GeForce 9600 GT vs GeForce 8800 GTS

M

mattireland

Geek Trainee
Hi,

The fan stopped going round on my old graphics card about 7 days before I was thinking of moving it to water cooling it as I do with the rest of my system and it burnt out - typical.

I was originally thinking of getting a Gainward GeForce 9600 GT "Golden Sample" 512MB but then a friend advised a Leadtek GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB instead. Does anyone know what the differences and similarities between these cards are?

Would I also be able to attach a water cooling resevoir to any of them in the near future?

Also, they both say built for Window's Vista. Would it work fine with XP? I'm really not hot on gaming but I do sometimes play CS:S and when it comes out BFH as a well as the C++ game programming I do.

The one that burnt out was an Asus GeForce 8600 GT. I was not happy with this as I had loads of driver issues and couldn't play anything without the computer BSODing and then the fan went as a final straw.

So if anyone had any thoughts about similarities and differences and any driver issues I might have, I'd be really, really grateful,

Thanks very much,

Matt. I
 
Well, the 9600GT is just a slightly faster 8600GT. Both have DX10. The 8800GTS is much better than the 9600GT. I would strongly advise the 8800GTS because it is WAAAAAAAAAAAAY Better. But it all comes down to your budget. The 8800GTS is more Expensive than the 9600GT.

With regard to water cooling, I'm sure it can be done if you have space in your case because the 8800GTS is quite big.

The Card will work great with XP or Vista
 
Thanks very much! That's great!

I don't want to be a nuisance but in what ways is it better? Just I'm wondering out of pure interest.

Thanks for the comment on water cooling - I'll probably set that up in a couple of weeks if the card works alright - I'll order it in about an hour or so. So no driver issues, brilliant!

Thanks!
 
I don't know the details as to why it's better, I'll leave that upto someone else, but when it comes to nVidia cards, a general rule is:

8800 - The first 8 is the series
8800 - The second 8 is the number within the series, normally goes upto 8 or 9

8800 > 9600 because it is higher in it's own series.
9600 > 8600 because it's in the next series up.
 
The 9600GT is basically a cut down 8800GT.

The 9600GT is using G92 core with 64SP's compared to the 8800GT's 112, the 9600GT has 650Mhz stock core clock compared to the 8800GT's 600, even though the 9600GT has such less SP's its not massivly behind an 8800GT unless the game is really shader heavy but the 9600GT does seem better with AA and is only slightly slower.

But given the current price of the 8800GTS 512 I would deffenitly get one of those :).

The 8800GTS 512 is also a G92 core, same as 8800GT but the 8800GTS 512 has 128SP's and 650Mhz stock core clock, all 3 cards have a 256bit memory interface.
 
Thanks very much! That's really helpful! I'll order now!

EDIT: When I install the drivers, do I uninstall ones for my current graphics card first? or can I just install the new graphics card straight away? Thanks!
 
If you already have an nVIDIA adapter, just plug it in and update the drivers (download and install) no need to uninstall.

If you had say an ATi or was using integrated graphics, uninstall current drivers and download nVIDIA's latest ones and install.
 
Brilliant! Thanks very, very much! Thread solved :) Card's arriving tommorrow. I'll put it through its paces to see what it can do :)
 
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