Has anyone got their hands on one of these? I've always been an ATI guy, but this card makes me want to switch. I'm looking to build a new high-end gaming rig and wanted to get some opinions on the card. I also heard that ATI's Crossfire ain't as good as it could be. I believe the 8800 is the only DX10 card as of now also, so should I wait for more DX10 cards to come out, or sport for the 8800 now?

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Saw a gaming rig over the Holidays with an 8800 and it rocked.

42 fps on max settings of a game and looked incredible. About $600 CDN for the card, but Buddy thought it was worth every cent. He could not get any lag in it no matter what he tried.

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Overall, Nvidia cards are better than ATI since their drivers tend to be updated more frequently and actually are supported by more games off the bat. When a new leading edge game comes out it normally takes ATI a couple of months to release a working driver where as Nvidia already has one out or gets one out in time for the release. Also, SLI is better than Crossfire since for one it doesnt require the doggle or 2 different types of video cards. Plus since it doesnt have a doggle there is not way that any external interference could slow down the bandwidth between the two cards.

I would get the 8800 since it is DX10 (aka very good for vista) and is a very good card. One last thing to note is that SLI does not support multimonitor setups (neither does Crossfire) when in SLI mode. However, you still can do so except you have to disable SLI when not playing a game which is not a very big issue plus this is a feature that should be change soon.

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thank you guys for your input. I did know about the SLI multi-monitor thing though. I want to get SLI if I could. And want a mobo with extreme OC-ing abilities. I've gotten in OC-ing about a few month's ago and I love it. I'm trying to get the perfect OC-ing/gaming rig, lol, if those don't go hand-in-hand already. I've always used a mid-tower sized case, but for my next rig, i think i'm gonna need a full-size tower. Hoping to get a water-cooling system for the cpu and vid cards. I want seperate systems for them each to increase cooling efficiency.

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Apparently ATI's R600 beats the 8800GTX hands down. I am not sure if this is true, but ATI do have a habit of releasing their cards later, but they tend to out preform their nvidia counterparts.

If you are going to get a 8800 and you have the money, go for the GTX, as it out preforms the GTS version by around 16% - 30%, which is nothing to laugh at.

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Yeah, when it comes to graphics cards, I never buy the dumbed-down version. I always get the best of the best whenever I can.

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late february or early march, ATI will release their monster.. the X2000 with the R600 engine.. rumors said that G80 gpu is nothing compared with the R600 gpu..

the price..

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Well if you do get the 8800gtx you will be getting nvidia's highest card even when they release there other cards=) but you will pay the price of having it now.
ATI is dieing it merged with amd even if ati card is better. nvidia will strike back and take the lead,(i know they got somthing up there sleeve) but we will see in time

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Plug has had alot of systems with 8800GTX's in them. As a system builder I feel they are far superior to ATI Crossfire setups. You can't go wrong with either of the new 8 series Nvidia cards. Watch the brands that you buy though, we usually use the ASUS version of the 8800GTX, although it has the same core clock and memory clock speed as the other 8800GTX's it consistently gets higher 3DMark scores. Just something to note. If you're going to get such an expensive card, might as well get the best brand for the price.

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R600 indeed beats NVidia's 8800GTX, the reason why is simply because ATI used the more advanced nm technology which lets achieve higher results at lower speeds, meaning less heat. By the way, for the true lovers of NVidia (by the way I'm one of them), as a fact, NVidia video cards always have much greater power consumption which is a great concern when upgrading on a budget since now you'll have to pay extra bucks to upgrade your power supply. From my own experience, 8800GTX use up to 550wats in a single mode and above 650wats in SLi. When looking at ATi's XTX1950, they are easily satisfied with a 500wwats power supply in a crossfire setting.

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