Top Graphics Card

Well, 8800Ultra is the best card, but it's a big waste of money.

The 8800GTX is basically the same card for a lot cheaper. I say go for the 8800GTX.

it really depend of you, how is your games holding up to you? are you sick of old games and ready to step up?? if you cant wait to see the real dx10 games holding up the current top cards then buy a card that is right for you. 8800s, gts320 if you are gaming at lower resolution and 8800gts640 to 8800gtx for higher resolution. and yes skip the ati-amd cards for now.

You just named the two flaws. Too much cost and too lttle performance.

I see. I'm not the kind of a stuborn customer who wants "The best of the best". I'm ready to pay for what is good and what is worth the price. Then 8800GTX it shall be, by no means a "lame choice" Thank you guys for your quick response, appreciate it.

It costs significantly more than the GTX, and offers minimal performance increase.

Thank you.

For the second part of the question, what brand should I buy? There's a wide selection and the prices differ quite a bit as well. I'm new to NVidia cards, so I can't really choose.

Also, there is this one brand that offers the card already OC'd (from 575MHz to 626MHz) for the same (similar) price, is it worth it? I'm going to watercool it at any rate and can do the OC'ing myself, so should I go for the basic stats or OC'ed ones are always better?

generally if it has a good warranty, just go for the cheapest option.

The EVGA GTX is priced pretty similar to the other brands on newegg, give or take $10-20.

Link

Also, the EVGA warranty is very nice; lifetime and it covers overclocking and watercooling mods as long as you don't physically break the card in the process

Links?

loopack is sooo right: wait! you have the same card as i have wich is in no way slow, so just wait. you can play a lot of games maxxed out and just a few titles with a little less eye-candy wich in my opinion run great at these settings (mostly 1280x1024 4xAA with less hdr and shadows in my case for oblivion rainbow six vegas etc.)

wait for the real dx10 games and benchies and then make your buying judgement. my feeling is that these dx10 cards we have now will not play dx10 games for long because they are to slow with it (just judging from lost planet dx10 demo and shader intensive games like oblivion, vegas and stalker).

i can be very wrong but wait for the games you can not play at descent settings and then make a decision about the power of current hd2900xt and 8800gtx. (could be even that ati gets better performance out of the 2900 down the road due to better drivers, who knows...)

This is the same problem that I'm having. I'm building a new rig in a couple weeks, but the problem is that I have NOTHING now, save for a 4 yr old dell laptop. I'm going to go ahead and get the 8800 gtx and hope that with dx10 tweaks etc it can keep up. My advice to you: since you have a half decent card already you can wait a bit and see what happens. The GTX isn't going to go up in price so you have nothing to lose by waiting.

I'd get the 8800GTX. The Ultra is overpriced - even if I had the money I wouldn't waste it on that.

Sadly, ATI's offering looks weak at the moment and runs very hot too.

I wouldn't wait for the next thing round the corner - I would just buy from what's out there now.

Having said all that, I only have an X1800XT at the moment and I don't feel the need to upgrade yet - it's doing me just fine right now.