Im buying a graphic card for my brothers birthday and i was going to buy him the asua 8800 gts 320 until I saw the gecube hd2900 pro which is abit cheaper, also they seem too preform about the same, so is it worth sparing a few bucks. I need to get the card in the next week so I cant wait for the new cards which are suppose to come out soon.

The question is can his psu handle it & can he take the extra heat & noise from 2900?

IMO, the 2900 Pro wins hands down as far as performance goes. It runs slightly warmer and uses more power then the 8800 GTS 320 though.

Personally, the 2900 gets my vote.

If he has a SLI Motherboard get the 8800. If he has a Crossfire Motherboard get the 2900. If he has neither get the 2900pro 1gig.

The psu is not a problem, temp is fine and compared to his current vaccum cleaner either card would be fine. He has a silght slot pci-e mb. Currently I have not been able to find a 2900pro 1gig card only the 512mb in my country. I think I might buy the 2900pro because i have read you can oc it abit, but could go either way.

ignore the 1 gig 2900 pro's, just get the 512, I don't think there is even a game out that uses 1 gig at all effectively

Man, I was going to buy the 2900 Pro tomorrow but the dang thing jumped $25 in price overnight!

Don't take the overclocking thing as Guaranteed but it should get somewhere near a XT if it does there could have been different reasons for the chips to be binned either unstable at XT speeds or unable to reach XT speeds so its reasonable to deduce that they wont all overclock to the same level.
Having said that given the price differance i personally think it would be mad to buy a full XT at the min when these cards are about and as spuddyt said dont even look at the 1gb cards its all hype you wont use itthe 512 will be fine.
Mactronix