small resolution big video card?

[Greymack]

I'm currently building myself a new PC and it's gradually coming together.

I still haven't purchased a video card yet mainly because it's the most expensive item you stick in your pc and i want to be sure.

As it's core 2 duo machine with windows vista it makes sense to buy an Nvidia 8800 for it's directx10 compatibilty.

Now i was pretty sure i would go for the GTS, it's not top of the range but certainly no slouch.

At the back of my mind i kept thinking for another £100 i could get the top of the range card the GTX

Common sense says get the GTS plus i'm not sure how much benefit i'd get from the GTX. My reason for saying that is when you read benchmarks they all talk about it flying with everything switched on 1900x1600 or some such high resolution.
I have a 17" LCD my max res is 1280x1024 so surely the GTS is going to fly at that resolution and the GTX would be overkill for me.

So for a reatively small LCD is the GTX overkill?

[MadPistol]

Yes. If your max res is 1280x1024, do not get the 8800 GTX. The GTS will tie you over fine. The GTX only really takes off on super high res: ie 1600x1200 or higher.

BTW, which Core 2 Duo do you have?

[Greymack]

The CPU i have just order is an Intel Core Duo E6600.

I think and hope it's a good choice

[Greymack]

Well i've just confused myself further (not difficult)

After reading countless reviews of Nvidia 8800 cards i thought all GTS cards were the same or at least thats what was written. They're all the same states custom pc so kust by the cheapest.

Apparantly they're not!

Just been looking at dabs.com and there's one of my fav card makes XFX with 2 versions of the GTS, on at £272 one at £333. They appear to have different clock speeds and different core clock speeds.

It's not apparant which one is which appart from the obvious price difference.

Theres one card the EVGA GTS card which is as dear as the cheapest GTX card, go figure.

Just when i thought i'd made my mind up

[Rugor]

The other difference is going to be memory size. Either 640MB or 320MB. Right now I'd go for (and just did go for) the 640MB one. I'm not sure that 320MB will be properly addressed in today's games. Some may just treat it as a 256MB card which is fine. However if the game treats all cards over 256MB as 512MB that wouldn't be fine on a 320MB card.

I'd also recommend either BFG or EVGA for Nvidia cards.

[Greymack]

Hey Rugor since posting that em post i have purchased a BFG 88GTS OC (it's slightly overclocked) and was actually cheaper than the standrad cards - got it from overclockers uk.
Happy with it so far

[Rugor]

Mine is the regular BFG 8800 GTS-- works great.

[fizur2002]

im still waiting for the 2nd gen of the DX10 cards to appear.