Best Graphics Card?

Good question, June. Yes, it does matter which one you get. First, I'd say don't get a 7900. To buy anything below the GeForce 8 series is to invest in the past. Development on 7 series is long over with. Let those cards die off.

You can't go terribly wrong with any of the 8's, but it is still important to know what you are and aren't getting with each of them, before you make your purchasing decision. If you opt for a 320MB GTS, you don't want to find yourself wondering why it doesn't work as well as your friend's 768MB Ultra. They're both gonna be very good, but the top of the line Ultra will run circles around that entry level GTS.

To find out which one is for you, take a look at the nVidia website to see the specs of all the different models. On the GeForce 8 page, you'll see they're all listed in order from top of the line to bottom. Notice the Ultra, listed on top, has the highest spec numbers across the board, and also naturally has the highest price tag. The GTX is the second highest, so it costs the second most. And so on, and so on, down the list.

If you want my opinion, I feel the GTX has the best power per dollar ratio, the most bang for the buck. The Ultra is slightly better, but not enough better to justify the staggeringly higher price, in my opinion. For me, the GT and GTS are lower power than I would want, so their lower cost isn't much of a selling point.

For yourself, as you should with all things computer related, just pick the most powerful one that fits in your budget and call it a day. If you can afford an Ultra, and you don't mind spending that much on it, go for it. If you want something more reasonably priced but almost as good, go for the GTX. If you're on a lower budget, consider the GT or one of the GTS's.



As for LL's chart, it looks like they weren't discriminating between specific models in their reporting, just main model groupings. That probably goes a ways towards explaining why they have the 8800 averaging just 39 FPS, which seems a bit low to me. I'd imagine the people with the less expensive GTS's and GT's likely outnumber those of us with the more expensive GTX's or Ultras. The relative abundance of the lesser cards probably brings the numbers down a little from what we see with the better ones.

My point of view about the 8800 gs and 8800 gt and the 7900 gtx extreme..... therte is a big diff between the two. 7900 gtx gives better results ( thats if you can still find the 7900 gtx extreme)......


Now the 8800gt series I say is worth getting. If your planning to put them into sli 2 of them. then i say go with the 8800gt aas one now. and then ass anohther later.

boils down to ....

which card provides the biggest numbers for the price

for older based applications (SL) the 7900 gtx is the hands down winner,it has the most horsepower

but for brand new state of the art video games the 8800+ has the (slight)advantage, good horsepower, and lots of optimizations for todays "more texures, less polygons" type engines, but suffers under older systems where detail = polys

My lil' 8800 GTS runs Crysis @ 1024x768 with all settings on "High" (no Vista) with few problems. Just the ocaissional pause when you reach a check point.

My ONLY gripe about the 8800's so far..... They run HOT!

The 'new generation' of gfx cards is just out:

Nvidia 8800 GT 512MB, according to nvidia, should retail at 220US, but generally retails at 250+US. Supply is very low, so picking one up is an issue (all preorder)

ATI Radeon 3850/3870, both perform worse than 8800 GT but have price marks of 190US and 220US, supply is pretty unknown atm. And they still run circles around any current gen. midrange cards.

Both destroy price/performance of the 'current generation' (nvidia 8x00/ati 2xxx series).

It doesn't seem DX10 gen cards adds anything to SL atm. Although the stats published are ofcourse based on normal client, and not windlight (which uses a lot more shading tech, but still nothing requiring shader model 4.0).

Ati is known to have more issues with OpenGL than nvidia atm, esp. with Vista.

SL uses a lot of texturing compared to 'normal games' (mostly due to people using rediculously huge uploaded textures). So usually big texture mems make more of a difference then in other 3d apps/games. Although, this argument is slowly getting less important with SL moving more towards using shaders and better mipmap/LOD handling. And PCI express bandwidth is less of a bottleneck as AGP was in the past.

Conclusion:

First choice:
pick up an nvidia 8800GT (or two), if you can find one for a reasonable price, and expect to wait for it. If you don't want to, pick up an 8800 GTS. Of, if you're rich and also plan to play crysis/biohazard like games on your 24"-30" screen, an 8800GTX.

If you desperately want to go ATI, no compatibility results about 3xxx gen cards are known atm. So i can't say anything about how it will perform.
2xxx have been known to often cause issues, esp with Vista, and score comparable/lower fps in SL to 19xx. Go with an older 1950XT card for good results.

If you're budget limited, almost all choices are horrible atm But i think a 8600GT is your best choice atm. Or, if you can find them second hand (retail, they're as expensive as new gen. cards) a 7900GT, which will run SL fine.