ATi HD2900 or nVidia GeForce 8800GTX

I have fonud two similar Direct X 10 compatabile cards on scan.co.uk
The ATi HD 2900 1GB - http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=619491
or wether Ishould part with a bit more cash for the older, less memory 8800GTX - http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=499238
I will be overclocking the card, and running some Direct X 9.0c games on it, aswell as some new DirectX 10 games, and will be running Vista.
The only other problem is that my old card is stealing 796MB of my RAM, so will my new graphcis card continue to do this, or will I have to turn something of in the BIOS?
TIA

They are both great cards, and the ATI is actually meant to be a competitor for the 8800GTS. But it can best the GTX in many cases. But this is heavily overclocked. In most cases you will probably get better performance out of the 8800GTX, but you'll also pay a little more. (BTW the difference in RAM is really not a major concern. There are other factors that are more important than the amount of RAM a card has)

One good thing about the ATI card is that it'll come with Half Life 2 Ep 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. But that is still only a $50USD value.

If it was me buying, I'd go for the ATI card mainly because of the cheaper price (but still great performance) Price vs performance I just think the ATI is a better deal.


Oh and, no, neither of these cards will rob you of any system RAM. Your x1300 does that because it uses the system RAM as a cache for textures and stuff. But this is only something they do for more value oriented (read cheaper) cards because system RAM is slower to access than video RAM.



(Sorry for the incoherency of this post, I'm amazingly tired and about to head to bed.)

Thanks for you're reply. I myself prefer the HD2900 and would probably have choosen that one if it was my decision. Which card acheives better benchmarks and which is better for overclocking etc?

a_coppard said:

Thanks for you're reply. I myself prefer the HD2900 and would probably have choosen that one if it was my decision. Which card acheives better benchmarks and which is better for overclocking etc?

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Well who's decision is it?

The 8800GTX will get better benchmarks than the 2900XT 9 times out of ten. If you're an inexperienced overclocker and are going to do it with the stock heatsink and fan the 8800GTX will probably be a better overclocker and much, much quieter.

As you can see I have the 8800GTS and I can't hear a damned thing. And I keep the fan set at 75% duty cycle.

There are things to like about the 2900XT: You can fold on it (if you know what that is...) and it has built-in HDMI (if you have an HD television that had HDMI). But if I could afford both of them... for raw firepower... I'd go with the 8800GTX.

I'd go with the GTX as well, but if you do go with the 2900XT, think about the 512mb card, it would seem that other than adding to the price, the 1gb card offers little over the 512.

OK. Things might have swayed over to nVidia. That makes me ask 8800GTS or GTX. Obviously the GTX is more expensive than the HD2900, but the GTS is less than both. If anyone has any opinions, like what would the difference between a 640 GTS and a 768 GTX be?

GTS = 320bit bus. GTX = 384bit bus(I think) it's clocked better.

The 2900xt 512mb that I am getting was only $420 CAD. And the 8800GTS models I was looking at were not too much cheaper. IMO, for the money, the 2900xt 512mb is the best bang for buck. It does compete well with the 8800GTX (not well with AA though) and for the price, its a better buy than a GTX. Its why I got a 2900xt

Have to agree. Just looked around scan for some pries. 640MB GTS = 512MB HD2900Xt (price wise) as does a 1GB HD2900XT = 768MB GTX. So if I were to base that on price which would you rather have out of the two cheaper cards?

I've been looking around at the GTS versions of the 8800 and quite like the price of a 320MB version, however, is it worth splashing out a bit more for the 640MB version? I am going back to XP, rather than Vista, and so the DirectX10 support is just for peice of mind incase I do go back to Vista. So for graphics editing, and games like Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, and 3 when becomes available and possibly MOHA aswell, which version would you recommend.

the 320mb version should be just fine until you get into super high resolutions where most people like to play

a_coppard said:

I've been looking around at the GTS versions of the 8800 and quite like the price of a 320MB version, however, is it worth splashing out a bit more for the 640MB version? I am going back to XP, rather than Vista, and so the DirectX10 support is just for peice of mind incase I do go back to Vista. So for graphics editing, and games like Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, and 3 when becomes available and possibly MOHA aswell, which version would you recommend.

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It just depends on the resolution of your display, if your display has a resolution of maybe 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 or higher, you might want to go with the 640MB. And I say maybe because I'm not entirely sure where the performance cutoff is with that card. Have to search around for benchmarks.

Just something to think of:

Performance: 8800GTX > 2900XT > 8800GTS,
Price to Performance: 2900XT > 8800GTS(320Mb) > 8800GTX > 8800GTS
Overclocking on stock: 8800GTX can exceed the Ultra, the 2900XT can match the 8800U, the GTS can match the GTX if you push it, getting it to perform as well as the 2900XT is quite easy.

The 2900XT's integrated sound and HDMI support is a nice bonus if you have any need for it.

The 320Mb GTS is generally problem free as long as you're dealing with resolutions below 2Mp.

I'm just running a Widescreen 19" @ 1440 * 900 and sometimes a 15" ( I think could be 15.4") at 1024 * 768 (dual screen).

a_coppard said:

I'm just running a Widescreen 19" @ 1440 * 900 and sometimes a 15" ( I think could be 15.4") at 1024 * 768 (dual screen).

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Then I think that the 8800GTS 320MB would be just fine for you.

I've only got a display that'll do 1024x768 (at least at 85hz; crappy CRT) and I plan to get the 320MB version as soon as I can afford to do it.