Overclocked 8800GTS 320MB cards

It depends on how tech savvy you might be and how much you want to risk and tinker with your graphics card.

First of all if you buy it pre overclocked it comes with a warranty and its a worry free situation, you get extra performance but for a price!

If you overclock yourself it will save you money but you will most likely void the warranty on most video cards(!). Of course you can still most likely RMA it if another problem arises.

Lastly you might want to do some research to find out whether the risk or the extra money you'll have to pay will be worth the small increase in performance you'll get.

Here is a great article on a 8800GTS 320mb Round uP. It shows the performance difference between higher and lower clocked GTS's and the potential downside of more noise, heat and power requirements.

Thanks man, that was a very useful article! I think I will go with an OC'd card after all. Like you said the warranty covers it being in a pre-overclocked state.

Thinking about a BFG 8800 GTS OC 320MB, but I need to know what PSU to get with it. As you can see from my sig I am in need of an upgrade!

Was thinking about getting this to go with it:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.5GHz)
ASUS M2N-SLI DELUXE Socket AM2 nvidia 570SLi
OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400
Antec TruePower Trio 550W PSU - With 3x 12v Rails and 120mm Fan

I'm not looking to build the best gaming machine, just something to get by with untill SKT AM3 maybe.

Well i'm not sure what your budget is but a better performing system, for the same price, might be able to be worked out. I don't know what you might be paying for that setup but something else might be better.

The Antec Trio is a good line of psu's although in the past Antec has had some issues with reliability, this is a good line. It is plenty sufficient to handle a 8800GTS.

Depending on price you might want to consider EVGA, they offer a lifetime warranty i believe and you can also enroll in the step up program. It offers you 90 days from your purchase date to upgrade to a newer graphics card while paying the difference between the retail price on your current graphics card and the one your looking at.

eVGA's warranty will cover anything but physical damage (dropped on the floor or something). If you want to overclock I suggest you buy from them. They will also let you add a 3rd party heat sink/fan as long as you include the original in the event that you RMA it.

Well, my budget is about £500 ($990) but if I know somthing new is gonna come in the next couple of months I will probably just wait, save up a bit more and get somthing a little better.

EDIT: So, any thoughts on what I should get for £500 ($990). I already have a case, monitor, speakers and sound card, so all I need is:

Mobo
CPU
RAM
Graphics card
PSU