So I bought a EVGA 8800GT SC card back in November last year and am coming to the end of my step-up window so enquired as to how much it would cost to step-up to a EVGA 8800GTS.

Now when I bought my 8800GT it was £184.99 (€246.53, $364) excluding tax and delivery. I keyed this in to the step-up calculator on EVGA’s website. I then selected the 8800GTS and it came back with a total step-up cost, including delivery of £93.41 (€124.47, $184). Now on EVGA’s website the difference between the 8800GT and the GTS is about £75 (€100, $148) (this includes the £9 (€12, $18) EVGA shipping fee) so I would still be paying a slight premium to step up.

So basically, is it worth it? I want to upgrade primarily because of the better cooler but does the £93.41 (€124.47, $184) extra equate to the same difference in performance?

What do you guys think?

One, more thing. Obviously the 8800GT is overclocked already and I've tried fiddling with it a bit to OC is futher but couldn't quite reach 700MHz on the GPU core speed. What sort of OC's could I expect from a stock EVGA 8800GTS? And then what difference would I see from this over the superclocked 8800GT?

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Rig:

Antec 900 Gaming Case
Vista 32-bit
Viewsonic VX824 (1280 x 1024)
Gigabyte GA-P35-S3 (Rev 1) Motherboard
Core2Duo E6600
Enermax Liberty 500W PSU
Crucial Ballistix 2GB DDR2 PC2-5300/667
WD 500G SATA2 WD5000AAKS HDD
EVGA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Superclocked "Crysis Edition"

As for the overclocks, the GT/GTS generally have similar high end overclocks - in the 730-760mhz range. Your card seems a little weak struggling to get to 700mhz. I've seen two of these in my actual experience and they sit at 700 fairly comfortably. A superclocked GT comes at 650-675 right? So you wouldn't see much difference.

I personally don't think the step up is worth the cash. Assuming you can OC the GTS to 750mhz (which is a stretch but possible), you will really only see up to 15%-20% more performance and this is only in situations where your are shader bound. You have to decide if the extra money is worth that kind of boost. From what I have seen the difference between the two cards doesn't justify the price difference nor the step up price. You also will be without a card for some number of weeks. I only stepped up once and it took 4 weeks to get my new card.

Furthermore at 1280x1024, unless you are a Crysis addict (does anyone actually like the game?), the 8800GT should handle pretty much everything.

€124.47 to go from an 8800GT to an 8800GTS? Looks like a bad deal to me. You would get to keep crysis, but I sure woundn't step up for that cost.

Yer, sounds like you are all right. Wouldn't really make sense I suppose.

With regards to overclocking my 8800GT SC then, should I definatly be able to push the core up to 700MHz? Because when I tried it at about 680MHz and then run ATITool, it starting to produce errors. And it wasn't the temps as they sat around 75C. Is there a better tool that ATITool to check for overclocking artifacts etc on the 8800GTs?

The dual slot cooler is nice, but you can now get one from EVGA to fit your 8800GT for $39.99. http://www.evga.com/products/morei [...] cs&family=

Not all cards are created equal, some OC better than others. If you are disappointed with the OC ability of your GT perhaps the 16 extra SP and the possibilty of a better OC is worth the step-up to a GTS.

Are there any reviews of this cooler anywhere as I was looking to get the Thermaltake DuOrb and would be interested to see how these compare.

question ... are you retarded? or do you just crave attention?

Excuse me? You know I thought these forums were a place where people could come and talk and seek help no matter what their level of expertise. But it seems that we can't do that now without getting insulted. Seriously, if you don't have anything constructive to say, I'd appriciate it if you just didn't say anything at all. If you don't agree that this would be a good purchase then please say so but not in a condescending way.

You could almost buy another GT for that price. I have GTS and am happy with my decision but no way would I pay $190 (i think) to go from the GT to it.

Yer I think you are right. I'm dropping the idea of stepping up now. Just going to try overclocking more I think. Need to get a new cooler for my GT though. Mmm...

I thought toms stated it was going to make all forums AMERICAN DOLLARS. I can't tell if your deal is good or bad but from it looks to me, they are charging you an additional 20 for the stepup program.
They are charging you what it cost prior to price drops and it seems like a fair price however personally you already have a good card, should be happy with it until the price really drops when the new boards come out or, your company catches up with the GTS price drops to make them more enticing lately over the obvious options to pickup the GT.

BTW the GTS is a better clocker than the GT. The GT runs hot on EVERY board I've read about...the GTS is allowing people to clock with the stock coolers and state they dont run as loud.

Your money, your time...you decide what's worth it right?

GL in your decision.

Sorry, updated prices to include $.

That was my thought but seeing he has a P35 mobo I didn't mention it.

WTF for, and why should I take any notice of such a demand as I am not and have never wanted to be American.

The easiest way to cool my GT I have found is simply to set the fan to max when gaming. my temps never break the mid 50's C (funny because it idles at about 53C on the stock fan settings. For some reason it seems the GT doesnt really adjust the fan speed when your gaming. So I just use riva tuner and crank it up before I game, temp problem solved.

That's odd, my two idle @1100rpm and spin up to 1900rpm when gaming, with no intervention on my part or RT's.

Yeah, that works, assuming you have some good noise cancelling headphones. I prefer gaming with 5.1 speakers if not using a headest & mic for multiplayer. Two 8800GT at 100% fan speed was way more than I could take. Shoot, 69% wasn't even tolerable to me.