Which graphic card to buy ?9400 or 8800

[kppatil]

Hello,
I want to buy a g-card to support the latest games.budget is 1500-3000 Rs.My sys config is dual core 2.5Ghz, 1.0Gb ram,17" monitor. I thought of buying Nvidia geforce 9400 1 Gb or 512mb. Also I heard 8800Geforce with 512 mb is well enough to play games.I'm totally confused whether to get 512mb or 1Gb. what more benifits i get if i buy 1 Gb , is it cost worthy?

 

[Mousemonkey]

Between those two the 8800 wins hands down.

 

[kppatil]

some say 9400GT is weak card for gaming , 8800 is better . can u plz tell why 8800 is hands down? also i'm confused about 512mb or 1GB, plz help. what more benifits i get for 1 gb?

 

[Mousemonkey]

Neither card can actually use a gig of RAM so it's of no benefit at all and the 9400GT has a mere 16 cores or SP's whilst the 8800GT has 112.

 

[Aneesh@4GHz]

+1^mousemonkey

 

[kppatil]

Thanks a lot ! so i'll get 512mb. Is 8800GT available in market? whats is its price? i jus saw its 12500Rs. oh.. i won't put hands if its costly , rather i would take 9400 which is 1900Rs for 512mb . Are there any other cards in that price range?

 

[Lmeow]

The 8800 GT is old, the newer version is the 9800 GT although that would probably be out of your price range too. What other cards are available at that price?

 

[jyjjy]

Exactly how much do you have to spend

 

[kppatil]

not more than 3000 INR

 

[kppatil]

does unused memory on the G-card can be used as a physical memory?will it speed up my system process?

 

[Mousemonkey]

does unused memory on the G-card can be used as a physical memory?will it speed up my system process?

No, I'm afraid it does not work like that.

 

[kppatil]

thanks anyway! I have decided to get 9400GT with 1Gb

 

[kppatil]

Best answer selected by kppatil.

 

[jyjjy]

If your goal is gaming the 9400GT is simply not an option really.
For 3000INR you can get either an HD4650 or 9500GT. Either will be well over twice as powerful as the 9400GT.

 

[Dane Bouwer]

the most important thing to look in for a graphics card is the bit rate, because the 9400gt has 1gig dedicated memory, and the 8800gt has 512mb, doesn't mean the 9400 is better...

the 8800gt has 256 bit rate and the 9400gt has only 128!! the bit rate is data transfer rates, which, all in all, makes or breaks a GPU

and the higher the model number doesn't mean a better card! Remember: Bit rate!!

 

[jyjjy]

The memory bus width is VERY far from the most important factor in a video card. For example an HD5770 is 128-bit and there are a ton of 256-bit cards that aren't nearly as good. On its own I'd even go as far to say the bit rate is meaningless. It must be combined with the ram speed to determine the memory bandwidth which is the important factor.
In the end the thing that truly matters is performance. If you know enough about video cards you will be able to estimate performance from stats but anyone with enough knowledge to do so knows that benchmarks are a much better and more precise way to determine a card's abilities. Considering the web is full of sites benchmarking any card you may be interested in there is no reason to use anything else.