8800GTS, so many flavors!!!

[sandiegoislandboy]

i am building a new system and think i am going to go with an 8800gts video card from evga... only problem is that theres 6 flavors!

the 320mb has 3 versions and the 640mb has 3 versions, pretty much different clock speeds.

right now the 320mb has a price range of $300 to $350 and the 640mb has a price range of $400 to $480.

which would be the better bang for the buck? i do NOT plan on doing SLI, so i need one solid card.

 

[996GT2]

The different versions of the 320 and 640 mb cards simply have different clock speeds. If the overclocked one is significantly more expensive, then it's not worth the extra cost for what is a 5-10% performance increase over the standard-clock card. However, if one of the higher clock models costs only $5 or 10 more, then I would get the faster card instead of overclocking a standard one myself.

As far as choosing between the 320 and 640mb versions goes...If you do most of your gaming at resolutions less than 1600x1200, then the 320mb version will not have much of a performance disadvantage to the 640mb version. However, at very high resolutions (i.e. 1920+), the 640mb card really does pick up the performance gap against its lesser-priced sibling.