Hello, I am going to buy a Graphic card for Game engine Deveolpement using DirectX ,so what GPu should I purchase Nvidia Geforce 8 series,ATI Radeon X3870 (with DirectX10.1 support) or a Nvidia Quadro FX,and will I wait for Directx 10.1 Graphic cards .I am confused between Quadro or Geforce . Thanks

the 8800's been claiming Top Dog for a while, but apparently the new ATI chip is finally giving it some serious contention. I'd recommend Bit-tech for research purposes.

I think 8800GT is the way to go. I just got this XFX GeForce 8800GT
http://www.dealstudio.com/searchdeals.php?deal_id=75110
incredibly good performance. I upgraded from a 7800GT, which was certainly a decent card, but the 8800GT positively blows it away, especially on newer shader-intensive games. Stock cooler, even though it is single slot with a small fan, does a decent job, and is VERY quiet on the default 29% speed. So far,so good. I highly recommend the 8800GT.

Right now the 8800GT is the best bang for your buck, because a small investment in a good aftermarket cooler will let you overclock the *shit* out of the thing. You can get about 90% of the 8800GTS's performance, a $350 card where as the 8800GT is around $250 (if you can find it).

I bought an overclocked 8800 GT mainly to play Crysis, and I'm very happy. Great bang for the buck! I don't think DX10.1 is THAT important from an API perspective -- the big upgrade comes with DX11 in a year or so.

Also, rumors have it that the GeForce 9850GX2 is actually a pair of 8800GTS chips bonded in internal SLI mode. If the 9xxx series is supposed to support DX 10.1, then that would meant that the 8800GT512/GTS chip actually can already do the 10.1 feature set. Whether that is true, or whether that will translate into driver support, remains to be seen. However, the NVIDIA architecture is amazingly programmable, so I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Anyway, best bang for the buck (and best OpenGL compatibility): GeForce 8800 GT/512.

Quote: I am confused between Quadro or Geforce

Quadro cards are intended for CAD and other workstation applications where color and computational accuracy is very important. They can also render antialiased lines extremely quickly (again, only really useful for CAD). They come with drivers that are specially tuned for different applications. For example, you could pick a driver specifically for 3D Max and get a big performance boost. That said, the high price tag does not mean they will play games faster than a comparably equipped GeForce series card. For gaming, just stick with GeForce. If you need to render a few hundred million antialiased lines in real time in Max, go for the Quadro.

I also have an overclocked 8800 GT and im very satisfied.I can play everything at high settings though I didn't test crysis under vista very high details but it runs great on XP and all the other games on the market are less demanding and/or better optimized :) than Crysis.
My card has standart cooling it runs at 51C on desktop and hits 80C under crysis but I stopped my case fans beacuse of noise :)

Quote: Original post by hplus0603
Anyway, best bang for the buck (and best OpenGL compatibility): GeForce 8800 GT/512.

I would question the former a bit; the AMD ATI HD3870 puts in scores very close to the 8800GT and cost less. While I can't pull sites out of the air the general feeling is that bang-for-buck wise the HD3870 is the best you are going to get.

In either case I'd wait a bit as a new crop of cards are due in the near future, which are the very least might well drop the prices of the current ones.