Gigabyte Nv GF 9600GT or 9800GT?

I'm thinking of buying one of these two video cards:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Product [...] uctID=2804

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Product [...] uctID=2883

The one is little more expensive than the other and I want to know is it worth buying the 9800GT because I would like to save some more money for buying other stuff (additional HDD).

Right now I am with Gigabyte's GeForce 7600GT with "Silent Pipe II" technology which I like very much. 9600GT has similar technology but the 9800GT doesn't have anything like that.

Any advice?

All kinds of games... i just want to play the new ones at "high"
res: 1280x1024 (usually)
Intel Pentium D 3.2GHz dual core
3GB DDR2 RAM Kingston (if I buy 9600GT most likely I'll upgrade to 4GB)
ASUS P5LD2 SE motherboard (if that matters)
HDD: 60+160GB Maxtor and Seagate

I've got a 9600gt and its not a bad card, but for what you'll spend, grab the 4830, sits in price between the 9800gt and 9600gt, but performance as good as the 9800gt, all which BlueScreen mentioned. You also may look at the 4770 if you can find one online, as they can be found on newegg for about 100, and should best all the above mentioned cards. However, if you really want cheap, check out the ATI 4670.

The other question, what Power Supply are you running? I don't think this has been asked, but this will dictate what kind of upgrade you are actually able to do.

They're not that much different. Maybe you'll get that 15% speed boost which will mean that extra 3-5 frames. But a decent overclock should be able to compensate partially for something like that anyway.

I actually recommend the 9800GT if the price difference is not that much. The 9800GT gives you on average 20+% higher performance than the 9600GT at 1280 x 1024. In Crysis the difference is 50%.

See benchmarks:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/v [...] html#sect3

While you may not care about 50FPS vs. 60FPS in games right now, the 9800GT will allow you postpone purchasing a newer video card in the near future since it has "extra power on tap" to deal with more demanding games that have not yet been released. Of course if you intend on upgrading to a DX11 video card in the near future, then the 9600GT should be fine.

I use a overclocked 9600GT in my HTPC every now and then to play Fallout 3 @ 1920 x 1080 at medium settings.