Best buy at £40? gaming & folding

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ooooh, no it isn't

the GT240 is a new, 40nm GPU with 96 "cuda cores" (as NVidia would have it) and either GDDR3 or GDDR5 memory on a 128bit bus (a bit of a mixed bag really) whereas the 9600gt is 64 cores and a 256bit memory bus. 512MB GDDR3 versions are just under £60, and would be bad for gaming (crippled by the low memory bandwidth) but should be brilliant for folding (the GDDR5 versions should be reasonable gaming cards, however). Plus, it has a TDP of just 69W (i.e. no additional PCIe power connectors ) - very important consideration if I'm going to be running the machine 24/7.

the OEM-only GTS240 is a rebranded 9800GT - 112 cores, 256bit GDDR3 memory interface. Not interested!</archi-lecture>

right now, I'm watching a couple of 8800GS's on fleabay (that's the one that was rebranded to the 9600GSO!) - but tbh I really can't afford even £20 on a new GPU right now and it's mostly of academic interest until maybe Feburary...

In the Hexus classifieds there was an 8800GTS 512MB for £45 IIRC.

Perhaps you should have a look at an 9600GSO Magic which had 96 shaders, a 128 bit memory bus and GDDR2 RAM. It is based on the G92 chip and should be cheaper than a normal 8800GS or 9600GSO. There is a picture of it in this link:
http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-52...IC-512-MB.html

[scaryjim]

In the Hexus classifieds there was an 8800GTS 512MB for £45 IIRC.

There was a horrendous week last month where 2 8800GTS 320MB came up in FS at once and if I'd had the money spare I'd've bought both of them for a killer folding + SLI gaming set up: but alas, no money

Anyway, I'm keeping my eyes open and will hopefully end up baggin a bargain one way or another

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There was a horrendous week last month where 2 8800GTS 320MB came up in FS at once and if I'd had the money spare I'd've bought both of them for a killer folding + SLI gaming set up: but alas, no money

Anyway, I'm keeping my eyes open and will hopefully end up baggin a bargain one way or another

SLI 8600GT DDR2 FTW!!

[scaryjim]

SLI 8600GT DDR2 FTW!!

Lol - you jest (well, I assume you do) but I seriously almost got a couple of 8600GT OCGear that microdirect were selling cheap! Then I did my research and realised they were basically identical to the 9500GT