[djbass]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

The technicality being that you were talking about a different card. I'd never recommend the "premier" card to anyone, and if you note in this thread I've been advising against what you seem to think I am proposing.

For all intents and purposes they are the same card. There may be a few extra pipelines, more memory and a faster clock rate, but at the heart of the card it is still an 8800. The point is not in its processing power, but rather that which Kenny so perfectly nailed on the head, this card, and its architechure are over a year old. Yes the 8800GT is more affordable than its predecessor ever was, but I see it as being too little too late. ATI aren't going to sit and wait around for their competitor to release a next-gen card, by the same token Nvidia aren't going to wait for their competitor to trump them.

The 8800GT costs ~$215-250, or is this rather significant part of your argument a mere technicality as well?

$200 (AUD) vs $400-500 (AUD), which would place your values in the same range as mine. Are you going to base your entire rebuttal on splitting hairs?

Is running games better part of this cunning marketing plan? I mean, there's a correlation between standard of product and sales but I think that's more down to the engineers than the marketing department.

Running games better comes with the territory. A 3DFX Voodoo 1 runs games better than a Cirrus Logic with 512Kb RAM, that doesn't mean buying a Voodoo 1 today would be value for money, what is your point exactly?

It is more in the region of how much better does it run, is it significant enough to justify the price difference. The economy of the card can come down to how it is used. If you intend to run all your games at the highest resolution possible, with full AA, dynamic lighting, vertex shading, and all the other doo-dads bells and whistles then yes an 8800 for the time being is going to be the best bang for your buck.

The questions to ask though are things like:

Do all the games I want to play even support the max resolution my card is capable of?
Does the native resolution of the monitor I have chosen match the max resolution my card is capable of?
Do the games I play utilise the more advanced features of my card in a way that genuinely improves gameplay?

I would be inclined to say that for 90% of current gen games the answer to all of the above is no. Most people are not going to be running at 2560x1600 with full AA, HDR dynamic lighting, vertex shading, motion blurr etc. The performance gap at lower resolutions closes greatly to the point where you are unlikely to get a significant performance gain.

For the few games that do push the 8800 to its limits people have found the card struggles to keep up with all features turned on. Only people who are running their rigs at max capacity with SLI and have overclocked most of their system are able to squeeze the required juice out of it.

That is why I believe you are better off to get a lower end card and wait it out until a newer card comes along.


Anyway, my intention for posting here was not to start an argument over emerging hardware and its pros/cons. I simply wanted to offer advice as requested, and to present a POV from the other side of the fence. I totally understand the OPs desire to have the best of the best of the best. I've chased that dream for years, and like most others in my shoes have come to realise you can always throw money at the best hardware of the time, but it doesn't take long for something newer and better to come out.

I encourage smarter buying, by making sacrifices early on in order to reap the benifits later. If getting an 8800GTX is what makes him happy so be it, I'm indifferent either way.