geforce 7950 GT- need quick response

I'm considering buying an evga geforce 7950 GT 512mb from Microcenter for 219.99 - 20.00 mail-in-rebate, (so around 217$ after taxes and if the rebate is honored.)

Is this a good deal or should I just keep waiting?

This is for a new computer and around 220$ is my limit for a graphics card and I'm not really interested in ATI cards since I already have a nvidia board. I don't play any graphics intensive games, just mmorpgs like RO and WoW.

Also is HDCP worth it?

I need a quick response since the rebate offer ends in 2 days.

If you could spend the extra $40 this card offers far better performance and will be compatible with future DX10 games:


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130082

However, if you just need a mid-high end and want NVidia, then that 7950GT would be good. The 7900GS is cheaper and can overclock enough to contend with the 7950GT, but depends on whether you want to do this or not.

personally, if you can't afford an 8800 and you cannot wait to see what ATI's cards can actually do then you should go for either the 1950pro or XT if you can afford it.

i have never, and will never recommend a 79xx over a x19xx series card.

I don't know how accurate tomshardware spring VGA chart is, but I took a look at the x1950xt compared to the 7950 GT and it seemed to get lower benches at higher resolutions. (Right now I have a 22" monitor) However this is probably because they only have the 256mb version of the x1950xt. Still, I think that the x1950xt 512mb model would be out of my current price range.

Also I probably wont go with 2 gpus until half a year or so but the benches show that x1950xt crossfire perform considerablely worse than the 7950gt SLI and if I go the crossfire route I think I would need to buy a new motherboard in the future.

Any thoughts?

PS: I realize that the 8800gts is great currently, but all rebates aside, I would have to pay nearly $310 upfront for the card and as I'm not an "enthusiast" I really don't think that the performance gain compared to a midrange card on the games I play would be significant (or even noticeble) to justify its cost.