[achtung]

Never get an nvidia card that ends in gts and gtx, those are always budget cards or just castrated in a way you never imagined. **** dx10, it's only for vista, so only vista will benefit, and also the x360, but you get what i mean, plus there's not much difference between dx9 and dx10 anyway. Plus i've heard that the geforce 8 series didn't have much to offer which it really doesn't. OOOO geforce 8's got dx10 and better movie acceleration wowie, not worth the money for your small increase in speed in movies and worthless dx10 you'll never notice and will take forever to get implemented into games. Just get a ****ing geforce 7600gt or up, nothing lower, good for the money, and damn satisfying, plus the 7600gt and higher models in the geforce 7 series have blu-ray and hd-dvd acceleration (which is a ****ing good thing to have along with multiple cored processor...if anything, it's hi-def movies that will run your computer into the ground). So in reality, the geforce 7's are only missing dx10 which you can take a piss on really.

Get a geforce 8 only if you are going to use dx10 ****ing religiously which won't happen since you wouldn't be able to.
I have a 7600gt, do not get the gts, like i said about the gts models, they are pure crippled **** that i don't even know why they are in stores for budget consumer graphics because they can't play games at playable framerates. And it's also a good rule of thumb not to buy anything from nvidia called gtx either. Gtx is like the crippled version of the high end cards they offer.

****.

I'd just buy me a good high-end card now, and hold out a couple of series.  Considering most games don't fill out current card's abilities anyway.

[S-99]

Wow, I haven't seen so much ignorance in a single post in quite a while.

1:GT<GTS<GTX in the Nvidia naming scheme in general. The GTX moniker has been used for their top end model for the last two generations.
2: The main selling point of the 8800 cards has nothing to do with DX10. It's their superior DX9 performance in current games. The 8600s are pretty worthless right now, but that certainly doesn't apply to the entire 8 series.
3: The video acceleration on any of these cards is useless for most people, since it only works with their own software and that costs money. They apparently do this to cover royalty fees on the video formats. Besides, modern CPUs have no problem running HD movies anyway, unless you're doing other things at the same time.

Wow sorry, i did make a mistake in here, i meant gs and not gts. I was just going over a fued i had with nvidia trying to by a geforce 6. I was like 6600 or 6800, after that which card isn't crippled, and what the hell is the difference of the gs, xt, gts, etc. The geforce 6 series was sort of confusing in that and what made me decide on the 7 series. Lol, yeah my post was a little ignorant more out of past anger than anything. I did some extra research, xt is fine cards, and so is gts. And yes cp5670 i do know about the gt as well, otherwise i wouldn't have bought a 7600gt. Anyway pretty much stay away from anything GS in the nvidia arsenal.

Modern processors have no problem running hd movies anyway? I beg to differ to a certain extent, i watched hellboy ripped from a blu-ray disc on my brothers laptop which is an intel core 2 duo 2gb ram and an nvidia quadro. It did ok in mplayer except for the parts of hellboy where there was really fast action or lots of fire when the computer started skipping frames taking 100% of the cpu's at full power to play the movie with the good old video card helping along. The movie for the most part was watchable to a good extent, but cpu intensive is a **** yes on that one. The hint of advice for hd movies on a computer is that you don't do it on a single core machine. One reason it's cpu intensive is because of the compression methods used such as h264. If you have at least a dual core and have video acceleration at your fingertips, you might as well use it, video acceleration of hd movies on a computer removed as much as 40% of the workload away from the multiple cores(various benchmarks i remember i think from hardocp.com). Anyway, multiple cores should have no trouble, but they still do unless you have a pretty good system that isn't lacking. Hd movies take tons of processing power and resources. I'd say the modern processors no trouble in hd movies is true only to a certain extent (the lacking resources extent) and even when everything is perfect for resources i'd still say you'd have a few moments in hd movies where you had some obvious dropped frames. Anyway, the more cores, makes the chance of having no dropped frames and slowdowns much greater

****.

I'd just buy me a good high-end card now, and hold out a couple of series.  Considering most games don't fill out current card's abilities anyway.

Sounds like a great idea actually. You won't need to replace that card for a while. In fact i'd still be using my 9800pro 256mb today if it hadn't suffered memory overheating problems that i had no time to fix (it's what prompted me to get a 7600gt, and it's so much better than my old 9800pro, but like i said, i got the 7600gt out of necessity for another video card period)

[Liberator]

If you would actually look at reviews instead of spouting propaganda.

The 8600GTS is out performing everything that ATI has except the 2900.
That means that except for the 2900, the 8600GTS is the most powerful non-8800 on the market and can usually be found for under $250.  The 8800GTS usually retails for about $320.

[Bob-san]

The 8600s aren't worthless pieces of junk. At release, they were all much too overpriced, though now they are preforming quite well for their price points. Remember how graphics generations work--a high-end graphics card today will be equivalent to a mainstream graphics card tomorrow. The next day, that card will be equivalent to a low-end graphics card...

The 8600GT is about the same as 7900GS (from what I've heard). The reason you buy the new DX10 cards is because you don't want to have to upgrade any time soon. A 7600GT is not as good as an 8600GT. The price gap isn't that big either...

You'd probably be better off going with a DX10 card. I've "gamed" on a FX5200 since DX9 came out--trust me, you don't want a 8500GT. Buy at least an 8600GT and you should be fine until the last generation of DX10.

[CP5670]

Modern processors have no problem running hd movies anyway? I beg to differ to a certain extent, i watched hellboy ripped from a blu-ray disc on my brothers laptop which is an intel core 2 duo 2gb ram and an nvidia quadro. It did ok in mplayer except for the parts of hellboy where there was really fast action or lots of fire when the computer started skipping frames taking 100% of the cpu's at full power to play the movie with the good old video card helping along. The movie for the most part was watchable to a good extent, but cpu intensive is a **** yes on that one. The hint of advice for hd movies on a computer is that you don't do it on a single core machine. One reason it's cpu intensive is because of the compression methods used such as h264. If you have at least a dual core and have video acceleration at your fingertips, you might as well use it, video acceleration of hd movies on a computer removed as much as 40% of the workload away from the multiple cores(various benchmarks i remember i think from hardocp.com). Anyway, multiple cores should have no trouble, but they still do unless you have a pretty good system that isn't lacking. Hd movies take tons of processing power and resources. I'd say the modern processors no trouble in hd movies is true only to a certain extent (the lacking resources extent) and even when everything is perfect for resources i'd still say you'd have a few moments in hd movies where you had some obvious dropped frames. Anyway, the more cores, makes the chance of having no dropped frames and slowdowns much greater

I think C2Ds are generally fine with it, but it depends on what else is running in the background.

The problem with these video acceleration features is that they don't really do anything unless you buy the separately sold decoder software (although it may come with an OEM system). It's not very expensive ($20 or so), but most people aren't going to be willing to pay for it on top of the card.

If you would actually look at reviews instead of spouting propaganda.

The 8600GTS is out performing everything that ATI has except the 2900.
That means that except for the 2900, the 8600GTS is the most powerful non-8800 on the market and can usually be found for under $250.  The 8800GTS usually retails for about $320.p

Care to back that up? All of the major sites except HardOCP show the X1950XT creaming it across the board (I mean, they aren't even close), and it costs the same.

[edit] Actually, Nvidia's own 7950GT has fallen to the same price now and also beats it comfortably.

[asyikarea51]

Wow @ EliteT3. (woops, didn't notice this was Mars' thread... sorry my mistake )

I only have a Q6600 - the price margin from 6600 to 6700 was too far off for me, but I hear it's more resistant, so you pretty much get what you pay for. (Hey, I've got tight budgets too. I'm not a very well-off person; I know, my processor betrays me, but I can't just plonk $5,000+++ at random. If I was THAT rich I would've bought a server board instead.)

Oh well, we all make mistakes. 8600GT's doing fine, so with an estimated price tag of around $200 in my area I'd recommend it (don't take the advice though - it's unguided), but I would've gotten the 8800GTS if I could, roughly $500-up for the 320MB variant. Certainly more interesting options from the GTS onwards.

I'm not an ATi user, so I am unable to comment on the X1950XT/XTX series.

[Bob-san]

Wow @ EliteT3. (woops, didn't notice this was Mars' thread... sorry my mistake )

I only have a Q6600 - the price margin from 6600 to 6700 was too far off for me, but I hear it's more resistant, so you pretty much get what you pay for. (Hey, I've got tight budgets too. I'm not a very well-off person; I know, my processor betrays me, but I can't just plonk $5,000+++ at random. If I was THAT rich I would've bought a server board instead.)

Oh well, we all make mistakes. 8600GT's doing fine, so with an estimated price tag of around $200 in my area I'd recommend it (don't take the advice though - it's unguided), but I would've gotten the 8800GTS if I could, roughly $500-up for the 320MB variant. Certainly more interesting options from the GTS onwards.

I'm not an ATi user, so I am unable to comment on the X1950XT/XTX series.

That's expensive for your area. Where I am, you can get a full 8600GT for $130. The 8600GTS is $180. The 8800GTS 320 is $280. Well, whatever I guess--your prices seem inflated (if you are using USD).

[asyikarea51]

Whoops, my bad.

Nah, it's not USD.

*Goes off to do currency conversion*

EDIT: Right, I haven't checked the latest pricelists here, but judging from what I previously know, you guys get the 8800GTS 320 around $50 USD cheaper. 8600GT about the same, only minor shop variables not more than $10-20.