Geforce 7600GT now or Radeon x1650 later?

Hands down 7600GT.

I vote neither. Save it and in 4 months buy a DX10 card in the $200-$300 range. Unless of course you have a dead card now and have to buy something immediately. Then I say get the 7600 so you at least have the potential to go SLI later, or use the 7600 as a physics engine when nvidia rolls out their solution.

PNY GF7600GT: $125 AR

what about the 7900gs? thats officially launched today....

The cards aren't in the same league and price. X1650 beats it's rival, the 7600GS, but it won't touch the high clocked GT. If priced anywhere's near each other, grab the 7600GT.

I'm replacing a Geforce FX 5200 and I would like to upgrade soon. Are the 7900GS cards really much better than a 7600GT? Is it worth an extra $50?

Hmm, haven't even noticed it. Big launch. :tongue:

hence the "..." and the word "official" but we all come to know taht nothing appears on shelves on launch day.. it must be physically impossible to coordinate shipping and production for anyting like that.

As for the other person, hte 50 dollar difference is worth it and yet not worth it. Graphics wise, yes but with DX10 cards on the horizon, it could be 50 dollars well spent on a dx10 card a few months later.

I don't think the PCIe 7900GS has officially launched for retail yet. I believe the official launch date is August 30th. It has been available to OEM's, mainly Dell, for a while though along with the AGP 7900GS.

Essentially, the 7900GS, the X1900GT, and the RV570 X1950Pro are all in direct competition and are eventually going to be priced around $199, but probably end up a bit higher than that. (The 7950GT was originally supposed to compete with the X1950Pro at $299, but ATI decided to lower the price by $100. The benefits from a 80nm process I guess, although I can't imagine ATI's margins being very high anyways. $199 was originally the RV560's price point). Next the 7600GT and the RV560 X1650XT are going to be around $149 and the 7600GS and the RV530/RV535 X1650Pro are going to be around $99.

Now those are the eventual combinations around Christmas, but ATI has yet to release the RV570 and RV560 so nVidia is waiting in their response. I'd expect to see more movement from nVidia though since the X1650Pro is faster than the 7600GS and the RV560 is almost certainly faster than the 7600GT so I could certainly see nVidia moving the 7600GT's price down to put more pressure on the X1650Pro. The X1950Pro should also be faster than the 7900GS, but I've seem the older 7900GT floating in the low $200s so it's certainly in contention.

As far as the 7900GS launch, I was not talking about availability. I'm talking I am yet to see a preview of the 7900GS. That's why I joked about it being a big launch. Not missing from shelves, missing from hardware sites.  

oh haha.. ya that too, i wasn't exactly serious about that suggestion...