I ended up getting an Asus GeForce 9800GT card from Newegg, that has a Zalman-like cooler on it. After rebate, it was only $10 more ($109) than the oc'd Asus 9600GT card and came with free shipping, unlike the 9600, so that made it a no-brainer for me.
The GSO cards are in a weird zone. They aren't true 9600 cards and I've read that they're re-marked 8800GS cards, which didn't sell too well. More stream processors, but lower freqs than the 9600GT. I had ordered the $70 (+$10 shipping) 9600GT from Zipzoomfly, but ended up cancelling it as I wasn't sure if the 2-slot cooler would fit and I wasn't too sure about how quiet it was. It's a big card. The Asus card got good reviews on noise, which is important to me. I can't stand the fan whine of the stock coolers. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121268 The 9800GT is just a re-vamped 8800GT with some minor improvements, which is considered to be the king budget card right now. But, I'm seeing the 9800 for less than the 8800. In the end, though, almost anything you get today will be an improvement over the 7950. > -----Original Message----- > Oops, I turned your 9's into 8's. > > The 9600GT is a nice card from everything that I've read. Tom's > Hardware put its overall performance only 12% under the 8800GT, despite having > only half the stream processors. Google it a bit, but I would wave off > the 9500 for only 20 bucks. Zipzoomfly has an 512MB EVGA 9600GT for > $70 after rebate. > > > -----Original Message----- > > My 7950 went out recently and I have a choice between the two cards > > above for cost reasons. The 9500gt is 85 bux, I have it now in my > > box and it seems to run just fine...but I've been considering returning it > > because the 9600 is about 20 bux more. Would I notice any real difference? > > I don't care about eeking out every bit of framerate I can in the > > newest game, I just would like to be able to pop a game in once in awhile without > > problems. Any feedback on this would be appreciated. I'm not a serious gamer > > by any means but I'll play UT3 once in awhile and some crysis. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
