9600GT or 8800GTS

i am building a new kick ass pc, and i have only one major decision left before i finalize my parts and have them shipped. on newegg there is a great deal on the 9600GT 1GB card but i have heard a lot of really good things about the 8800 GTS 512MB i am going to be using this puppy for gaming.
My new pc parts that i have decided on: (i already have a hd, monitor, speakers, and mouse)
Pioneer 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA

NZXT TEMPEST Crafted Series CS-NT-TEM-B Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply

Saitek PZ30AUR Red USB Wired Slim Eclipse Keyboard

Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model PDC24G6400LLK

ASUS P5N-D LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600

you want a 8800GT 512MB. You don't want the 9600.

i heard that also from geekstogo.com. seems like ill just get the 8800GTS. thanks for the help

Well actually the video card you choose is gunna be decided by the monitor you have, if you running a 17" or 19" that tops out at 1280x1024 then the slower 9600GT is gunna be plenty, and the higher end 8800GT/GTS is gunna be overkill. The 9600GT is perfect card for 1680x1050 or under, but if you really wanna max out the detail and knock up the AA/AF at 1680x1050 or above, the 8800GT is perfect choice. For any higher resolution, such as 1920x1200 then the 8800GTS is gunna be the better choice, even though the 8800GT is fast enough for it.

But, you can refer here to see a database of modern video cards, and you can compare two cards side by side to see the differences. And you can refer here to see the I3dSpeed charts from Digit-Life, and in there they compare some of the most popular cards (like the 9600GT, 8800GT, 8800GTS, 9800GTX) against one another in popular games like Stalker, Crysis, COH, and so forth.


As for memory wise, very few cards today will actually be able to utilize 1gb of memory. Even playing through crysis at 1920x1200 on high settings you'll typically only pull down 300mb or so of typical video memory usage. So unless your running 2560x1600 and a multi-gpu set up like Crossfire or SLI, then you wouldnt even come close to using 1gb
Quality of the GPU takes priority over the quantity of memory.

I agree that it is better for you to get a 8800gt card.