VeeshanVault

3D Guru has a lengthy article discussing the best graphics card available to date. It's expensive and blows anything away available today. That's not the reason to check out the article though. As you get deeper into the article, it covers shaders, etc and explains a lot about how graphics cards work which should help everyone during their next video card purchase.

The Verdict

Obviously from a gaming point of view the 8800 GTX rocks ! I mean seriously this bugger is so frighteningly fast that it'll run any game to date with the best ever image quality settings. You can now play games with 16 levels of anisotropic filtering and 16x anitaliasing enabled (if supported) how cool is that ? Framerates will fly sky-high over your screen at any resolution while the 8800 in your PC is screaming at you "is that all you can feed me ?" Yes the 8800 GTX is a very lovely card to own. A card of this calibre comes at a price though. Spending 600 bucks on a computer component just to play games is for a very small audience only. Interestingly enough, it's a large part of the Guru3D.com audience.

I would have liked the article to have compared more 79xx cards with the 88xx cards to get a feel for how much better the new 88xx's perform but the one chart that does show a 79xx demonstrates that the 88xx is in a class by itself and not just some small 50% increase or something.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/401/1/

Something to look forward to maybe in the middle of '07 after low and midrange 88xx cards are released. Now that most people have PCI-e based graphics cards, you can always upgrade to an Intel duo core processor/motherboard/DDR2 memory and use your existing PCI graphics card until the 88XX's drop and then swap or add one to your speedy PC...just don't skimp on the power supply in power or quality.

Winnow wrote: I would have liked the article to have compared more 79xx cards with the 88xx cards to get a feel for how much better the new 88xx's perform but the one chart that does show a 79xx demonstrates that the 88xx is in a class by itself and not just some small 50% increase or something.

Here's a picture that should satisfy your needs:



I've personally recently had the chance to try out the new cards. The best way to sum up the performance of the GTX is that it's so much better than anything previously offered that your eyes aren't busy analyzing the performance increase, they're busy being immersed in the game. Playing oblivion on max widescreen resolution (2500 x XXXX) and not noticing a hitch while running outside is almost breathtaking.

The GTS is a good card. It's not even on the same tier as the GTX, but I think that's how it should be. The $200 price difference between the two agrees with me.
What separates the GTS from previous generation cards of comparable price is how well it works with HDR enabled.

I built a new rig last week:

E6400 Conroe
8800 GTS
G. Skill 2GB 533 DDR2
320GB Barracuda
BIOSTAR T-965
Antec Truepower 650W

I've overclocked the 2.13Ghz Conroe from 266 x 8 to 335 x 8 and it still bottlenecks the insanely powerful GTS. However, I can run through oblivion on 19XX x 14XX resolution (max for my monitor) and not hitch at all. I'm more impressed with the Conroe than the GTS, though.

Check out the two values of the E6400 (overclocked to 360 x 8 at the top of the image, regularly clocked in the middle):


Yeah, that means that a simple, Arctic 5 + stock HSF overclock makes it run better than any other stock chip. An $800 gain for free.

My only regret with my rig that I built is that the motherboard bottlenecks the potential overclock for the Conroe. I could probably squeeze another $200 in value out of the chip if I had a motherboard that was more specifically built for overclocking. If I had known how well the damn thing overclocks before building my rig, I would have gotten a better suited mobo.

My rig screams. And it's quiet too. I have the Conroe on permanent max fan speed and I still can't hear it over the GTS (which isn't loud, just a point of reference). What I want to see in the future is a greater variety of games with HDR settings. It's beautiful.

Good that means the 7xxx cards will be dropping in price. I usually buy a couple generations back after the price drops. My 6800 is a great card and it only cost me $130.

I decided to wait till my tax return to get my Conroe system. By then, Vista and DX10 will be out. I've read that many people are disappointed that nVidia doesn't even have Vista drivers for 8800 yet.