Ugrading GFX card... 8 vs 9 series
well the current crop of 8800gt/s are the same chips as the 9800 just slower (by about 50 mega hurtz at the 9800 bottom end) the 200 series are an actual step up but still very expensive.
so honestly a 512 GT 8800 is probably your best bet if you don't want to spend much.
One word of advice whatever you go for: Be prepared to experiment with the drivers. I've just finished refreshing my PC and ended up with a dual 9800GTX+ setup. I run it in non-sli mode most of the time as I like to run multiple monitors.
The latest set of drivers actually ran CoH significantly slower than the previous ones. If I'd gone straight for the newest drivers then I'd probably have been very disappointed with the card but luckily I'd used an earlier version that ran everything happily at 60fps, even in the middle of a Rikti raid.
Ever wondered how our costumes stay so clean and shiny given everything we put them through?
Then you need to try out Spandex Crisis (Arc ID 32943)
which is really odd, as the performance on my older 8800GTS has actually gone up (5 -10 FPS on average)
ok so... ummmm?

Thelonious Monk
Shouldn't this be in the technical section?
Back to the question. There is not a lot of difference between the two cars except the 8800GT has been discontinued but saying that you can still get a 9800GT for cheaper than an equivalent 8800GT.
See here for 8800 and here for 9800.
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which is really odd, as the performance on my older 8800GTS has actually gone up (5 -10 FPS on average)
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Yup - go figure!
Also, from other discussions I've seen on here drivers that are completely stable on other cards in the 8/9 series are comlpetely flaky on mine and vice versa. So, unfortunately, just going for the latest drivers isn't reliable advice - best thing to do is experiment (which is a bit tedious).
Ever wondered how our costumes stay so clean and shiny given everything we put them through?
Then you need to try out Spandex Crisis (Arc ID 32943)
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Shouldn't this be in the technical section?
Back to the question. There is not a lot of difference between the two cars except the 8800GT has been discontinued but saying that you can still get a 9800GT for cheaper than an equivalent 8800GT.
See here for 8800 and here for 9800.
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Uh, not according to your links you can't, same price to much more expensive...
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Shouldn't this be in the technical section?
Back to the question. There is not a lot of difference between the two cars except the 8800GT has been discontinued but saying that you can still get a 9800GT for cheaper than an equivalent 8800GT.
See here for 8800 and here for 9800.
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Uh, not according to your links you can't, same price to much more expensive...
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Had a look at my links and seems you need a little help. I added the VAT and sorted by price and found the following
8800GT for £99.86
and equivalent 9800GT for £93.84
Looks cheaper to me
Edit: Just looked lower and found 9800GT for £89.59
Getting a 9800GT would leave you better suited to go SLI at a later point aswell due to the discontinued factor.
For less than £10 more than the 8800GT you can get this 9800GT with 1GB of onboard RAM.
Wow, £10 saving for a slower card. awesome find there old boy, you are an unstoppable genius!
The amount of graphics ram will only help with texture sizes, and you have no idea at what res SS runs the game.
SLI would be a bad idea with this game as it can cause a great many issues, plus, what if SS's mobo is Crossfire (SS favors AMD boards, which will not have SLi support anyway)
there are no major advantages to getting a 9 series of the later generation 8 series, and honestly your not convincing anyone other wise.
Well I wouldn't buy a discontiued model of card. Especially not one that has been superseeded by two more series.
wasn't superseded, the later 8 series and 9 series have the same chip (the G92) usually the 9 series was faster, but all that's left is the over clocked 8 series that are actually faster.
But they are not Cass. For a couple of extra pounds you can get a much faster 9800GT and for the most expensive 8800GT on the links I posted for the same money you can get a 9800GT that is loads faster.
I honestly dont understand you reccomending the 8800GTs over the 9800GTs. Even if it is the same chip there must have been ample revisions made to increase proformance or reliablility to warrant them being tagged as the next series.
...yes, the profit margin! and now they are both sub £100 as they are the same tech the next actual upgrade was the 200 series...
remember the 8 series 512 GT's are not the original G80 chips, they were a much later edition (as i recall, after the 9 series had come out) they were to sell off the slower clock speed 9 series chips, nothing else.
And that is my point. For less than £10 more for what you waould pay for a 8800GT you can get a 9800GT with a much faster clock speed.
Am gonna stop here because you seem to want people to buy old stock that is too expensive for what is available for similar money.
did you actually check the clock speeds? the 9 series that you vaunted as "cheap" was slower than the two 8 series cards...
And apologies to SS for the nerd fight in the thread. i though i had make a simple comment....
Yes I did and then reevaluated and checked clockspeeds and that is what i was refering to in the last post.
all the 9800's you recommended were 600 Mhz clock speed... the 8800 were 650 and 660... that makes the 8800's faster...
Basically you can't really go wrong with either of them. i use an 8800GT 512Mb on my 22" TFT running 1680x1050 with everything on max in Coh and it doesn;t even break sweat. it also runs CoD 4 at the same res with everything on and pretty quickly too.
Defiant 50's
Many and varied!
@Miss Chief
Well I got a 9800GT wiht 512 megs of ram at the right price and the concensus was it was better than the 8800GT and I got a new board and CPU too, AMD5200, so it'll blow my 4600AMD running a 7900GS into the weeds I reckon.
Thanks for the discussion people

Thelonious Monk
I have a 8800GT and it handles most games with ease on max. CoH is no contest tbh.
With regards to the 9800GT, they're pretty much identical in terms of power. You certainly wouldn't notice a difference.a
Either will do, but why not go for the newer one
I did.

Thelonious Monk
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I did.
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Ah, must have missed that last post, sorry
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I did.
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Ah, must have missed that last post, sorry
[/ QUOTE ]No problem but thanks for the sound advice. Even after the fact you confirmed what the concensus had said which means I guess I made a good call
had a bit of an issue on assembly with an underpowered PSU causing slow running, but fixed that and now we are spanky

Thelonious Monk
I had the 8800GTX from BGF, this was a slighly overclocked card which cost me around £300 if i recall:
8800GTX SPEC:
Price: Around £350 when i baught it
GPU: nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX
Core Clock: 1 Core running at 600 MHz (575 Standard)
Video Memory: 768MB
RAMDACs: Dual 400MHz
This was a bloody good card. it ran games like: Gears of War, Crysis and Call of Duty 4 at the Capped FPS rate which would be Vsynced at my refresh rate (60 FPS). But due to some reason i dont know, it broke down and was full of artifacts and just would not work, this was after 8 months.
im currently in the stages of getting it replaced by BGF it has a 10 year warranty.
Meanwhile i baught the ATI HD 4870x2 Now is this is 1 Craphics card with 2 cores, 2 clocks, 2gb DDR5 Video memory!! Everything is double, Like 2 cars in 1. I would never normally go for an ATI card, i was thinking about the 280 Card from nVidia, but this ATI card just Topped the charts, its 3dmark06 score is out of this world.
ATI HD4870x2 SPEC:
Price: £482.99 - Overclockers.co.uk
GPU: Gainward ATI HD4870x2
Core Clock: 2 Cores running at 790 MHz
Video Memory: 2048MB
3800MHz GDDR5 Memory
Im telling you, for ATI, this outshines ANY graphics card out on the market to date, its simply an overkill for ANY game out today.
unless u really want to stick to nVidia, i suggest trying out the ATI HD4870x2, its like having 2 graphics card.
and for City of Heroes, Well, at the mo i got 75 FPS on FULL settings ive got VSync turned on which capps the FPS to my refresh rate which is 75 ALL the time, does not drop below that. unless i put it to 60 FPS.
Level 50 Heroes:
Pilgrim Of Darkness - Spines/Dark Armor
Angeltearz - Fire/Kinetics
Angeltears - Energy/Energy
Tearz - Willpower/Energy Melle
Trives - Katana/Super Reflex
Strain - Firey Melle/Super Reflex
Tarox - Firey Melle/Regen
Baium - Dark Melle/Super Reflex
Kottos - Peacebringer
ok I'm looking at upgrading my graphics from a 7900 to a new card.
I lean heavily towards AMD boards and nVidia cards (I know, I know about ATi) but I'm looking at something like an 8800GT or better spec. I'm not sure how the nVidia series compare, or the relative advantages/disadvantages.
The most graphic intensive work I do is CoX and Second Life so any sensible suggestions are welcome.
Cheers
Thelonious Monk