Nvidia 8600gts or 8800gts

My video card bit the dust last night - So I'm in the market for an upgrade.
BUT I'm a little confused.

Been reading about Vista compatibility problems here and elsewhere, but when
I go to the Review web sites (CNET, guru3d, hardocp . . .) I don't find any squawks
about Vista incompatibility.

I'm specifically looking at the e-Geforce 8800 or 8600 gts.

ANY suggestions??

[CrowdAds]

[felix8406]

I don't think incompatibility is really the issue, but users not having a well rounded knowledge of Vista. That's my opinion though. I just find it difficult to believe that a modern video graphics card, especially one design with Vista in mind, is not compatible when there many users running Vista on older PCs with older Video cards designed for Win 98 or Win XP.

Depending of what your needs are, I'll go with the 8800. You can save a few bucks by going with the 8600 however.

I'm curious though; how did your graphics card get damaged? Usually video cards can outlive the PC unless there's a heat dissipation issue.

[crabby]

Simply go for the best can you can afford

I never but a card above $300 becasue the price drops sooooooooo quickly.

Its a shame you cant wait until september, the market will be highly competetive with dx10 cards by then.

crabby

Thanks for the input - I opted for the 8800 GTS with 320M of memory. Difference in price was only $70 - because of rebate available for the 8800 and my local store had the price marked on the shelf $10 less than it should have been. It ended up costing $280

Felix - regarding your question about the death of my video card. All I can say is that it was a strange card from the beginning. From the day I installed it, the noise (fan) level of my PC went up 10db. In one of my earlier posts regarding the motherboard monitoring software I removed the software because every time I started the monitoring the fan on my video card went wild. I was never able to monitor the stats of the card with either Nvidia or any other software. Sat down to log on yesterday morning and noticed that the fan on the card seemed extremely loud - and when I turned on my monitors - NOTHING. Verified the motherboard was okay, powered the system off and let everything cool down. Power on to same results - Must be video.

Didn't have much time to play last night so I don't have any feel for the new video card yet. One thing I did notice - when I brought up the window to benchmark the system after the install was a new message at the bottom indicating that I had three days to activate my copy of Vista. Notice doesn't appear when I reboot the computer or sign on, just in that window. I'll track it and see if the counter decrements, but I can't imagine that I have to reactivate my copy of Vista because of a video card replacement.

[felix8406]

Originally Posted by jemw

Felix - regarding your question about the death of my video card. All I can say is that it was a strange card from the beginning. From the day I installed it, the noise (fan) level of my PC went up 10db. In one of my earlier posts regarding the motherboard monitoring software I removed the software because every time I started the monitoring the fan on my video card went wild. I was never able to monitor the stats of the card with either Nvidia or any other software. Sat down to log on yesterday morning and noticed that the fan on the card seemed extremely loud - and when I turned on my monitors - NOTHING. Verified the motherboard was okay, powered the system off and let everything cool down.

Sounds like the card was running hot from the start. The fan RPM is designed to increase as temperature increases beyond a certain point. As the temperature decreases, the fan RPM should decrease as well to an almost silence mode. If the fan continues to turn at a high RPM, there's the posibility that the fan has an issue or the card's temperature still too high.

By the way, enjoy your new card and let us know how it's working.