Nvidia 8800***~~~ HUH?

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bombasschicken

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ok ok.. This is just driving me NUTS trying to figure out.

For the 8800 serise.. there is GT, GTS, GTX, Ultra right? Then there is something about Xenon and Leviatha..??

Then there is XFX, Forsa, MSI, Anytec, Gigabyte, Inno3d, ZOTAC, Sparkle (yeah what?), Asus..

AND!! of course the budget cards, the regular cards, the overclocked cards...

Ok so i have seen GTS priced $100 more than a GT, and GTX twice the price of that. I kinda get the ultras and their prices but the rest just drives me crazy trying to compare all of these cards. Of course TH.com only has so many cards they can test and compare... When it comes down to it, each company has like 3 versions of each card, and with so many diff companys, how can anyone possible make an educated choice?

SO... I guess its user input time...

Your manufact, card version, memory, bus... all that fun stuff if you care to share.. and your opinion on the cards..

I am really interested in info about some of these off name brands..

Thanks..
 
fueled_by_ramen

fueled_by_ramen

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Well, first off, there aren't any off name brands per say.

Nvidia and AMD/ATI makes the actual GPU chip and then license other third-party companies to make the PCB (printed circuit board) and they stick those GPU chips on them, along with any modifications of their own (ie. extra ram, clock settings, etc).

XFX, MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, HIS, Visiontek, eVGA, and so on are these third-party companies that make the boards using the chips they get from Nvidia and AMD/ATI. Certain companies make them only for Nvidia and certain other companies only for AMD/ATI. For the most part, they are all fairly good but some companies are more reputable than others. In my opinion, on the Nvidia side, you can't go wrong with XFX or eVGA. And on the AMD/ATI side, Visiontek and Sapphire are two of the more well know board makers...but as I said...most of them are usually pretty good, it really comes down to personal experience/preference on who you go with...keeping in mind that some companies either overclock their vid cards, or add ridiculous amounts of RAM, or specialized coolers, and so on. So not all of them are going to be exactly the same. A company might release a version of the 8800GT with the standard cooler, and then release the same card but with a different cooler on it. Or they might release a card running at 600MHz core speed and another one at 660MHz. Or the RAM might be different. This is really where you get tons and tons of different vid cards, because each company usually releases at least 2 different versions of the same card.

If anything might be considered an off name brand it's only because they aren't as well known for their vid cards as XFX or Visiontek for example. A company named Galaxy made a version of the 8800GT, but I would venture to say that most people have never heard of Galaxy as a video card maker before and might avoid them because it isn't such a recognizable brand, but that's really the closest thing to an off name brand regarding video cards, just name recognition. Doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with the card.

In the 8800 series, it is usually broken down like this.
GT < GTS < GTX < Ultra.
Now there are some exceptions to this, especially recently with Nvidia's new 8800GT (G92 Chip), which is better than the older GTS (G80 Chip) cards. But there are also newer GTS cards using the G92 Chip as well, so these are still better than the GT. In the GTS line, you can tell the difference between a G80 and a G92 chip depending on the RAM. If it has 320 or 640 MB it's the older G80 chip. A 512MB GTS will be of the newer G92 design.

I know I know, confusing as hell. Not sure if I explained it clearly, but hopefully that will help you start to figure things out.

If you are looking to buy a new vid card, and you don't have all the money in the world to spend, the 8800 GT is considered by many to hit the price/performance ratio "sweet spot." They can run around $250 but they are starting to come down in price. I would recommend the 512MB version because 256MB of RAM on any card just doesn't cut it anymore in the newest games.

On the AMD/ATI side, the 3850 and the 3870 are also amazing cards and they are fantastic performers for the price. The 8800 GT will usually beat them in most games, but quite often only by a small margin, and even the 3850 has had some better performance in a couple of games, mainly games using Valve's Source game engine (HalfLife2/Team Fortress2). The 3850 can be as low as $150 now and also comes in 256 and 512MB versions. The RAM difference doesn't seem to affect the 3850 as much as other cards would, but it's probably still a better idea to go with a 512MB version of the 3850 anyway. If you are gaming using Vista and DirectX 10, get the 8800GT for now. The 3850/3870 take a bit of a hit in performance using DX10, but that should be fixed with newer drivers, just need a little patience.

Personally, I have a 3850 512MB OC card made by Visiontek right now, and I love it. I bought it at $180 when the 8800 GT's were still around $250-260 for the cheapest ones, so that extra ~$70-80 didn't seem worthwhile for the handful of extra frames per second. Crysis runs great at all High settings so I'm happy with it. But like I said, the 8800GT is coming down in price now so it's definitely more appealing than ever.
 
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bombasschicken

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Wow.. Much more than I was expecting.. You really cleared a lot of the air for me. Although some of those cards I dont think I would even consider touching, reguardless of the price. I like to see lots of 'thing' all over the card and some of those cards like from Gigabyte Ultra Durable2 editions. Just seems like its too empty to compare to the some of the other cards...

Also, is there any way to tell the diff of the G80 and G92 for the GT models?

I use 3 (soon to be 4) 22in screens for my work and they are currently connected to 2 x1900 pros in crossfire. Not a bad setup. I can do crysis at 1600x1050 smoothly for 90% of the game. But like everyone, I want the best of the best. So I am considering 2 8800GTs in SLI. The benchmarks for the 3850 just dont seem to match the 8800.. or perhaps I am looking in the wrong places....

I have noticed that the GTS with the G80 cores are actually more expensive than the GTs with the G92 core. And the GTS with the G92 cores are hard to come by... (I am in South Korea by the way). So would you say it better for me to go the GTs or the GTS?
 
fueled_by_ramen

fueled_by_ramen

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All GT's are the G92 chip.

In terms of the benchmarks between the GT and 3850/3870, yeah, the GT will perform better overall in most cases.

Since you are running 3, soon to be 4, screens, then you'd want at the very least a couple of GT's. G92 GTS's would be ideal probably because of the number of screens you have and their sizes.

Glad you were able to glean some info from that blob of text.
 
JeanLuc

JeanLuc

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I've brought Galaxy Nivida cards before and there is nothing wrong with them. Typically Galaxy likes to use third party HSF on their video cards rather then the reference Nvidia design. Their HSF's are cool and very quiet.
 
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imnotageek

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Oh, when all equal, some people actually choose the brand of the card by the buddled game as well.



If you want the "best of the best", I would suggest you SLI a top end 8800 to give you something that no single card can deliver. If you are considering 2x8800GT, I would rather recommend you to get a better single card instead.

Just my humble thought.


 
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bombasschicken

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I would, however as I mentioned before, I am runnin 3 screens and soon will be picking up a 4th.. So I need the extra card. I was considering buying a really really nice expensive one, (i miget be able to get an ultra for $550) but then I have to buy a second cheap card for my other monitors.. and since color out put is diff between cards.. I would have to tweak the second one to match.. Little things like that bother me..

So if you have 4 monitors, what would you do?

1. One really nice card with a second cheap one?
2. Two semi-really-decent cards?
 
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Rip181

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Dont know if this would help but if you want a single card for 3 or 4 monitors.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/01/asus-quad-dvi-packing-eah3870-x2-1gb-top-gets-previewed/
 
Heyyou27

Heyyou27

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I'm in a similar situation; I use 3 monitors on an 8800GTX + 8600GT configuration.
 
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gwolfman

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Wow, i haven't seen that one yet, very interesting
 
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bombasschicken

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WOW.... some people are REALLY lazy...

You know.. they COULD just disable sli when they are not using it. Takes all but 1 min to do. Im sure they dont play games 24/7...

I do the same thing with my crossfire in XP.. when I want to play games, I just enable crossfire. When I want to do other things, I just disable it and get my monitors back.. Simple as that..
 
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bombasschicken

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Yeah I was seriously considering getting this since it beats out an Ultra.. However, the only versions I have been able to track down here in Korea have only 2 video connector thingys... Not 4 like that one has...

If I find it, I might just buy that. Quad crossfire sounds nice... But I think I wont be able to find it here anytime soon...
 
Waspy

Waspy

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LOL yea good point, I think what it is (which is probably directly related to the laziness), is that the people want to have a walkthrough up while they are playing games.
 
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bombasschicken

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I think they are currently working on something like that.. Its suppose to revolutionalize multi-tasking spacifically for that!!!

They call it a Prin-ter? Im not sure about the spelling. Maybe its French?
 
Waspy

Waspy

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Come on dude it's 2008! Kids now a days have to have Facebook/MySpace and 30 IM windows up, AND that walkthrough. Printers are so dinosaur!
 
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bombasschicken

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Damn that a really nice looking card. I love all the copper shinning in my case. That would be a good addition. And Im sure it stay really cool too..

However, the problem of availability still exists here in Korea. I prolly wont see that or something like it for another 1~2 months...
 
Heyyou27

Heyyou27

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I use to have an SLI system and I found it to be a complete pain in the ass when switching from multimonitor and gaming; I was almost always prompted to restart Windows. On top of that, if I wanted to play a game and watch TV on media center at the same time, I'd be forced to using only one of my GPUs. If he's going to get two slower cards for SLI, this could be an issue. This time around I chose an 8800GTX for my gaming screen and an 8600GT for the other two and I've been completely satisfied.
 
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