8800GTS - Worth upgrading to GTX275 ? - My spec Included in posting.

I have a Core2Duo E6600 cpu

Actually, I have also bought a Q6700 which I am hopefully fitting tonight.

Also tonight upgrading my RAM from 4GB to 8GB

And running Window7 Release Candidate 64-bit.

My graphics card is a XFX 8800GTS with 320MB of RAM.

As I'm upgrading my CPU and MEMORY (and my new 64-bit OS) I was wondering about my graphics card.

Obviously Nvidea (due to OpenGL being faster with Nvidea - unless somethings changed in this regard recently)

So, how about a GTX275 ?

Quite a chunk of money.

Do you think I'd get more speed out of SL with a GTX275 than my 8800GTS with the spec of my PC detailed above?

====EDIT====

Oh yes, and my screen res is 1600x1200, and I'm kinda thinking about a new 24" widescreen to replace my 20" 4:3 display, which would be a bit higher res obviously.

Maybe but not much, but if you play any other games a GTX 275 stomps all over an 8800GTS, so yeah it would be a big upgrade in general.

Also if you are getting a 24" widescreen you would definitely want the GTX 275, a 24" widescreen resolution would eat 320mb of v-ram for lunch.

ditto

I don't know much about the GTX275. But, to me, there are two weak points in your machine:

> The amount of memory on your graphics card
> The GTS

The "S" versions of Nvidia cards are usually pretty lame compared to the rest of the series. Personally, I think a 9800GTX with as much memory as you can afford would be a much more cost-effective choice.

The best comparison of Nvidia cards I've seen is actually in wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_Graphics_Processing_Units

You may note that OpenGL support has changed very little since the 8800 series, moving only from OpenGL 3.0 to OpenGL 3.1 *shrugs*. Above a certain point, it seems like the big determinants of performance for SL are the amount of video card memory and the memory bandwidth to the CPU.
.

I run 1800x1600 on a 21" LCD without issue (other than odd issues with OpenGL as used by SL) on a Radeon HD 3780 on a 'now messly) Athlon 64 x2 running Windows 7 RC with 6 GB of RAM (1x2 + 2x2). I've heard a 8800GTS is similiar in performance to what I'm running, so I'd say it's good enough for now...