Advice on upgrade

[Sheps87]

I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card, my computer specs are:

Asus A8N-SLI deluxe
A64 3800+
2GB DDR400, Dual channel
2x GeForce 6600GT 256MB (SLI)

The reason for wanting to upgrade is that I find quite a lot of games don't seem to benefit much (or at all) from SLI, wether this is because they don't support it properly, or the 16x PCI-Ex being split to two 8x PCI-Ex bus thing. I find some of the games I play actually slow down.

Either way, I have ~£250 available to spend, and was looking at something like a 7800GT, Gainward offer the:

Gainward BLISS GeForce 7800GT "Goes Like Hell" 512MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI PCI-E Retail @ £245

Core clock 450MHz+
20 Pixel Pipelines
512MB 1300MHz+ GDDR3 Ultra Fast 1.4ns Memory
256-Bit Memory interface
7 Vertex Shaders
Memory Bandwidth - 41.6GB/sec
Fill Rate - 9.80 billion pixels/sec

The advice I really need is:
a) Is this a good card for the money, are there better deals?
b) Will this be noticeably faster than my current cards?
c) Is this a bad time to upgrade with Vista and DX10 coming up?
I've read a lot of posts on this and opinion is divided... Will a geforce 7xxx or ati x1xxx run games under Vista OK, even tho they do not have full DX10 support?

Thanks for any help

Sheps

 

[Datman]

Check out the 7900GT, a much better card.
Don't worry about Vista & DX10 for sometime yet. It wont be out till next year now.

 

[marneus]

its probably 2 do with only having 6600gt x2... it is unkikely to be the 2x16 vs 2x8 PCI-E

a 7900 is just a shrink of the 7800, not archectural (no, cant spell lol) improvements but it certainly clocks higher and you would benefit from having 512mb vid mem

 

[mdd1963]

"The reason for wanting to upgrade is that I find quite a lot of games don't seem to benefit much (or at all) from SLI, wether this is because they don't support it properly, or the 16x PCI-Ex being split to two 8x PCI-Ex bus thing."

The 6600GT in SLI made for some improvements at moderate resolutions over a 6800Ultra, but at high resolutions, they are bandwidth limited, and two of tehm made littel difference sometimes...

I'd look for a single 7900GT (10-15% faster than previous 7800GTX) as other posters recommended...huge boost over a pair of SLI'd 6600GT cards...

A darn good deal for roughly $300-$320....if you can find one in stock!

(The PCI-e 16 lanes vs. 8 lanes is of little consequence, as no current cards can really tax the bandwidth of 8x lanes much less 16x lanes; worth less than .2 frames/sec....maybe!)

 

[Sheps87]

Thanks for all your help!

I'll get shopping for a 7900gt!!

Sheps