7900GS or 8600GTS?

I am trying to decide between the following two cards for a new build. I am not a hard core gamer but would like something with decent performance and longevity.

BFG Tech BFGR79256GSOCE GeForce 7900GS 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express for about $110
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814143070

MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256EZ HD GeForce 8600GTS 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express for about $135 - this also is fanless which is a plus in my book.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127287

Thanks.

The Frys deal is the one I am looking at but since there is one in the state I am in I have to pay tax - thus the extra $10 or so.

I consider the 7900GS faster, just as the above poser mentioned. As far as being future proof, none of them is. While the 8600 can run dx10 its can only do so on a technical level - it lacks the performance to do it at an acceptable speed. The 7900gs might be faster but can't run DX10 at all. Same goes for the 1950pro. I would suggest the 1950 pro since it's slightly more powerful than the 7900gs but not much more expensive. The DX10 only age is still a few years away and thus the DX9 cards will do fine for some time. If you can wait a little then you might get the next nvidia or ati card coming during the next months.

What are you planning to do with this card? If you are not a gamer, are you planning to make it an HTPC or do video editing? IF so go with the 8600. Knowing what you are using it for will help people tell you what to do.

I do some lighter gaming - the occasional RTS or FPS. I am not a hardcore gamer. The PC is mostly for home use: Internet, some video and photo editing, etc.

Thanks.

Both of these cards would handle farcry at the highest resolutions. Either would do. But if you also want to offload some CPU while watching HD videos and dx10 go with 8600gts.

Heheh, I did.

The 7900 GS has a spot there not just because of stock performance, but because it overclocks well. Personally I advise the X1950 PRO usually, but the last time I checked it wasn't much of an overclocker. I should see if the recent AtiTool beta has changed that.

In any case, I don't look upon the 7900 GS quite as harshly as you do, but I am keeping track of the 8600 GTS pricing. I do think the 8600 GTS drivers have come ahead a bit since it was released, and the prive has gone down too, so it's certainly alot more viable than it was when it was +$200. It is getting pretty low and next month's "best cards for the money" article in the $140-ish price range is something I'm going to have to brood over.

Although, from what I can see the 7900 GS' are getting scarce anyway, so it might not even be an option for much longer...

Well, I wouldn't exactly call it 1/5 of the shader power. The 8600's universal shaders are very different animals when compared to the 7900's pixel shaders.

But yeah, you can definitely see the 8600 GTS looking better in the new titles.

You're missing the point though dude. Those raw numbers are a little misleading and don't really tell the story. The architecture is very different.

Even a synthetic benchmark won't show the 8600 GTS having 5 times the shader power of a 7900 GS. 7x00 series Pixel shaders work diffrently from the 8x00 series universal shaders. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, and you'll never see a 5 times performance gain, even in a shader-only app.

don't argue with Cleeve, I think he's been at it for a while now

I don't think he's the only one who's been at it for a while now.

In a game benchmark there are lot of variables.

It's obvious 8600gts is superior even to 1950pro when shader intensive situations even with lower memory bandwidth. How we can measure accurately? I don't know.

No, you have to supply power to the 6pin connector, either straight from the psu or with the dongle...

I noticed that there's a star next to my name now but there are members here who's been here longer who don't have stars. Before I had no stars. How do you achieve stars? What does stars represent?

You mean a molex connector? Yes I have it on mine. All 8600gts does for your motherboard and video card protection. We know Geforce 8600gts require something like 70watts to run at peak. And PCI-E requires that you use a molex connector if you use more than 75watts. Nvidia went safe added molex connector to all 8600gts while 8600gt does not.

My card even runs without the molex connector but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Heheh. Offended? That's an odd interpretation to get from my reply. All I did was point out that there's nowhere near a real-world 5x shader performance delta, honestly wasn't expecting you to take it personally.

As far as programs focused on shader performance, I'm pretty sure 3dMark would have a test specifically for that.


P.S. the stars beside our names used to reflect our post counts, but it seems to have reset when we went to a new forum a little while back. Looks like we still have the titles but lost our posts.

What about $140 for the 7950GT?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] CatId=1558

(Not Saying Yeah/Neah, Just saw this and thought it was a decent deal.)

That's what I though at first because people who has more posts don't even have stars and I got my first one.

Well, I've never had an issue with them, but not a regular TigerCustomer but the few times I had rebates there, I got them.

Actually, they get fairly good reviews.
http://reviews.pricegrabber.com/tigerdirect/r/500/

He provided that the most demanding game he ever tried was far cry information later. If you were going to quote me from something, please use some logic.

7900gs is crippled card for modern games something to consider if he's going to play games from time to time in the future and let's not forget HDCP which BFG 7900gs can't even do. A 1950pro or 8600gts would give him the extra fps of being fluid or not and better image quality to boot.

He also mentioned that he has to pay tax and shipping charges which would be in the same ball park. $5 for lower frame rates for games like oblivion, stalker, bioshock, probably ut3? I don't care what Tom hardware recommends and I disagree with Tom's hardware. Maybe 4 months ago when 8600gts was much more expensive than 7900gs but it's not anymore.