreadable text is almost as bad too. The fact i'm now gaming at the highest resolution's i can manage means more and more that more shaders coupled with the same amount of memory, and being the same price, means the 8800GT is a more suitable solution for me.

[dsio]

It doesn't work, I've tried. You stretch across two screens and you get your character cut in half down the middle. You need 3 monitors before you can do it propperly.

[skool h8r]

Well i used CT_Viewport to set up the render area and it worked, it just made it look like, well, i really don't know how to describe it, but it wasn't pretty.

Well, my new 8800GT 512MB arrived today. And at stock, it smashes my overclocked 3850Pro 256MB to pieces in all benchmarks i've tested. It's got less bandwidth and lower GPixel/Sec count, but a much higher GTexel/Sec count. +1.1k on a 3DM05 score is a helluva lot considering i've not even overclocked yet. And it's quieter to boot. I've not tested in any games yet, but i'm expecting to see higher FPS in just about every game.

The motheboard i ordered went out of stock a few hours after i ordered and it wasn't me who got the last one so that's on backorder. However, my new Dominater memory did arrive. I've yet to install it as there's no point using it in this board, but i may see even more of an increase if i did decide to do so.

Although the card cost me about £100 because it was on a this week only AND weekend special at the same time, the performance increase was worth spending the money. Shouldn't have any Transparency Antialiasing issues in WoW either.

UPDATE: Able to run crysis at 1280x1024 2xAA all settings at high with smooth fps (30+) at all times except during the "in-game videos". It autoset all settings to high which really surprised me. Running at 4xaa causes massive slowdown but at 2xaa, there's not much in Crysis that can slow it down. Even using unlimited suit energy mode, going at full speed and there's no fps drop. WoW is about the same in terms of performance, but everything else, especially stuff that uses more texture shaders than pixel shaders seems to be massivly better.

[cloasters]

Thank you for the information, skool h8r. $200 seems very reasonable for a 8800GT, I gotta say. I assume that a 9800 will cost the earth?

[skool h8r]

Cheapest 9800GTX i can find is £200 which is about $400USD. Personally, unless you're going for the best 3DMark scores or plan on running Crysis with at 1920x1600 or other HD resolutions, there's no real reason to go for anything other than an 8800GT. Pretty much an all-singing all-dancing card that's ideal for the enthusiast.

Personally, with Crysis already having built-in edge AA that's NOT very system intensive but does do a good job, you don't need antialiasing enabled in setting, which frees up a lot of resources for other image enhancements, such as POM which is like the Parallex Mapping that was used in FEAR, where 2d textures get some enhancements to make them look very 3D, and it does make a difference. Also allows you to dedicate some of that power to Sunrays which make a massive difference to the quality of the game.

The reason it performs so much better in games than the 3850Pro did isn't down to just the memory, it's down to having a ~3.5 - 4x higher Gigatexel per sec count, in exchange for a slightly lower Gigapixel per sec count. Games tend to use texture effects more than they use pixel effects. At stock, it's got lower bandwidth, but it uses the bandwidth it has much more effectivly than the Ati cards do.

All in all, 8800GT is one of the all time great cards, similar to the way the 7800's were welcomed with open-arms, except this time round, it's much more affordable to the every-day person.