Can't decide....

[Cloudium]

I have been arguing with my self on what to get, the 3870, GT, or G92 GTS. The 3870 is cheap, silent, cool, and power efficient, but it's not really that powerful, especially when AA comes into play. The GT is perfect mid range, but the noise and heat it makes it far too high compared to the other two. Then there's the G92 GTS which is overpriced, silent, cool, and lacking in the power efficency department.

http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.aspx?sku=343946

So, the card in the link is basically a GT with a Zalman cooler which is supposedly better when it comes to silence and cooling of, but the added costs are like $70 (This is in Europe so everything is overpriced, keep that in mind). I should be able to CO it even more with the added cooling and my already great cooling, and it won't be noisy.

Is the added price worth it though? There is a 3870 on there with an IceQ cooler which only adds $50.....Still, even with that the 3870 is already a great card when it comes to cooling, noise, etc. On the other hand, this might let me OC it to surpass what a regular GT could do....

ATi is behind on drivers and I don't know if that's keeping the 3870 back. Still, what would you do? Get the GT or get the 3870?

 

[firewolfsm]

If the decision is that close, get the AMD card just to support the smaller company, they need the help.

 

[Cloudium]

Nah. I will only support them if I feel like it. I just hope there are some reviews out there on these special coolers. Anyone tried the IceQ cooler? I have heard that they are quite nice. I'm in the dark when it comes to increasing the OCing ability GT levels though.

 

[imported_Scoop]

If I was only updating my GPU, I'd take the GTS 512.

If you're thinking about investing ~$70 on cooling the 8800GT then don't you get the GTS 512 for that price and you can OC it for greater performance without having to result to 3rd party coolers?