drwho

I've got a friend who is looking to upgrade his video card from his current 7800 GT to either a 8800 GTX or the new 9800 GTX when it comes out. I've been telling him he should go with the 9800 instead of the 8800. We both decided to let the experts here at DriverHeaven help us make the choice. So what do ya think, guys.

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BlueMak

Considering that the 9800 is also dx10 and not dx10.1 and the speed of the 9800gx2, and not having seen any 9800 gtx numbers yet, i say, get the cheaper one.

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Vikingod

I'd maybe hold off for the 9800, or get the X2.

It'll be interesting to see the official price point of the to-be-released card, as compared to the previous gen...

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Scoped

If only he lived in Canada:

Pcvonline.com, Buy BFG nvidia 9800GTX 512MB DDR3 PCI-E Video Card.

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matthew_davao

either way he'll get a big performance boost from the upgrade.

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CDsDontBurn

as of right now, i'd say go with the 9800GTX over the 8800GTX. the 8800 uses the older g80 core, and also, the 9800 also has full support of DVI to HDMI cable converters.

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tcman

If the two do not differ much in price go for the 9800GTX, since the latter one is more energy-efficient (well, relatively energy-efficient for a high-end gfxcard) than the 8800GTX, so more performance per watt.

See here for a comparison the power consumption etc. by using several high end gfxcards:

XFX 9800GTX 512MB review (Bjorn3d.com) - Power Consumption & Temperatures

GeForce 9800GTX is not a Power-hungry monster - Expreview.com

Tipstaff

Hold on a sec. Does anyone else see the problem? I mean, the 2 power consumption charts are inconsistent (3 if you count EpertReviews quoting of VR-Zones totals). There's a 35watt discrepancy in idle and load between the 2 sites in regards to the 9800GTX totals. On Bijorn3D the 9800GTX uses 166watts in idle, and 292watts during load. However, on ExpertReview, in idle they report 131watts, and under load 230watts. Then you have ExpertReview quoting VR-Zones totals which are even lower.

To confuse you even more, Bijorn3Ds power consumption totals for the 8800GTX XXX are far over the 8800Ultras in the ExpertReview totals, and you even have the 8800GT totals on Bijorn3D that are 50watts higher than ExpertReviews totals for the 8800GTS G92 (a card using the exact same chip) for both idle and load. WTH?

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Zelig

Am I missing something, or is that just the inconsistencies they're getting because they're testing total system power draw, and using totally different systems?

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Tipstaff

I was thinking the same thing after I posted. It makes sense that Bijorn3ds totals are higher given the fact they tested it with 2 x 1TB drives vs ERs single 250GB drive, plus they had 2GB extra ram in their test system, and a quad core CPU. That extra drive, ram, and cores would extra watts to Bijorns totals.

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Fahim

I have both 8800 and 9800 GTX and i did bench them both, just let me know if you would like some figures.

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