Video card upgrade dilema

[Bruceb]

I am looking to up grade my ASUS 9800GT 512 video card to a GTX285 1Gb but I have a problem.  My 9800GT is the factory OC model @ 725mz and the only 285 cards I can find weigh in at much less than this.  So I am now wondering whether I will gain much by making the switch.  ASUS seems to have an OC model that comes close but I can't find a retailer that stocks it in OZ.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Bruceb

[Maurice_King]

When you say Weighs in much less than the 9800 in what respect do you mean because from what I've seen they run at a pretty fair clip,  remember if you see Core Clock speed of 666 Mhz that is the Graphics clock  when you add the Processor clock of around 1476 for instance so I ythink you might be on the wrong track  the GTX285 is a far superior card to the 9800 .......

[Wolter van der Spoel]

well I've got the EVGA GeForce GTX 285 SSC 1 Mb

1024MB DDR3 Memory

PCI-E 2.0 x16

702Mhz GPU Clock Speed

2646Mhz Memory Clock Speed

NVIDIA SLI ready

DirectX 10/OpenGL 3.0

and it runs a treat, I have upgraded from the 9800GTX SSC 512 Mb and the difference is a day and a night of improvement

[Ian Routley]

Wolter, does your card have DDR5 ?

[alainneedle1]

Easy to answer, this is what you have to look for, core clock, memory clock and shader clock, the faster the better....

http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5214205&CatId=28

This card is close to Nvidia now, picture quality Nvidia still better, this card will be better performance wise sometimes not always.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125299

[Ian Routley]

Easy to answer, this is what you have to look for, core clock, memory clock and shader clock, the faster the better....

er, but unless I'm sadly mistaken, you cannot compare clockspeeds between different cores / chips, so unfortunately that doesn't help much in that instance.

Also, it would depend what you are running - as to how important things like a shader clock are to you ... or alternatively how much memory bandwidth will matter.

The GTX 285 is a fast card .. but there are less and less of them, as TNBT (the next big thing) approaches around the corner.

EDIT: Wolter - scratch that question ... it was a misprint on the doco I was reading on the Classified version of that card.

[alainneedle1]

Er let me try again, for .....<"FSX"> .....regardless of the chip manuf. if you choose Nvidia card you need to look at the fastest core clock, shader clock and memory clock if you look at ATI same thing fastest core clock, shader and memory clock.

Now if your PC is running at 2.8GHz with DDR2 memory at 800MHz any GTX 8800 will do.

If you are running the i7 975 clocked at 4.8GHz + with DDR3 memory at 2200MHz timing at 7-6-6-18   well....wait for the new 300 series comming  first quarter next year.....

[Bruceb]

My 9800GT has a core clock speed of 725Mhz, (other parameters are memory clock 2000 MHz and shader 1750 Mhz). When I shop around for a GTX285 most have significantly lower core clock speeds.  So I am wondering will I see a net benefit by swapping cards?  My other components are dual core 8600 cpu, 4 gig DDR2 ram (1026), Vista64 and a1920x1200 display.

Bruceb