Overall Best Graphics Card for between £100 and £200?

[muffin247]

the zotac is fantastic value for money and a little tip when u register within 14 days of purchase u get a 5 year warranty!!! 2 with the vendor and then 3 directy with zotac!!! sweet

[Pob255]

By all accounts, so far, the 9600GT, 9800GTX and even the 260 and 280 are the new cards for the extra resolution of 2650 x1600. The general oppinion on the net is that Nvidia should get their fingers out and release a GPU that really makes a difference compared to the 8800 cards.

??? What are you on about?
The 9800gtx uses the same chip as the 8800gt, it has more streams unlocked and it's run faster that's all.
The 9600gt is very bad at thoes high resolutions and the 8800gt is better than the 9600gt (I've seen a couple of reviews were the 9600gt is slightly faster, but that's a OverClocked 9600gt vs a stock 8800gt, if you oc the 8800gt as well it takes the lead back)

The thing to remember about the 8800 is that there are two differnt ones, the 8800gts 320mb, 640mb, gtx and ultra all used the older g80 chip that wasn't that great
the 8800gt, gts 512mb and 9800gtx use the g92 which is the newer chip
The 9600gt uses the g94 chip, which is a cut down version of the g92.

[edjay]

Pob255

You're quite correct; my comments are very sloppy, I should have left out the 9600GT, and possibly
even the 9800GTX.

Look at the 1920 x 1200 here for the older cards:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...orce_8800_gt/8

...and here:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...review-13.html

The only cards that make any noticable improvement on the older 8800 Ultra, GTX and the newer GT are the 260 and 280GTX. With the 9600/800 this is not really the case.

Look at the 2650 x 1600 and 1920 x 1200 for the newer cards and the (older) 8800 Ultra here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...0,1953-18.html


I'm still happy with my comments about SLI.

[Pob255]

My point was that the 8800gt & 8800gts 512mb are not really 8series cards, they are mid range 9series called 8series for marketing reasons.

The links you posted are to high res performance and crysis which is a pig of a game graphics wise, look to some of the other games on thoes reviews and you'll see rearly does the 8800gt dip below 30fps on 1680x1050 so they are playable at the bottom end of the £100-200 price bracket.

the 9600gt and 9800gtx where never going to beat the 8800ultra, they were never designed too, again we go back to the original topic.
the 8800Ultra was £500 when first released, so it well out of consideration.
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=8593&page=2
Also give the fact that it's beaten by both the g260 and g280 and the g280 is still cheaper on release by £80

Now if we look at what was around for that £100-200, Top end of that was the 8800gts 320mb £180+

The upshot was that ATi's rather lackluster hd2900 got well spanked, decided not to try to chase the high end where very few people will buy these cards and went for midrange where the majority of the market is.
It was the combination of poor midrange 8series and comming ati 3xxx that basically forced nvidia to take a fast option of changeing the g80 chip to work with cheaper 256bit memory and push the clock speeds higher to make aome decent midrange cards.
that g92 chip is still an exellent performer, they were never supposed to be massive powerhouses but streamlined versions of the g80 to push the prices down while keeping performance up.

If you want a replacement for the 8800Ultra then the g280 is a serious contender.
They squeezed in more clusters, with more cores per cluster, they've ballanced out the number texture addresses/filters to pixel addresses/filters (which will smooth out performance over all games junst not better performance one one type) they've upped to more expensive 512bit memory.
It shows in performance and price tag. If you want very high resolution with very high settings then you pay very high prices.
But for a lot of people, you can get high res, high settings for midrange prices. (ok 1610x1050 is becomeing medium res with the falling cost of monitors, but to me it's still high res )
EDIT: just to clarify, don't look to the highest resolutions available and think you'll get a mid range card that can play these on very high settings)