9600 GT vs. 8800 GT vs. Future

[roguerower]

Like the title states, what's the best choice at the moment between the first two cards, and is there anything coming out in the near future from either ati or nvidia?

I've seen comparisions between the 9600 and the 3870 but never the 8800 vs the 9600.

 

[Kromis]

Originally posted by: roguerower
Like the title states, what's the best choice at the moment between the first two cards, and is there anything coming out in the near future from either ati or nvidia?

I've seen comparisions between the 9600 and the 3870 but never the 8800 vs the 9600.

Are you sure? I swear I've seen some tests involving those two cards. Lemme look around...

http://firingsquad.com/hardwar...erformance/default.asp

http://xbitlabs.com/articles/v...bliss9600gt-512gs.html

Some sites

 

[Lithan]

Mostly depends on the game... but @ 1680x1050 or below, I'd say get a 9600gt. More for power and heat concerns than cost. If you can get a 8800gt with an upgraded cooler within 40$ of a 9600gt then it's a competition. But I would never in my life buy a stock cooled 8800gt again. Last one I bought wasn't stable @ stock, crashed within minutes of starting a game. I had fan cranked up to 65% and it was STILL getting to high 80's and crashing after a couple hrs TF2 (which isn't THAT intensive a game). And noise was approaching unbearable to me at that point.

I wound up spending $60 more on a gts plus paying $15 to ship the card back for RMA plus $10 buying antistatic bags so I had one to ship it in. I still consider that the best buying decision I made in years. I wouldn't use that card in my rig if they paid me to use it.

But honestly, if I hadn't already sold my 9600gt by the time the 8800gt got here, I would have gone back to it and been happy. Mostly upgraded to get an EVGA (and 9600gt evga's were overpriced at the time) because the 8800gt scared me into wanting a warranty (and I've never had a gfx die on me) it was that bad.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: Lithan
Mostly depends on the game... but @ 1680x1050 or below, I'd say get a 9600gt. More for power and heat concerns than cost. If you can get a 8800gt with an upgraded cooler within 40$ of a 9600gt then it's a competition. But I would never in my life buy a stock cooled 8800gt again. Last one I bought wasn't stable @ stock, crashed within minutes of starting a game. I had fan cranked up to 65% and it was STILL getting to high 80's and crashing after a couple hrs TF2 (which isn't THAT intensive a game). And noise was approaching unbearable to me at that point.

I wound up spending $60 more on a gts plus paying $15 to ship the card back for RMA plus $10 buying antistatic bags so I had one to ship it in. I still consider that the best buying decision I made in years. I wouldn't use that card in my rig if they paid me to use it.

But honestly, if I hadn't already sold my 9600gt by the time the 8800gt got here, I would have gone back to it and been happy. Mostly upgraded to get an EVGA (and 9600gt evga's were overpriced at the time) because the 8800gt scared me into wanting a warranty (and I've never had a gfx die on me) it was that bad.

Lithan, it's pretty clear that your 8800 GT was defective. Yes, the stock cooler for these cards is crap, but it sort of does its job, mine never crashed, even when it reached 86 C when playing Crysis (fan at stock speed). Your cooler must have been installed wrong or something, since you had high 80's with the fan at 65%.

Stock cooled 8800 GT, in a good ventilated case, will keep the card cool enough so that it could function properly and it's even quiet too. Of course, it will have very high temperatures and it's not going to live many years, but it won't crash. If it does have stability issues, it means that something else is the culprit.

The thing is, the cooler of the GT is working at its limits. So anything like a bad ventilated case, or if those that installed the cooler used too much thermal paste or too little, it's gonna add those couple of degrees that will cause the card to loose stability in normal usage situation.

So yes, it's recommended to buy, if it's cheap enough, a 8800 GT with an aftermarket cooler, but let's not generalize and say that every stock cooled GT out there is defective.

 

[Peezee]

Actually, I believe the critical temperatures on the 8800GT would be around 110C. So even 86 is just fine
GPUs run much hotter than CPUs these days, and they also have more heat tolerance.

 

[AzN]

8800gt is much more future proof than 9600gt for not much more.

 

[phantom404]

Just got the evga 8800gt stock at 600MHz and right now have it sitting at 725 and used rivatuner to crank the fan speed to 65% and the temp while playing crysis is high 70s low 80s. So far I'm very pleased. Also have the memory oc to 950 i think.