I have 7600 GS; SLI it up or sell it and buy 8600GT

I read it, but it didn't really help me out. I'm looking for a rather specific answer to my question.

I already have Bioshock, and it runs silky smooth on low (30fps). Well, I suppose that's not silky smooth to you guys, but either way, it plays perfectly like that. I'm just sick of seeing the lack of detail in textures in whatnot, and as my budget is limited, I was wondering what the best option is.

Thanks anyway.

assuming your PSU and wallet can handle it an x1950 pro will demolish the aforementioned cards (an xt would murder the pro if you could afford that though)

I'd get the 8800gts, and you could always sli those later when you have more money, you may need a better psu at that point though.

yeah ppl suggesting 8800's... forget it, I expect that the 2 7600's would beat 1 8600 but you can check the charts

I've had a xfx 8600gt before and it sucks hardcore. Please dont get one, my roommate has a 7600gt and mine just barely beat his in some games, and he beat me in some.... Anyway, this is what i did. Get on ebay, and get a 7950gt. They are on newegg for like 180 (last time i checked) but I got mine for 140 shipped on ebay, and it absolutely crushes the 8600gt and the 7900gs (dunno about ati cards cuz i'm an nvidia fanboy ) but yea, that would be my recommendation. GL!

yeah whatever you do. do not sli 2 7600gs's. its not gonna do anything for image quality. sli just helps when you are running insane resolutions. (which you aren't)

you have liquid cooling, are you OC'ing?

a 8600gt overclocked would be twice as fast as 7600gs. I wouldn't sli with 2 low end cards.

Again 7900gs is a bad buy NOW if you look at modern game benchmarks. It has a hard time even matching a 8600gt which cost less BTW.

A 1950pro or 8600gts give you similar results.

Didnt see your system specs before, it would be a travesty to run that system with anytning less that a 7900gs/1950xt, get your forty bucks, then head over to newegg and get a new card. On anther note, im more of a casual gamer, but i'm kinda digging bioshock too, beautiful game.

SLI doesnt just helpa t insane resolutions, I think you out tyo stop spreading false information.

When I enable SLI on my resolution, which is 1280x720, very small, i get almost 80% boost, there goes your whole SLI thing.

Mate if you're looking for just a cheap upgrade for a bit better performance then yeh go with it, probably best to save your money and get a 8600gts though. Rather then a 8600gt.

Ha. NO. I meant 7900gs. I wouldn't even get a 8600gt because 8600gts is only $20 more with roughly the same speed as 7900gs for older games but faster in new ones.

7900gs is looking terrible for modern games. It is only tied with 8600gt or sometimes slower in games like oblivion and bioshock.

Bioshock BTW is based on UT3 engine which is going to be used a lot in the future which would make 7900gs not worth it IMHO.

I'll vouch for the above suggestion though I would prefer the 1950 pro option since its cheaper

How did I know more ignorance is going to come out of you? THG uses 6 month old drivers in their vga chart and test old games that favors 7900gs. If THG updated drivers we wouldn't even be having this argument. With recent drivers 8600gts is neck and neck with BFG OC 7900gs and is the better card for future not to mention better IQ and actually have HDCP functions.

I never mentioned 8600gt beating out 7900gs. I said it has a hard time beating out 8600gt in recent modern games like oblivion and bioshock. You want benchmarks you can search it yourself. It's all over the net which you seem to ignore.

don't sli 7600gt
-wait till november and get either 8800gts 640 or 8800gtx
-sli is not cost efficient or performance efficient when compared to one card of the higher generation.

-you should be shooting higher than silky smooth on (max) settings on 1024 x 768, though. it's basically a different game on 1600 x 1200 compared to 1024 x768.

-just wait and see what the prices do in november is my advice
just don't sli

Your arrogance is amazing. It speaks loads.

However thank you for finding two games where the higher priced 8600GTS is faster than the 7900GS and posting benchmarks for them. I'm sure others will find this much more helpful than your lambasting it across the board.

Did you find a site to support the claim you made earlier that the 8600GT cost less than the 7900GS which was $100AR?

http://www.legionhardware.com/docu [...] id=675&p=5
A review from less than a month ago using the 162.22 drivers.

SLI works for almost all games though mate, theres dozens of profiles probably hundreds, I sure aint counting them.

If the guy had the money to buy a 8800GTS im sure hr probably would, fact is he is asking if spending a small amount to iprove his graphics by getting another card will give him a bit of performance boost.

Relativly itll likely give 70% odd performance boost, so yes in answer to his question it is a good idea. Its a cheap way to get extra performance, end of.

Getting a DX10 card would be a good idea.

Perhaps it's not a football helmet you need. You probably need to educate yourself by reading recent articles and stop trying to compare a 2 year old game like FEAR. We all know FEAR was a game based on 2 year old trends.

One thing though 8600gts does quite well once you take out AA. Beating out 7900gs in FEAR.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles [...] -pcie.html

http://www.digit-life.com/articles [...] -pcie.html

How do I know this you say? Let's educate Mr. ignorance. Since 7900gs has more TMU it does better in AA not to mention it has more memory bandwidth. Once you take out what 7900gs is good at you get truth from both side of the fence.

Totally. It's a bad buy. Not worth it when it has a hard time hanging with a 8600gt in modern games with only half the memory bandwidth. Bioshock, oblivion, stalker, Rainbow six shows this. Based on this knowledge I can also predict it will also be slower in Gears of War and Unreal 3. Many more games that is also based on this engine.

Again FEAR is a 2 year old game which 7900gs did well on with Anti Aliasing. But in modern games it doesn't do so well.

Last month you could have bought a 8600gt for this much. I do not know where the deal is now. I don't keep track of prices for every single video cards especially when I already have a faster card.

If you really want to know where you can buy 8600gt for $100 go search newegg. They have them for $100.

Actually here's one for $95 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814122024

You can get a 8600gts for $130 after rebate. Far as credibility I have quite a bit of knowledge how video cards and cpu render and work. I gave you links which you ignore. I can't help your ignorance.

But you are still ignoring my links. The link I gave you is the same card. BFG 7900gs OC card... Here's the link again. As you can see with some older games BFG 7900gs OC is hair faster while tied to most, nothing major. Once shader intensive games like stalker, oblivion was benchmarked it doesn't do so well. Loses on lost planet by a hair too.

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/nv [...] s_roundup/

That's great. That's you opinion. No one is going to take your opinion away. But the fact still stands. 7900gs doesn't do so well in recently released games compared to 1950pro or the 8600gts. Let me remind you people also look for image quality when gaming. Geforce 7 is seriously lacking in this dept not to mention it doesn't do dx10 effects.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/11211/6

Everything has a price. 1950xt is very good card and it does well in recently released games but it's missing in action or it cost $200. At this price though you should really wait for 8700gts. Newegg had some open box ones for $160 and I linked to another guy in the forum but within few hours it was gone.

1950pro is ever slightly faster than 8600gts some times while it's neck and neck most of the time. It's nothing worth mentioning honestly. Why not have dx10 and superior HDCP functions? Remind you these g8x cores have greatly improved in image quality over the Geforce 7 series and it is slightly better than 1950pro. Superior in AA algorithms. Like 8xAA 16xAA as well.

8600gts aren't really that bad and compare nicely to 1950pro. I had 1950 pro prior to this card and I'm really impressed with geforce 8 series image quality.