Wow, now thats a sobering letter.

But you do have a good point!

I've already decided on delaying my purchase of a motherboard/cpu as
I've already come to the same conclusion as you have. That in a few
months, there will be the latest crop of next generation motherboards
supporting dual and quad core CPU's.

But I was thinking of getting the video card now so I could enjoy the
higher fps and so forth. I play quite a bit of games (like BF2,
BF2142, etc...) so I would enjoy being able to run the game in a higher
res and getting more fps, but actually I was just about to buy Splinter
Cell, so I'm not happy to hear that it has problems with the 8800. Of
course, i've heard this game has a lot of problems in general...

Thanks for the info John.

-Todd



John Lewis wrote:
On 6 Dec 2006 21:21:05 -0800, "Todd" wrote:

Does an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX work on an Asus P5WD2 Premium
motherboard?

I am going to be upgrading my system pretty soon (motherboard, and
everything else), but since I haven't quite figured out which
motherboard I am going to go to, I figured I was going to go ahead and
get the video card I want, but I wanted to make sure there are no
problems.

I know my motherboard, this Asus P5WD2 Premium (not the 'E' variant),
needed a bios update to support the Nvidia GeForce 7950GX2 board, so I
wondering (and worrying) if the 8800 GTX was going to work.

The current bios available for the P5WD2 is 0709 (which I am using),
and there is a beta bios which is 0802.

Anyone with information if this will work?

Thanks, I appreciate it!


Take a cool shower and try to forget the early adopter syndrome. Wait
for retail Vista/Dx10 and driver maturity for the 8800 for BOTH Dx9.0c
and Dx10. You will have a frustrating (and costly) experience for the
next 6 months or so if you buy a 8800 now. Several games do not yet
work with the 8800, which is a brand-new architecture requiring
brand-new drivers - one recent example Splinter Cell: Double Agent;
probably more Ubi's fault than nVidia's in this particular case.

You will be a far happier and richer camper if you delay all your
upgrade decisions till mid-2007:Vista/DX10 - OS and driver maturity;
the full range of AMD's new 65nm processors revealed, both dual and
quad; stable BIOS upgrades for DX10; wider and competitive choices in
enthusiast motherboards and power-supplies, ATi's(AMD) efforts on Dx10
fully revealed, real competition in DX10 cards driving the prices
down, second-gen Dx10 cards emerging -- prices steeply falling and
definitely re-engineered ASAP on 65nm in the case of nVidia, lower
cost,higher speed, lower power. That 8800 GPU chip is hot'n HUGE.
TSMC must have a truly squeaky-clean silicon-process for that chip to
yield AT ALL. I would bet that each yielded part fully tested and
packaged costs nVidia themselves $150-$200...... No doubt sold to the
board partners for $300-$350. Gotta cover the $475 million development
cost somehow.. So, lots of room for cost improvement with a re-spin
on 65nm.

John Lewis