8800GS 384MB a decent upgrade from an 8600GT 512MB?

[geno]

My GF revealed she's getting me a new video card and some RAM for my birthday, which is 1.5 months away, but she's impatient and wanted to give me something right away. I currently have a 512MB XFX 8600GT I got brand new for about $110 about 4-5 months ago. This new card is a part of a bundle with 2GB of RAM from Newegg for $80 after rebates (for both the card + RAM).

Now, I've been looking around at comparisons between the 8800GS and the GT/GTS cards and how much they kick the crap out of the GS with FSAA enabled. However, I'm more concerned with speed than quality and rarely enable FSAA, so I'm OK with that.

I'm concerned with the memory decrease, should I be concerned with 384 vs. 512? To go with my new card / ram, she also preorderd Crysis 2 for me, so I want to be good and ready for it when it comes out

Is it worth worrying about the bigger/badder 8800's or am I getting a good card for the $80 it'll cost?

 

[MarcVenice]

What resolution? A 8800gs isn't exactly good to go for Crysis: Warhead. Then again, it's faster then a 8600gts for sure. You should try and get a HD4850 instead. In fact, buying right now would be pretty dumb, in 1.5 months the HD4850 ( $155 right now ) might have dropped to acceptable levels, so she can buy you one of those ...

 

[Denithor]

The 8800GS is a pretty decent card, especially priced like it is. And quite an upgrade from the 8600GTS.

Now, for Crysis, erm...no, it's not gonna be pretty. Even the GTX 280 barely makes Crysis playable at reasonable resolutions. Unless you just enjoy playing at 1024x768 with the eye candy turned down (in which case, why bother?) you are going to want more of a card than the 8800GS.

There have been deals on the GTX 260 for as low as $225AR but that sounds out of the price range. Best bet is what Marc said, a 4850 for $140AR is a good card at a great price.

 

[s44]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
You should try and get a HD4850 instead. In fact, buying right now would be pretty dumb, in 1.5 months the HD4850 ( $155 right now ) might have dropped to acceptable levels, so she can buy you one of those ...

He might need a new PSU for that.

 

[AzN]

8800gs is fast as 9600gt. Give or take. It's also better than 9600gt for folding. Check out my review in my sig. I compare it with 8600gts. I get 37 fps in Crysis @ high settings dx9 on Vista. 1440x900 resolution. It's 2~2.5x faster than your 8600gt. Crysis Warhead is supposed to be more optimized than original Crysis anyway.

Memory size isn't an issue long as you run lower resolution or turn the AA down.

It works great for these resolutions and AA settings. it's not like 512mb of vram really helped 8600gt in the first place.

1280x1024 4xAA 8xCSAA 16xCSAA
1600x1200 2xAA
1920x1200 no AA

Originally posted by: s44

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
You should try and get a HD4850 instead. In fact, buying right now would be pretty dumb, in 1.5 months the HD4850 ( $155 right now ) might have dropped to acceptable levels, so she can buy you one of those ...

He might need a new PSU for that.

Not to mention twice as expensive.

 

[daveybrat]

For the price she got it for including the ram with it, it's a steal.

At least twice as fast as your 8600GT. Just sell off your old card and make it an even better deal.

 

[geno]

Originally posted by: daveybrat
Just sell off your old card and make it an even better deal.

That's the plan! I don't have use for the RAM either (still on XP, 4G RAM won't do me much good), so that might get sold too. I still have the original box and manuals to ship it all out with. I'll probably upgrade again before the end of the year, but for the price and the upgrade in performance, I didn't see much in the same price range which will get me that much further along. Right now, the name of the game is buying a house, so we have to save wherever we can