I am in the market for a new card. Currently have a BFG GeForce 6600GT. I always assumed the higher the number the better the card, but this does not seem to be true. According to Toms Best Gaming Graphic Cards Feb 2008 Summary chart the 7900 cards rate higher than the 8600 cards, why is this? So, I should buy the 7900 right?

No, get the 3850 or 8800GT 256 or 8800GS. 7-series cards dont handle new games very well. The 3850 is around the same price as the 8600GTS and gives twice the bang. Same with the two 8800s. If you can find a 7900 really cheap (like £40) then it'll be a decent deal, but dont spend anything over that.

Whats the rest of your system like?

I recommend 7900GT over 8600GTS
but cant u afford HD 3850 in that price range? if u can then go for it its alot better than 7900GT and 8600GTS

my 7950gt can play crysis at med settings, everything else (bioshock, oblivion, supreme commander, dark messiah, TF2, call of juarez) on all high at 1280x1024.
i would say it depends on the resolution you run.
though, i agree with Maziar, the 3850 is a better card than either of the ones you mention.

You should really get a 3850. Almost twice as fast as 8600gts and only $30 more.

7900gt is actually slower than 8600gts in any of the modern games but faster in old games.

I can find a 8600gts for $125-140. A 8800gt is over $200. The 3850 is about $180. I will have to consider if I want to spend the extra $40-50 to get the 3850. I have always had nvidia and a little unsure about going to ATI, which I am sure there is a huge thread on already.

I found a 7950gt 256 for $125. If I don't want to spend the extra money for the 3850, I should get this 7950 instead of the 8600gts, right?

Will I need a large power supply?

System Specs
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0 GHz
BFG Geforce 6600gt
400w power supply
1GB DDR2 SDRAM

Nothing wrong with ATI or Nvidia cards. They do the same thing.

What brand is your power supply?

hmmmm, I do not know, I will look tonight. Does it matter?

Also, considering my CPU, could it become the bottleneck, for lack of better words, resulting in not taking advantage of a 8800 card pass the capabilities of a 7900 card? In other words, the CPU processing power demanded by the 8800 is beyond the capabilitiy of my CPU so I should just settle for a 7900? What are your thoughts.

By the way, THANKS to everyone for their input.
John

YEs it matters. There are cheap power supplies and good ones that can take high end video cards. Depending on how old and what brand it is you can outfit other cards without a problem. 400watt isn't really big but then again 7950gt doesn't eat up too much power. Long as you have a name brand and not some generic you should be fine.

The 8600gts won't bottleneck on your cpu- I did an upgrade on a vista machine for a customer, and the graphics went to a 5.6- games were not only playable but very enjoyable!

Here's the card I used:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130291

Read the reviews on newegg, they are realy good!

That's a big rip off.

Yeah, that does seem a little pricey for a 8600gts.

Does anyone think my CPU will be bottleneck with a 8800gs?

I don't know why you think its a ripoff.... it's a superclocked edition with a $20 mail in rebate to make it $169.00....There were cheaper ones on newegg... you just have to LOOK. The customers 5.6 was because he didn't want to upgrade the ram... he was running 2-512's...I did a test with 2-1gig chips and he got a 5.8. It all depends on your parts with vista.

what are you referring to when you say 5.6 or 5.8 games?

Please educate yourself:

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/ [...] 58117.aspx