which 7800 video card should I get?

Im upgrading my gaming machine and ditching the X800XL for 7800. Which 7800
is the best performance for the price? The BFG7800GTX gets top ratings but
maybe I can save some money by just overclocking a regular 7800.

mike

"miker" wrote in message
...
Im upgrading my gaming machine and ditching the X800XL for 7800. Which
7800
is the best performance for the price? The BFG7800GTX gets top ratings but
maybe I can save some money by just overclocking a regular 7800.

mike



Remember if it's big numbers you're after then the 512Mb 7800GTX also has
higher mem & core speeds than the 256Mb GTX. I would try to stretch to any
7800GTX if you can. I got a galaxy one and am V happy with it.

Chris

Regarding overclocking:

Be careful. Remember your time is worth money.
Let's be conservative and say your time is worth $20/hour.
[You could be a grad student who makes practically nothing or you could be
an engineer who makes $90/hour. I thought $20, as an example of
time-can-equal-money, was a nice average number to use.]
If you buy a 7800 with intent to overclock, I can almost guarantee you will
spend at least 4 extra hours of your life dealing with all the hassle,
research, experimentation, benchmarks, reboots, etc. to get that thing
reliably doing what a 7800GT is designed to do out of the box. And if you
try to clock a 7800 to 7800GT speeds, you'll also be investing money/time in
extra cooling. AND in the end what do you have? [yes, I realize for some
people it is fun to spend time tweaking and seeing what they can get a card
to do -- just please weigh this against the frustration and value of time] A
card running on the very edge of it's capability and more likely to have
future problems than otherwise. You even risk damaging your card so then
factor in the cost of the card and your time to buy a new one. So if you
want the performance of a 7800GT, spend the extra bux, save yourself time,
and buy a 7800GT. It will run more reliably and generate less heat than a
7800 overclocked to act like a 7800GT. OR... my advice is to get the new
512MB 7800GTX!

Video card is not an easy item to upgrade cheaply. Here is where I would
splurge if I were you. I highly recommend you bite the bullet and buy the
best card you can at this time so you don't have to try to sell it next year
for a big loss. Get the 7800GTX 512 now if you can swing it. And think of
how great it will be to play your fave games at the highest possible rez
with all eye candy turned on! By the way since the 7800GTX 512 came out the
7800GT is now third down the rung in performance. Remember, your TIME is
valuable. Yet another reason to upgrade BIG when you upgrade, so you can put
it off longer until the next upgrade.

BY "OLD DOG":
There's a review on the new 512mb video card at Tom's site. If you check
the benchmarks, the 512mb card in single mode sometimes beat the SLI 512mb
mode. By a few frames.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...114/index.html
And if I did my math correctly, the 7800GTX 512mb card was sometimes 23%-33%
faster compared to the 7800GTX 256mb video card for 1600 rez with 4x/8x
settings.



--
Scott Swain
512-497-4841
http://oceanMedia.net


"miker" wrote in message
...
Im upgrading my gaming machine and ditching the X800XL for 7800. Which
7800
is the best performance for the price? The BFG7800GTX gets top ratings but
maybe I can save some money by just overclocking a regular 7800.

mike

Scotter wrote in message ...
Regarding overclocking:

Be careful. Remember your time is worth money.
Let's be conservative and say your time is worth $20/hour.
[You could be a grad student who makes practically nothing or you could be
an engineer who makes $90/hour. I thought $20, as an example of
time-can-equal-money, was a nice average number to use.]
If you buy a 7800 with intent to overclock, I can almost guarantee you will
spend at least 4 extra hours of your life dealing with all the hassle,
research, experimentation, benchmarks, reboots, etc. to get that thing
reliably doing what a 7800GT is designed to do out of the box. And if you
try to clock a 7800 to 7800GT speeds, you'll also be investing money/time
in
extra cooling. AND in the end what do you have? [yes, I realize for some
people it is fun to spend time tweaking and seeing what they can get a card
to do -- just please weigh this against the frustration and value of time]
A
card running on the very edge of it's capability and more likely to have
future problems than otherwise. You even risk damaging your card so then
factor in the cost of the card and your time to buy a new one. So if you
want the performance of a 7800GT, spend the extra bux, save yourself time,
and buy a 7800GT. It will run more reliably and generate less heat than a
7800 overclocked to act like a 7800GT. OR... my advice is to get the new
512MB 7800GTX!

Video card is not an easy item to upgrade cheaply. Here is where I would
splurge if I were you. I highly recommend you bite the bullet and buy the
best card you can at this time so you don't have to try to sell it next
year
for a big loss. Get the 7800GTX 512 now if you can swing it. And think of
how great it will be to play your fave games at the highest possible rez
with all eye candy turned on! By the way since the 7800GTX 512 came out the
7800GT is now third down the rung in performance. Remember, your TIME is
valuable. Yet another reason to upgrade BIG when you upgrade, so you can
put
it off longer until the next upgrade.

BY "OLD DOG":
There's a review on the new 512mb video card at Tom's site. If you check
the benchmarks, the 512mb card in single mode sometimes beat the SLI 512mb
mode. By a few frames.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...114/index.html
And if I did my math correctly, the 7800GTX 512mb card was sometimes
23%-33%
faster compared to the 7800GTX 256mb video card for 1600 rez with 4x/8x
settings.



--
Scott Swain
512-497-4841
http://oceanMedia.net


"miker" wrote in message
...
Im upgrading my gaming machine and ditching the X800XL for 7800. Which
7800
is the best performance for the price? The BFG7800GTX gets top ratings
but
maybe I can save some money by just overclocking a regular 7800.

mike


bah. I got my leadtek 7800gtx, clocked it upto to 500mhz and ram to 1.3ghz,
ran call of duty 2, got a few artifacts so alt-tabbed back to desktop,
changed it down to 490mhz core, back to COD2, no artifacts. took all of 2
minutes. no problems since.

infact yesterday I just got another leadtek 7800gtx, popped it into the
second PCIE slot and bang! SLI!!