Cant decide on which video card! 8800gts g92 or wait?

[darkdisciple]

I plan to put a computer together soon, but there are some components I am undecided on. One of those is the graphics card. I plan to only use one card, and the 8800gts looks pretty amazing. Later this year nvidia is supposed to come out with a revision of it I think (the g200) and then a few months after that a whole new line of cards. Is it worth waiting till later in the year? Should I get a g200 in a couple months? Should I do something other than nvidia? Here is the stuff I know for sure I will be going with.

Case - Antec P182

Processor - Core 2 Duo e8400

Memory - (2) G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800

Power Supply - Corsair 620W Modular

Motherboard - ASUS P5K-E

Hard Drive - WD Velociraptor 300 gig

Cooler - XIGMATEK 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler

OS - Vista 64 bit

DVD - LG DVD Burner / DVD Ram

Thanks for any advice you can give!

 

[outlw6669]

Wait one more month before geting a high end card.
They will be coming in week 25.

 

[ciri]

Buy the OC version of the 8800 GTS 512 MB
U'll not be dissappointed.

Wait onli if U hav a good sytem as spare.

 

[jay2tall]

There is ALWAYS a new line of cards coming out. I never wait anymore, because here is what happens. The new cards come out at a premium price. You either pay the inflated price and then in 2 - 4 months kick yourself cause the price has come down dramatically. And by that time a new line of cards is in the mix to come out and everyone says "oh no no no wait till these come out" blah blah blah. The GT and GTS cards are GREAT! They are out and have been proven performers. For the most part you are looking at some sort of rebate to pick up one of these cards and get them for a steel. The GTS is such a great card, you can OC if you like and even stock it kicks butt. Down worry about the latest and greatest, sure its spectacular, but you also pay through your teeth for it. Do yourself a favor, get a good card now and be happy NOW not waiting for these mystically awesome cards to come out.

By the way, nice build, I'd change 2 things. 1) Get PC8000 or PC8500 memory if you plan to OC your CPU, you will cap out at 400MHz bus with 800MHZ memory. PC8000 will give you 500MHZ and 533MHZ at the 1:1 ration. And believe me that chip will go beyond 400MHZ. 2) Forget the Velociraptor, they are definitely a fast drive, but what the heck do you need it for? You can get a Seagate 7200.11/ES.2 drive for several times cheaper and get similar performance to the previous Raptor. You'll pay $300 instead of $100 for what, cause it loads maps faster? haha. I'm not poking fun but unless you have the $$$ to burn its a waste. It took me a year to convince my buddy that builds gaming machines of this. We duked it out while loading COD4 maps and my es.2 drive loaded them almost identically fast. We went back and forth on saying "DONE!"

~MikeRowe

 

[darkdisciple]

The timing on the PC2 6400 chips I was looking at is 4-4-4-15, while the timing on the OCZ and G.Skill PC2 8500 chips I am seeing are 5-5-5-15 and 5-5-5-18. The faster bus is worth the weaker timing?

PC2 6400 I was looking at:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227267

Highly rated PC2 8500s:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231166
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227289

The G.SKill PC2 8500 looks very nice, and with the e8400 I was definately planning to overclock.

 

[jay2tall]

The latency is higher but you are running it faster at the same time. You always want your memory to run no less than 1:1. Your ration will be lower if lets say your bus is 500MHz and memory at 400. it would be a 4:5 ratio, not so good.

So yes the latency decrease is fine if your memory is running faster. Look at the DDR3 memory latency MUCH higher, and DDR memory is lower than DDR2 memory.