nvidia's new 8800 GT -- best videocard deal in 5 years
 

I'm sure many of you have seen the new 8800 GT benchmarks. For those that haven't, nvidia just released a new videocard called the 8800 GT. Its MSRP is $200-$230 with factory OC versions going from $250-$300. So the normal price is around $230.

Tom's Hardware, Hard OCP, Anandtech, etc. have reviewed the card and are stunned by its performance. The 8800 GT slaughters the 8800 GTS 320, 640, and the Radeon HD 2900 XT, all which are $300-$400 cards. In many tests, the 8800 GT is on par with the 8800 GTX which is $500-$550.

This card is freaking $230 and is putting out 8800 GTX performances even at super high resolutions.

Anandtech is calling this the best videocard deal since the GeForce 4 TI4200 and that it will go down in history as revolutionizing the videocard market. I agree completely...it has quite literally trivialized the entire $180+ videocard market making every card from nvidia and ATI fuckass worthless.

Newegg keeps stocking them and they're sold out in 5 minutes....

Man I love it when new technology pushes an anomaly out the door like this freak of a card. Pretty sick that you can get a PC that will play Crysis with a $230 videocard and $120 CPU.

My recommendation: if you're in the market for a videocard, buy this card. :thumbsup:

HOLY CRAP!!!!!! crysis is soon!!!!

crap, just a little too late after I bought a GTS. sigh...

Tell me about it, my 8800GTX is 4 weeks old

$230 where? Newegg's cheapest instock 8800GT is $290. If I can find someone who has it in stock for $230 and doesn't charge $50 shipping/handling....I'd buy one tonight! Thanks for the heads-up though. The Crysis SP demo was awesome. Nov. 16th!

NewEgg doesn't have the factory GTs in stock right now. All of NewEgg's are factory OCed hence the higher price. They have a few for $259.99 if you can catch them before they sell out in 5 minutes.

Fry's had them earlier for $229.99 on preorder but they gotten taken down because they sold too many freaking preorders. They'll be in stock at $229.99 as soon as the demand falls from this high...

Hey Lasereth, I'm curious... do you know any good sites which benchmark SLI'd mid-range cards against single-GPU high-end cards? Right now I have SLI'd 8600s and was wondering if a single 8800GT (OC'd) would be on par.

*cream* Beautiful news, thanks. You were helping me out with video cards earlier but I held off from buying one. Now I might have to...

Damn, and my video card is only a year old...sorta wish I needed a new one :p

I would take a guess that an 8800 GT would be better. Many games don't support SLI that great so the 8800 GT would be the overall better setup. I'll look into it though!

Ok I did some research and the 8800 GT will basically blow 8600 SLIs out of the water. A regular 8800 GTS 320 will outperform them even in 95% of games. In some games, an 8800 GTS or an 8800 GT will provide double or even triple the framerate of 8600s in SLI.

I usually don't put any SLI setups on my buyer's guide because they rarely perform better than a single card that is one step above (except for the 8800 GTs...two of those in SLI is not only the same price as a GTX but outperforms it quite easily).

Las, thanks man :)

Speaking of Crysis, have any of you played the demo yet? Wow... Just Wow...

It's pretty fun so far, the graphics are insane... On my AM2 6000+ w/ 4gb ram, 7950GT card, I can really only run at 1280x1024 with all medium settings or it chops like crazy..

Not that Lasereth needs any backing up, but just to add to the info for people looking at the 8800GT, I emailed my contact at BFG asking whether 2x8600GTS (SLI) or 1x8800GT was the better performer. His response was simply:

"No comparison really. The 8800 GT is the card you want. It has the best price/performance by far."

tagging for future computer building goodness :) by the time I want it it'll prolly be less :D

*sigh*.......it's nice to dream I suppose.

But then again, I'd only have to eat cheap hotdogs and ramen for a couple months to afford the upgrade......

ClubIT has the 8800 GT for $221 with no rebates. It's currently sold out but keep an eye on it!!

http://www.clubit.com/product_detail...mno=CA9654041#

This one is even overlocked for that low.

As soon as I post this shit it gets deleted. These things are selling out of control!

Dell has one for $230!!!!! XFX model, get it while it's hot!!

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...471&lid=566643

Sweet. I gave Fat_Boy the link and he bought one from Dell after I pasted what you wrote about it above.

Here is a link to an article on Tom's.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/..._gt/index.html

With any luck, the TFP will be gaining two new TF2 players soon.

Thanks for the dell link....I still have $300 or so in dell credit leftover...gots me some thinkin to do.

These damn things were on sale this past weekend at Best Buy for $230 no rebates. The 512 MB version!! I decided to wait to see if I got any best buy giftcards. I came back the next day with $70 of giftcards and money I had acquired at family get-togethers. All of the GTs were still there, but the price had hiked back up to $290!!!!!!!!! Good god I was pissed. I could have had an 8800 GT for $150ish but the get-togethers had to fall 1 day late. Ugh!!!!!!!

Success!!!!!!! Today I went to Best Buy and they had the BFG 8800 GT 512 MB for $279.99. I printed out the Internet sale for $250 and they price matched it. Then I showed them my 10% off coupon and it wouldn't scan properly so the cashier just manually entered 10% off. I got the card for $225! I had $65 worth of Best Buy gift cards which brought it down to $160. Then I used my Christmas money I got yesterday to pay for the rest. I can't wait to install it!!!

Holy shit. I recently won an iPod in a raffle, returned it and I have $250 Best Buy credit.

Can you link me to pricematching page and the coupon?

EDIT:

Is this all I need?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....#productdetail

^^ Card

http://emailinfo.bestbuy.com/P/v3/Co...=1007&ci=50458

^^ 10% off coupon

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1190678470708

Sold out online, they have them in some stores though, it said my store was sold out IRL but I called them and they actually had 1 left.

http://emailinfo.bestbuy.com/P/v3/Co...=1007&ci=50458

GO GO GO GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

According to BB site, everything in reasonable distance is sold out :( I'll call the closer ones here and the one at kollege - I wonder if there's any way I can keep this until the end of January - VA tax is cheaper than PA :P

The site said it was sold out in my area too but I called and they had them.

And yeah, just print both of those out and take them in.

Seems easy enough. I'll probably call later - I think my phone contract ended (which is why I'm concerned that it still works) - but I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I need this. I mean, it's a spectacular deal and a good upgrade from my 6800XT, but my mobo / CPU are what's slowing me down now. I plan to revamp the core in about a year's time.

Do you think PCIX16 will still be the standard in a year's time? I'm hoping it will. I'm only really playing Counter-Strike: Source right now, so it's not like I've always got the best games (CoD may be in my near future...)

EDIT: DE has no sales tax!!!!!!!!!!!!! So I'm totally going to call and get them. Unfortunately, sales reps aren't answering the phone :(

One store within an hour has it in stock for me :/. But I think you got lucky. The coupon basically seems to say it'll only go with the stock price and not with any other offers. The guy I called said call back within a few days, loads of stuff is coming in soon. The 10% coupon expires Saturday, so I'll give them a call then ... if not, maybe a trip to Philly is necessary.

OK I did a 'bad' thing.

My GTX card died so I bought 2 8800 1 GiG superclocked GT's and SLIed them.

Expensive but damn.........

An almost constant 91fps in COD4 with everything on maximum including anti-aliasing 4x.

Only slowdown I've seen was with 20 people in a small area with multiple smoke grenades going.

On 3dmark06 I topped out in my system configuration (I think something like 13000+ winmarks) without any overclocking.

They also run about 20C cooler than my GTX.

Over all a very nice card, very close to GTX performance solo (much better SLIed at high resolutions), I'd highly recommend it for anyone building a gaming system.

Wow. My 8800 GT runs the game maxed out except AA. AA rapes the campaign mode (some levels go down to 30 FPS). If I go above 2x on multiplayer then it drags sometimes also. Sounds like COD4 benefits greatly from it!!

COD4 has a setting if you are using 2 video cards, I assume thats why SLI makes such a huge difference in it.

Still a great card solo, my GTX did about the same as yours.