Is 8600GTS better than 8800GTS ! Please help !

[nagukush]

Hi Friends !

Sorry if I sound a bit foolish here, but I was shocked to see that my XFX 8600 GTS with 256Mb has been mentioned as CORE - 675MHz and when I was browsing for an upgrade, I found that the XFX 8800 GTS 320 mb has only 500Mhz !

Why is this ? Does this mean that the 8600GTS is better than 8800GTS ? The 8800 has 320Mb DDR3 Memory, and its only about 70Mb more than the 8600's 256 Mb DDR3 ! Kindly explain and guide me if I have understood things wrongly here...

Please guide and help me a little on this as I'm planning to upgrade to a XFX 8800 GTS 320Mb or a MSI 8800 GTS OC Edition and I'm really confused now...

Thanks !

Kush

 

[Hatman]

Un-technically, core clock is simply a multiplier for its raw specs, tahts why cards are overclockable.

An 8600gts has a higher clock then a 8800gts however when ti comes to their hardware.

8800gts

Texture Units 24

Raster Operators 20

8600gts

Texture Units 16

Raster Operators 8

So the 8800gts is 500x 24 and 500x 20

Whereas 8600gts is 675x 16 and 675x 8.

8800GTS

500 x 24 = 12000

500 x 20 = 10000

8600GTS

675 x 16 = 10800

675 x 8 = 5400

Texture Fill Rate is done by core clock x TMU's.

Pixel Fill Rate is done by core clock x ROP's.

Memory like 256mb and 320mb isnt as important, its what the card saves data on for much faster access, its tons quicker then DDR2 memory so its best to have quite a bit of Memory on a card!

That same things applies to shader clock too, shader clock x Shader Pipelines = Shader Operations/sec.

For a mroe detailed comaprison, use http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=475&card2=512

Although, you cannot comapre DX9 cards in that to DX10 ones, and be wary of the 2900 series as on paper it rocks, on a computer its.. not so good.

As for buying a 8800gts, dont. On 29th October a card called 8800gt is coming out, which so far seems to be much more powerful then the 8800gts, despite its name.

 

[FarFarAway]

Wait for the 29th and get the new card

 

[nagukush]

Hi Friends !

Thanks for the help and for guiding me...

Actually if the card is releasing on the 29th, then it will be atleast 4 - 5 months for it to be available here (as I'm from a small town here in India) and moreover I have already paid an adavnce for the card and now I just have to choose between the MSI Overclocked 8800 GTS and XFX Std 8800 GTS...

I've almost decided to go for the MSI OC Card but I'm still doubtful if its as good as the XFX - it will be a great help if you can guide me a little on this...

Kindly advice if MSI is ok and if I may proceed to buy it ?

Thanks !

Kush

 

[cube]

MSI is a very reputable brand, as is XFX - fact is the boards will not differ much in quloty or performance as they are essentially identical - same PCB, coolers etc

 

[PP Mguire]

If you can overclock yourself id get the XFX. They can usualy top out at speeds higher than others with some tweaking. If you dont want to OC id get the MSI then.