Graphics Card ? improvement or not ?

[GP_38-2]

You should find that in actual fact the 9600GT will give the 8800GT a run for its money and should be on par, going by its memory transfer rate, its memory clock and memory interface are the same.
So therefore what ever the 8800GT can do the 9600GT will do.

Close, but not on par.
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=557&card2=544
Overall the 9600 GT will hold it's own against the 8800 GT, but it's still a touch slower in most benchmarks.
As for Price for Performance however, the 9600 GT takes top honors hands down.
back to the original question: An SLI setup of 9600 GT's would exceed the 7800 GT's performance fairly well, without breaking the bank either.

Trainmetal read up a bit: 1GB of onboard memory is all well and fine, and can help a card. In the 8800 GT's case 1GB is ok, but rather pointless, it's fast enough to handle data with just 512MB. On the other hand a card like the 8500 GT w/1GB still won't do squat compared to an 8500 GT w/512MB. Why? Massive amounts of RAM is all well and good but data is just going to sit in that 1GB if the GPU can't move it out fast enough.
As far as Trainz is concerned if the video card clocks are fast enough 1GB or 512MB won't make huge difference.

And as it goes Gainward is a junk company, stick to reference nVidia, BFG, XFX, or EVGA. The lower tier companies just don't know how to build them (or warrenty them)

 

[Magicland]

The nVidia 9600 GT is out now, from initial reviews it looks to be fairly decent in performance. It's definately not an 8800 GT, but at $180 USD it looks to be a solid mid-level card.

big_b YOW that much for a 7800 GT? I know that's in AU but still YIKES!

Yeah, I'd definitely stay away from that Zone Computing, sounds like they're a den of thieves.

Considering the card I've got http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...OTC-pr1c3watch-_-Video+Cards-_-MSI-_-14127329 is going for $199 (after rebate) compared to $179 for the 9600GT, and the chip on the 9600 (the G94) has only half the stream processors of the 8800GT's (G92), I'd say the "bang for the buck" still lies with the 8800GT, especially as benchmarks average 12% better with only a 10% increase in price.