Budget buying 9600gt or 8800gt

320mb 8800gts $79

http://fxvideocards.com/ZOTAC-GeFo [...] 16285.html

The 320mb GTS still packs a lot of power, in a review I read the Fatality edition beat the 9600Gt in most games - the stock one was close to necking it, this one should overclock quite well..

Perfect card for 1280 by 1024 imo...

That card is far from useless...

Its a G80 card that can keep up with the 9600gt/8800gs no problem, its a bargain at those prices..

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page7.asp

http://reviews.cnet.com/graphics-c [...] 64307.html

9600GT

A word of Advice: Be careful with Open Box items, they may have damage,etc. They also don't come with the extra stuff like driver CD,etc.

Thanks for the advice, I'm not big on mail in rebates, takes too long sometimes and i've been screwed before on them. What id like to see is what the 9600gt and 8800gt and gts 320 are like overclocked and matched up. My main reason for a 9600gt is the 512mb of ram, where as I'm not so sure about the 320 on the GTS. I play games like AoC, LOTRO, Movie Battles, HL2 mods and 2142. But id also like to leave myself open for some of the Crysis mods coming out, so im not very sure if I would need the 512MB or not.

Whoa!!! TIME OUT!!! Those cards are a lot if your on a budget. Consider an 8800 gs. It's basically the little brother to the 8800gt. The normal gs is worse than a 9600 gt. However, Newegg has a superclocked version by EVGA listed on their site. I think it's 135. Not a bad price, even though you are not big on MIR, it does have a 30 dollar one. Which means 105. It's only got 384 mb of ram though. But at the resolutions your wanting to run, ought to be plenty. And the overclocked ones according to the benchmarks at lower resolutions outperform the 9600gt in some cases. Meaning you'd have a good compromise, cheap price. Where you'd be limited is if you want to start playing high resolution. I think what I've read is above 1600x1200. But don't quote me on that, do a little research. But for 105 after rebate, it's not bad. I think EVGA also has a step up program, so if you weren't happy with the card, you could essentially trade the card in upgrade to a better card within 90 days. But look for some benchmarks and see what you think. I've been looking and that's what I've been wanting for my own rig.

For that resolution either of the three cards give a good performance ... though if you're thinking of a little futureproofing or are thinking of upgrading your resolution (new monitor) later, 8800GT is a better investment......... but as Shadow said, open box isn't the safest way to buy a card.

Can't you just buy an 8800gs whatever version and overclock it yourself, do the brands realy do anything that much different then a heatsink fan and a sticker?

What's interesting about that card is the dual slots setup which should provide good cooling and certain dose of silence. I have one of another brand and single slot, it's noisy as a jet engine.

lack of AA in 1280x1024? How? 8800gs supports upto 16xAA.

Usually newegg open box is fine. It's customer returns. However, I don't think newegg checks each card that is returned. It still comes with the same manufacturer warranty but doesn't come with good return policy. I would stay away from MSI warranty though. They aren't too known for their warranty policy like EVGA, XFX, BFG, etc..

Both of those cards will do fine for such low resolution. You might also want to put an eye out for EVGA 8800gs if you want to save more money. It is just as good as 9600gt in that resolution.

I'm not too fond of rebates either because lot of times it does not come however EVGA are very good with their rebates long as you follow directions and include everything that the form asks. I got mine within 6 weeks.

I can tell you this. I've yet to play a game that made this card choke. Even crysis @ high settings is pretty smooth at that resolution. Just no AA with Crysis unless you want to run medium settings and turn up AA.

On older engines 16x CSAA +TRMS + 16xAF like Half Life 2, BF2, you know some older engines and still pull nearly 100fps average.

With any of the recently released games I usually turn on 4x AA 16x AF. That is the base I start with the settings at that resolution. Sometimes more depending how good the game was coded. Games like COD4 I can turn on 16x CSAA and still over 60fps average.

If you don't have COD4 that xfx 8800gs is a STEAL. COD4 costs $40 alone and after rebate you are getting a high performing card for $60. However there are some draw backs to that XFX 8800gs card. The fan is not variable so it will be pretty loud. It also comes with slower memory. I'm not sure how far they can clock in the memory dept which these 8800gs seems to bottleneck. You might want to ask Paul the forum giggalo since he has that card.

I would purchase the 9600GT if I were you. I say that because if you were going to buy the 8800GS 384MB version you will have limited memory and the 9600GT has about 20 more GB/s of memory bandwidth which is nessesary for todays heavy texture games. Also (i know from experience) the 9600GT overclocks quite well and memory running at 1000MHz is easily obtaind along with a 740 MHz core, same as the EVGA SSC edition.

Or hold out because I think Nvidia is supposed to be releasing the 9600 gso. If you don't know what that is, from what I read it's really the 8800 gs rebranded into the 9000 series line. But I think they are releasing a 768 mb version. So if for the price of a 9600gt you could get a superclocked 9600 gso with more video ram, that might be the ticket for someone on a budget. Especially if it really is the same core and chip as the 8800gs.

One argument for the 9600 is that if you have an SLI mobo, you'll probably be able to grab up a second one cheap later on, they tend to discontinue older models fairly quickly, I'm hoping I can afford to buy another cheap 8800gt before they vanish

Do the 8800gs SLi well or is there no point for 2 of them?

I most likeley will only do a 1440-900 max in the future, I don't plan on getting thing bigger then a 19inch screen.So high res isnt really a problem for me.

I think ill just get this and overclock it http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130334, it is only 10 dollars more than the EVGA 8800gs superclocked

^...brilliant deal. Very much worth it indeed!

Heard Zotac warranty is very picky. I would stay away.

You might as well get the MSI 8800gt over Zotac.

Good words

Any one have any comments on this behemoth?http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814134040 thinking about this 9600gt for overclocking instead of the EVGA.
The EVGA, ECS are compared herehttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814134040

Tweak town, wierd name, had given it a 9/10. Any one know of their rep?
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1 [...] index.html