Newbie GPU question

Morithain

I decided to upgrade my graphics card from a 7600 to an 8800, but I have a small question about the types of 8800s. The 8800 GS is $119.99 and the 8800 GT is $179.99 on newegg, my question is, why? Is there a serious difference between the GS and GT (both XFX)?

Just want to make sure so I don't miss out on something important :P

gneGne

Yes there is quite a big difference, I believe they have a table on gfx card performance on Tomshardware.

Rook

Yes, the GS is the cut down shitty version.

Dyvion

I'm considering upgrading from SLI'd 7600 GT's to an 8800 GT. I love my 7600's, right now my processor (athlon 64, single core) is my bottleneck, I'm pretty sure. Tried to upgrade my processor to an athlon X2 but it was a bad processor... couldn't get it to boot after shifting everything around, finally put my old chip back in and it booted flawlessly it's on its way back to newegg right now. But if you've got an SLI board the second 7600 is probably much cheaper than an 8800 gt. won't get the same performance, but it will be better.

e: Unless you're trying to go DX10... and then the second 7600 isn't an option.

bloodr

I think one of the biggest differences is the number of Shader Processor Units each card has. The 8800GT has 128 and and the GS 64.

Now I had a Athlon 64 3400+ and slapped an 8800 GT 512 on it and Noticed a HUGE difference from my 7800 GT that was on there. Then I upgraded to a Core2Duo MB and got another jump in proformance.

In my opinion I'd get the 8800 GT 512, as you are future proofing yourself somewhat, going SLI with 7600 means dealing with the hassle of SLI and you'll probably need to upgrade again in 6 months. Besides all the newest games love lots of SPUs, something the 7x00 series is lacking.

One more note about buying an 8800 card, these are PCIe 2.0 cards so make sure your motherboard is compatable with it! You might need a BIOS update or downgrade. Apparently some PCIe 1.0a MBs don't like 2.0 cards even though they are supposed to be backward compatable.

Dixon

The 8800gs is totally gimped version, handles less bandwidth, less shader and stream units. Just yeah don't go for it. The GS would most likely be closer to the 8600gt. Yeah also SLI isn't a 2 times the performance dealy thing at best like 80% better but not always depends on the application. Also a 8800gt can handle more then double the bandwidth then that of a 7600gt

Monkey Ball Warrior

The second digit is often more important than the first.