Stay Away From Nvidia 8000 Series

[Roflcopter]

They are a waste of money. If you want to upgrade your older cards, and like me prefer Nvidia over ATI, go for a 9000 series card. The performance differences are TREMENDOUS.

So if you have the choice between a 55 euro 8600 or a 110 euro 9600, the latter will be a much better choice. It will run circles around the 8600, no joke.

(this has to do with the memory controller addressing, which should be 256 bits, not 128-bit like in the 8000 series (with the occasional 192-bit).

So even a 7900 with 256 bits will outperform a 8600, even though the GPU is of a later date.

If you do games, or have applications that use OpenGL rendering (videoprograms!) you want to really take notice of this fact, or you will probably wonder why your new card isn't as much of an improvement, as you had hoped.

[thelevellers]

Hmmm, wish I'd known this 4 months ago S'all good, I couldn't afford more than a 7600 series, and that was a VAST improvement over the old ATI 9550 I had, especially as now I've gone nvidia Fedora Linux has proper integration with the graphics card (less re-booting to windows just to play a game!).

Thanks for the warning, I may be in the market for another card this year...

[Roflcopter]

Yeah especially if you're dual-booting on Linux, any distro, you want an Nvidia. Best chance of finding a working driver. Also they let you set custom native monitor resolutions a damn site easier than ATI's. You even need Powerstrip or something, a 3d party program, for a lot of ATI cards to get them to 1680x1050 - that sucks so bad.

I'll keep you posted on the 9600's performance, as soon as I switch. Great expectations.... that is one nice little card.