Cheap 9600 v. cheaper 8800 gs

Ok, I'm graduating and going to the local university. Since im going to get money for this event, i was wondering how to spend it. I am trying to keep this as close to 100 dollars as possible so keep that in mind.
Here are the contenders so far...
Chaintech 9600 GT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814145151
and

EVGA 8800 GS Superclocked http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130333

i have no idea which one to pick. BTW, my monitor res is 1280 x 1024 incase you need to know.

8800 9600

$105 $119
96 stream processors 64
650 core clock 650
1900 mem clock 1800
384 MB 512
194 bit 256

what do i do????
thanks and i encourage any other suggestions or comments.

^Agreed. Also the 9600GT can be OCed more than the 8800GS imo.

Edit:
I was thinking about the 8800GTS.

so the number of stream proccesors doesn't matter?

It does for some games but game today aren't shader limited with current generation cards. In the future though those extra SP would make substantial difference.

8800gs has massive texture fillrate over 9600gt though so it does beat 9600gt in some games and 9600gt beats 8800gs some. 9600gt has 256bit memory bus so it does better at AA.

and the 384 is gonna hurt when things like FSAA are used.

I'd still go for the 9600, but it depends on the real advantage of shaders in the future, the extra ram for memory intensive appa is real and now though, but either way they are good cards.

It just depends. What monitor you are running?

I'm on 19" monitor so 9600gt is moot point with a higher price tag that performs about same at current time. However those xtra SP would help in future titles that are more complex.

Really? I play BF2 with 16xAA TRMS 16xAF @ 1440x900 and still get 100fps.

Any new titles I play with 4xAA 16xAF or higher depending on the game.

8800gs performs better than 9600gt in Crysis by couple frames at playble resolution where it matters anyway since all these cards play anything you throw at it with fast frame rates.

Oh hell yeah, for that price, I'd get it too.

In COD4 I can play everything cranked 4xAA 16xAF and still average 70fps.

Half life 2 forget about it. Try more like 100fps with the highest eye candy 16xAA 16AF.

I have a 19" LCD so I can play high settings and pull 37 fps. In very high detail I get 25fps or so with DX9 very high settings.

I was thinking about the old (non G92) 8800GTS. I stand corrected.

Not with 16xAA it doesn't. My old 8600gts gave me 50fps average with 4xAA in Half Life 2. You probably had AA off.

I only mentioned COD4 because the OP asked for it. What games did you want me to compare it with? There isn't a game other than Crysis 9600gt or 8800gs have trouble with.

8800gs performs fast as 9600gt if not faster without AA. Your original post mentioned that the OP would want higher AA settings. Your logic doesn't make sense. You say 1 thing and say another.

Probably because your so busy arguing, you cant see what im saying, here ill try again, at a low res like the op is talking about, hes going to want aa, to smooth out the jaggedness , so im suggesting the 9600, and in another post i said that bf2, and cod4 are not really gpu intensive games, i used to run them both on a p4, and a 7600 gt with great frame rates, and then i later said that i personally dont use aa, because i run everything at a resolution of 1600x1200, now if i ran at a lower res, then i would want aa, but since i run a higher res, i dont need it, i dont see the diffrence with it off, or cranked all the way up, in no way am i being confusing here, sorry your too busy trying to argue with me. Take a breath and reread the posts.

ok i bought the 8800 gs from fry's.
now this is going to sound extremely stupid, but, im using a 300 wat psu right now with an oerclocked 8600 gts, 7200 rpm harddrive and a core 2 duo. is this card going to puch my psu over the edge and burn it up?

Boy you just missed. For few hours newegg had dropped the price of Diamond Viper 3870 gddr4 to $129 with free shipping and $15 MIR.

my 12 volt rail is 19 amps. is that ok?

Because what you said didn't make sense. That would depend on what monitor you have. Usually smaller CRT at higher resolutions, you won't notice much jaggies. If you are talking about LCD you definitely notice jaggies. It won't matter if you are running 1600x1200 or not. Jaggies are still present on LCD no matter how high of a resolution you run. Some people don't get bothered by aliasing. I don't really get bothered by AA either.

At lower resolution 8800gs doesn't have a problem keeping up with 9600gt with AA. Only when you up the resolution where 8800gs runs of vram and start texture thrashing it has a problem. Even at 1600x1200 and AA most of the games don't have a problem with 384mb of vram.

BTW, notice fry's sale ended and now it's $180 less the $40 rebate. Sold out anyway. http://shop2.frys.com/product/5592220

I ordered one as soon as I saw Marvelous's link yesterday. Hope they ship it as $86.92 is stinkin amazing for that card. I can easily sell it again in a build for that price, but first it will be time to see how they do in SLI vs 8800GT SLI.

Anyway, still $105 + $7 shipping from newegg.

i did get the 8800 for 86 bucks and i think i got the last one. i waited for a few hours and ordered it. then i checked after a few minutes and it said sold out. yay. i just read a review from tech power up that shows an overclocked 8800 gs beating a stock 8800 gt which makes me happy.
thanks for all of your help.

Nice link. Potential of these 8800gs is great. Good overclock and you can easily match a 8800gt.

I decided to do a test to show G92 bottleneck between both pixel and texel fillrate vs memory bandwidth. I lowered my core clocks by 24% which would reduce both my pixel and texel fillrate. My memory clocks lowered by 24% to emphasis on this test...

STOCK OC CLOCKS 729/1728/1040
37.55 fps


CORE REDUCTION 561/1728/1040
34.87 fps -7.2% difference


BANDWIDTH REDUCTION 729/1728/800
33.70 fps -10.1% difference



Conclusion. Memory bandwidth is bigger bottleneck than both pixel and texel fillrate combined on G92.

Interesting results. Was that Crysis?

while im asking questions, is this vard on par with the rest of my system (no major bottlenecks)?
e4400
2gig ddr2 667 dual channel
SATAII 7200 rpm drive.
thanks.

i got the backorder message from frys. should i cancel or wait?

im thinking about canceling and getting the xfx from tigerdirect or newegg.