8600 GT

8600gt is okay but it's a budget card. It you overclock though it will last you for a while. It won't power a 1440x900 resolution with current games. This card is more comfortable @ 1024x768.

marvelous2 11, How is the performace of your graphics card with Bioshock and supreme commander?

I get away with 1440x900 on HIGH with bioshock but it does get slow at times. 1280x800 would be more ideal if I wanted to play complete fluidity.

I don't play supreme commander so I don't know but looking at benchmark reviews it looks like it plays fine without much slow downs from RTS point of view.

It will really bottleneck your system. What other options do you have? Or you can save up for a 8800 gts 320 mb. They are about 300 in Canada and the 8600 gt is about 150. You could also consider a 7600 gt. Do some research on what games you play. The 7600gt/8600gt will have their ups and downs in each game.

We have a 8600GT in a PC and it plays Supreme Commander great at 1280x1024

When you say the 8800 is $400 - is that the GTS version with 320MB of memory?
Is the 8600GTS available and within your price range? It would be the next logical step up from the GT version and might not cost too much more.

I have the moble version of the 8600gt. it runs bioshock decently. CS:S, quake 4, and others I can run on max without slowdown. the desktop version runs faster so I am sure current games can run fine.(and upcoming titles using the unreal 3.0 engine) Im not sure, however, how crysis or other upcoming titles would fare.

What else is available where you are? Here in the states, the 8600GT is prices about the same as other cards that are faster then it. The 2600XT and the 7900GS are two examples. Look around a bit and see what you can find. Its not that the 8600GT is a bad card, just that there are usually better cards available for the same about of money.

If i was in states I would definetly purchased 8800GTS
Here 8600GTS costs about 300$ and there is no sign of 7900
There is not much price differece between 8600GT and 7600GT.

Looks like there is no other way for me, than getting an 8800GTS  
How much time 8800GTS can last? another 2 years? and is it a native DX10 card?

You just relisted the exact same cards as in your first post. I said to look for OTHER cards. Is the 2600XT the same price or cheaper? If it is, then you should get that card instead. Seeing as you're using one right now, can you find an x800? If you can find an x800XT or an 850 PE, then you might want to get one of those. Seeing as the 8600GT isn't really much faster then a 7600GT, perhaps you should get that. I don't know whats in your area, but if you limit yourself to 8800, 8600, and 7900s, then you might over look a better buy.

4745454b, I have yet to recieve the price details for ATI cards,
Here ATI cards are not much popular amoung the distributers,
As you suggested, I think I have to wait till I get the price details related to ATI cards

I'd avoid the x800/x850 series since they only support SM2.0. Some current and future games are only supporting SM3.0 and SM4.0 therefore you want to get a card with those capabilities. Not for performance or image quality, but for compatibility so that you can actually run the game.

EDIT: Oh and supreme commander needs alot of RAM and CPU horsepower more than video card power, because its an RTS. But if you run high settings, it will obviously need a decent card. I ran the demo fine on my system with an x1950 pro, so the 8600GTS would run it about the same, and the 8600GT should run it fine also, albeit with lower settings.

randomizer, I agree with you, I am only looking at cards having SM4.0
I stilll have not recieved the price for 2600XT  
How about HD 2600 X2 or 2600XT crossfire ?

2600XT and 8600FT DX 10 support means, the card does operate very vell with all setting high in DX 10 and with lower resolution, or I does not support all DX 10 features?

I saw somewhere in the net AMD is going to release scaled down version of 2900XT (2900 Pro)  

I haven't heard about the 2600 X2. I'd worry about finding out the price of the 2600XT before worrying about setting two of them up in CF.

Both the 2600XT and 8600GT support DX10. The problem is that neither can provide playable framerates for DX10 games. If your LCD has a native res of 1280x1024, neither one of these cards will go over 30FPS using DX10 with the details up. And if you have to turn the details down, why use DX10? Keep them in DX9, and pump up the details to make it look nice.

The last cards I heard about was a die shrink for the 2400/2600. Moves them to 55nm, and adds support for DX10.1. I still haven't heard much about a better mid range card.

The 8600 GT will get similar framerates to your X800 XT, unfortunately. I wouldn't bother with that upgrade.

I wouldn't go anything less than an X1950 PRO, 7900 GS, or 8600 GTS.

The 8600GTS would be the best option from those 3 as it is compatible with (regardless of how poor the current performance) DX10, although not DX10.1.

@4745454b: The current DX10 implementation is poor, and they may perform better on games that are better optimised for DX10. At least they are actually compatible and can still play the games, even the native DX10 games of the future.

What i am thinking now since I have a crossfire MB (16X single card, 8x cross fire)
2 X 2600Xt may cost less than a 8800GTS here,
This all depends on the price of 2600XT and also I hope that my 8x crossfire will not cripple performace for 1440x800 resolution

two 2600 XT's won't perform close to a single 8800.

If you're lucky, two 2600 XT's will equal a single 8600 GTS...

i have an 8600GT, is a mid range video card, but it works well, not so good as a 8800GTX but at least is something better than an Ati 800XT

I know you're not supposed to question Cleeve or Grape, but I can't let this pass. If you're lucky? Have you heard of the 7.7-7.9 drivers? Seeing as a single 2600XT is not much slower then an 8600GTS, I would think it would be quite a bit faster.

GEt the x1950pro

You can question me all you like. I'm wrong sometimes like everyone else.

Having said that, I haven't seen evidence than a crossfire 2600 XT setup is appreciably faster than an 8600 GTS. If you have benches to show me I'd be happy to look at 'em.

I agree that I haven't seen a lot of crossfire benchies, or else I would have linked them. I saw some early ones when the 2600XT first came out, but those were with the older drivers. I'm heading off to work, when I get back I'll try to find some CF numbers. From what I remember, the XT isn't that far behind the GTS, less then 15%. Certainly CF scales well enough to make a 15% difference.

regarding the Supreme commander,

I've played it on my pc (E6420 & 8500GT), so it'd run smooth on ur rig. it utilises both core processors so u'd be doing more than fine with a E6600 & 8600GT. want to get a better card? even better. :]

Here 2600XT will cost around 25$ more than 8600GT  
and 2900XT will cost twise the cost of 8800GTS with 320MB  

The first CF link I have found.

http://www.xsreviews.co.uk/reviews/graphics-cards/sapph...

If you read farther back, he's using early drivers. (the article was written in June/July, and the official drivers weren't stable he said.) Except for FEAR which is more or less a tie when looking at the average, the XTs do quite well. After doing some digging, this appears to be the only benchmark of 2600XTs in CF that I can find. Perhaps Toms will lead the pack and fix this.

To the OP, I'm not sure $25 is worth it. Yes the 2600XT is faster then the 8600GT, but I'm not sure is faster by $25. What about the x1900/x1950 series cards? The x1950pro is as fast as the 8600GTS (depending on the game.), and it might be very cheap seeing as its "old" technology. If you can find one locally for the same price as the 8600GT/GTS, then I would get it.

Speaking of depending on the game, I'm not really sure how much faster/slower the XT is to the GTS. In some reviews in some games, it is faster then the GTS, while in other games (FEAR seems to cause the 2600 series quite a bit of trouble) its lucky if it gets even half the frame rates. 15%? It seems to matter more of who you read from or what game more then anything else.

Nice benches.

The performance is definitely in the same league when you look at the games.
But you're right, with newer drivers two 2600 XTs probably pass the 8600 GTS pretty easily.

What Power supply I can use to power 7900GT or 8800GTS
I can only get Antec here  

What model from Antec? Their TruPower and Neo series are pretty good, but I understand that their Smart power has a capacitor problem. (I didn't find this out however until AFTER i bought my SP 450W...)

I'm not sure how much power the 7900GT takes, but the 8800GTS needs 28A on the 12V rail. You better make it 30A just so that the PSU isn't maxed out all the time. The Gforce 7 series is rather power efficient, so I'd estimate that a PSU with 25A is more then enough, you probably only need 20 or 22A. Wait for someone else to confirm, or look it up yourself.

I think Antec true power trio is sufficient for 7900GT in SLI
and a single 8800GTS,
Antec Quatro 850W is for 8800GTS in SLI.
is that correct?

7900GT is 22a, 28a in SLI

What OS are you using?

Windows Xp sp2