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8800 gts

Post Date: 2007-09-13
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Willbig View Drop Down
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  Quote Willbig Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: 8800 gts
    Posted: 13 Sep 2007 at 2:15am
    I am looking to buy a new computer extremly soon. My head is about to explode with all the research i have been trying to cram in it. My question, and possible many more to follow, is this:   is it worth it to buy the 640mb adition?
    I could save 100 bucks and go with the 320gb. From what i have read there is not much of a preformance jump form the two cards because of games not fully utilizing the memory on board of Vcards? Will future games make more use of this feature? 



also, i have read that soem games performe better right now on Dx9. If i go with vista can i still play these games in teh dx9 mode to get more fps?
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Sonofek View Drop Down
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Posts: 59 		  Quote Sonofek Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 13 Sep 2007 at 2:23am
Most of the people on the forums suggest going with the 320MB card. The performance increase is minimal. I, myself, don't know about future uses for the card, but I'd guess that as the new line-up of cards is due rather soon, I wouldn't put too much hope into it.
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commast View Drop Down
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  Quote commast Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 13 Sep 2007 at 2:40am
The 320 Mb will be perfectly fine around a 22" monitor with full effects. If you have a bigger monitor go with the 640 MB. Some of the games will require 512MB of more in order to use High quality textures. Games are playable at 30 fps, anymore than that is only for bragging rights. It's up to you but i would go with the 640 MB if your budget allow just because of the reason above regardless of resolution. You can play DirectX 9 games on Vista. Dx 10 is backward compatible with Dx9. Hope that answer your questions.
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skyR View Drop Down
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Posts: 2220 		  Quote skyR Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 13 Sep 2007 at 8:04am
Go with 320MB GTS or GTX.

320MB will run any game on max settings fine at 1600x1200.

Yes you can force the games to do DX9 instead of 10 on Vista.
The only thing that keeps me wishing on a wishing star.
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Tyler Lowe View Drop Down
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Posts: 0 		  Quote Tyler Lowe Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 13 Sep 2007 at 11:33am
I know exactly how you feel Wink.
 
I went with the 8800 320 MB card as an upgrade from the 8600 series after finding that there is not mid range performance card in the classic sense. I've done a ton of reading over the last few days myself, and here's how it looks to me (and I will qualify this with an "I'm not an expert by any stretch):
 
Right now, the 320Mb and 640Mb stock clocked cards perform *very* similarly at resolutions up to 1600 x 1200. The problem with saying the two cards have the same potential at low resolutions is that tomorrow's DX10 games are not going to be the same as DX10 games right now. Right now, most DX10 titles are basically DX9 ported to DX10 with a couple of small additions to lighting or texture. They really do nothing to "push" the cards designed to run DX10.
 
As developers take advantage of more and more of the effects and textures that DX10 supports, the frame buffer size (the card's memory) is going to have an increasingly large impact on each card's ability to deal with those features, at any resolution setting.
 
 
The way I was thinking of it, it would be like having two computers side by side, both running 3.0 ghz core duo's, both using vista premium, one with 1Gb of RAM, the other equiped with 2 Gb of RAM. Both machines will run Vista, but the 2 Gb equiped computer is going to do it more efficiently.
 
 
Again, it's an impression based on reading, not industry experience as a professional, but my sense of it is that you would need to upgrade within the next two years from a 320Mb card, whereas you might be able to squeeze three from the 640Mb version, if you wanted to continue to have a more high end graphics experience.
 
 What I would *expect* to happen is that within the next couple of cycles of graphics cards, 512 Mb and 1 Gb memory sizes will become the standards. If you are looking at the future rather than the now, I'd compare the two cards against those figures rather than against the current standards of 256Mb and 512mb.
 
Fortunately, there just happen to be lots of people at Digital Storm that *do* have the experience and knowledge I don't that can correct the parts I probably got wrong. Tongue
 
 
Edit:
Just noticed the question about Vista. Vista supports DX9, so it *should* be as simple as selecting to run the game in DX9 at the options/setup screen in each game.


Edited by Tyler Lowe - 13 Sep 2007 at 12:43pm
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