high 7 or low 8?

[=LAS=Hellfire]

hey guys. im looking to by a card on the budget end (130-) and im not sure what to do.. I could go with a higher end 7 series card, like a 7800 or 7900 for a pretty decent price, or for the same price I could go with an 8500 or an 8600. i know the 8 series cards are dx10 as apposed to the dx9 for the 7 series, but which would give me better overall performance for the money?

any thoughts??

[dicecca112]

get a 7900, its better than a low 8000. Unless your dead set on DX10, which offers nothing right now, go with the 7900 card

[Apoptosis]

a low end DX10 card mainly sucks at DX10... so unless you want a HTPC I'd go a highend DX9 card or a budget DX9 card to hold you over and not break the bank

[tnynyn]

yup yup with the prices of the 7900 now (can be found for around 100$ after rebates) i say go for that, then upgrade to the 8800 once dx10 becomes mainstreamed (or stay with the 7900 since i heard theres a dx10 patch for xp coming soon)

[lukeqsee]

most low end 8000 cards are pieces of junk (no offense) but they are. a 7900 will do much better

[MakubeX]

Oh, definitely a high 7 over low 8. Any game that will NEED DX10, and it's not playable with DX9 (with the exception of Halo 2), probably won't be even worth playing with low 8 cards.

[siicogamer]

Well a high 7 card would be good for most games. But if you really want to play the next gen dx10 games i would go with an overclocked 8600GT(preferably a cheap watercooling kit).

8500gt is not at all good. Iv'e tested all the geforce 8 series and from the geforce 7300 up.because you don't want to spend the money on something like a 8800 go with either a 8600gt overclocked or a 7800 or 7900 card.

[Sovereign]

My SLI got owned by crappy nVidia drivers

So I'm "stuck" on a single 7900GTX. It's still a pretty powerful card, it can manage a steady 20FPS in FEAR with Maximum settings and 16xAF/4xAA/Soft Shadows (the shadows don't look soft, think that bug is still there...and maybe this is also crippling my frames). I run 1280x1024. Quake 4/Doom 3/Other id software games are nothing for it. Far Cry runs at 80FPS maxed out with 16xAF/8xSAA forced. Halo 2? Pfft (not that the Halo engine was ever that much work to begin with). Supreme Commander can get a little iffy at times with SLI gone but again I max out settings and AF/AA so if you dial things down a teensy bit everything is playable. The only problem game is Flight Simulator X, which ran like a dog under XP and SLI, a miserable 8FPS on the runway and 7-9FPS in clear sky. And that was with older drivers.

All frames are measured in the latest version of FRAPS at the time of measurement. I don't guarantee you will get the same performance (read my system specs in my sig) but a high end 7-series will demolish a low-end 8 series. Unless you must have DX10 (and low-end 8 series cards suck at it) you should get a 7 series card.

[siicogamer]

he should probaly go for a high 7 series card then buy a 9 series card when it come out. that would be the best money saver and for best gaming performence.