[Solved] Upgrade from 8800gt

I have a nvidia gefore 8800gt and i have no clue which card to get. I have been looking around and I cant really decide which card is better. Im looking for a card thats around 150-200 bucks and that can run smoothly. someone please help thank you

Providing the rest of your system isn't ancient, $150-200 can buy you a 5770 or 4890 ATI side or a GTX 260 nVidia side. Any of those would be a huge upgrade from an 8800GT.

oh i945 chipset.......it is highly chance your mobo only support pcie 1.0 ....so either any card at the moment able to work on your system....(4890/gtx260 require pcie 2.0 to function better performance, geforce 9 will still require pcie 1.1 or above)

other word...get a new rig......

Let's see.

These are the video cards that are generally considered to be faster than a 8800GT.

Radeon 4850
Radeon 4870
Radeon 4770
Radeon 4850x2
Radeon 4870x2
Radeon 5850
Radeon 5870
GeForce 9800GTX+
GeForce GTS 250
GeForce GTX260
GeForce GTX275
GeForce GTX280
GeForce GTX295

Why don't you just read Tom's best graphics for the money...and look at the hierarchy chart to make sure an upgrade is worth it. 8800gt's still a pretty good card.

Look for the October article soon
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2404.html

Exactly. 9600gt's a downgrade. Look at hierarchy chart.

Because cheesesub has no idea what he's talking about. Nothing wrong with PCIe 1, nor is a 9600GT an upgrade from a 8800GT.

One thing to possibly keep in mind is you have a mobo that has more then one PCIe slot. This means you can use your 8800GT as a PhysX card if you want. While AMD provides a better cost/performance ratio, if you have vista you can't use one. Before you do this, make sure the games you play can take advantage of PhysX.

9600gt isn't a downgrade of 8800gt. it is downgrade of 8800"GTS" which he doesn't have it..... it has better fabrication(65nm), and same buswidth(256bit) and better performance than 8800gt can offer. and most important is....less power hungry than 8800gt.

and the debate of pcie's backward competibility. i'm not saying pcie 1.0 can't support any newer graphic card. some chipset like g31 and nforce 610i can support pcie 1.0 to 2.0 but some cant. like older nforce 4 and i945. so simply it depands on the chipset. the problem is the "chipset". which he need to get a new system instead of just get a graphic card.

because i know what exactly i'm talking about.......

ps: i945 is the worst chipset in intel history and prescott + i945 is the worst combo ever....

how'd you prove i am a troll? tell me.

well just look up wikipedia, i may be wrong with 8800gt&9600gt, i was mistaken with 9800 gt. anyway.

btw he's mobo still cant run either geforce 9 or above, even pcie 1.1 like geforce 8 were still risky on that chipset. unless he wants to run these card with tons of hardware issue(as it may be fatal.).

so the conclusion is---he needs to change his mobo if he wants to get a newer graphic card because these graphic card require at least g31/35 or above to function probably(p45 would be much better).

i guess i mixed up with "ASUS P5LD2". thank you for correcting me.

whoa ok so i dont have to get a new motherboard right and if i get the gtx 260 i wont have any problems cause i want to make sure

As I've been trying to say, you'll be fine. Don't listen to those who have no clue what they are talking about, PCIe 2 will work in PCIe 1, it will just have half the bandwidth available. This doesn't mean half the speed, it means it wont' be able to talk to the CPU as fast as the bus allows. Seeing as even the fastest cards have trouble filling PCIe 1, this isn't an issue. (similar to harddrives not being able to fill SATA 150MB speeds because they can only sustain 100MBps.)

As Pepperman said, make sure you have the connectors you'd need, and a PSU good enough to run whatever card. Other then that, you'll be fine.

ok i have a 600 watt psu that would be enough right? and if i were to get another gtx 260 how would i be able to connect since i have enough adapters to connect one gtx 260

how will i determine that? i see a +12V then under it 32A and under that 384 watts and under that combined with the +3.3V and the +5V its 580W

thats whack was hoping to do SLI and if i were to do it i would have to buy a new PSU correct?

I completely agree with Ohiou, however about the 5750 and 5770 I'd suggest going with the 4870s or 4890s there much cheaper than the 260s at least the 4870s are. Newegg has the lowest 4870 at 124.98. The 4870s outpreform the 260s by far and match up with the 280s on some games. http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 64-10.html shows that. And the 4870 offers the DX 10.1 support which should be set for a while. D11 has few to no games currently but yeah. 4870 is the better buy. Rather than the 260 since its in like the same price range on Newegg.

If you want a 4870, you should go with the one I posted (at least if you're going off of newegg). Since the price difference is so small, you should stick with a 1GB version over the 512 MB version.

The 4870 I posted before was $145. Here's the link again.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150436

Oh, the EVGA is more expensive, also, because of brands, since more people just prefer EVGA since its the standard Nvidia brand, I THINK! Since its like how Sapphire and EVGA are exclusive to its GPU

The 2106 MHz of the GTX 260 is GDDR3 with a 448 bit interface while the 3600 MHz (900 x 4) of the 4870 is GDDR5 with a 256 bit interface. The bandwidth is very similar, I could calculate it but I'm too lazy right now, but you really can't compare the two cards that way; they're built on different architectures, so you can only look at theoretical performance differences. You're better off looking at the charts (either the ones I posted, or you can go there yourself).

ok so if i were to go with gtx 260 SLI i will have better preformance then the 4870

With SLI, yes, but just as the single card config, a pair of 4870's will perform similarly. I agree, that is a terrible cooler; to be honest, I wasn't operating at full capacity when I linked that. Unfortunately, the next best one I would recommend (based on warranty) is the ASUS Dark Knight, which costs $160.

Since you seem to want to have a multi-gpu setup, it really boils down to your mobo. The only way you can do it (without upgrading your mobo) is SLI. If you have the money now and/or you want to add another gpu later, you should go with the GTX 260. If all you want is a single GPU setup, you could get either, depending on how much you want to pay.

Dark Knight
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121291

That's what we're here for.