Is there a major difference between these Nvidia Graphics cards?

I have the choice of either:


- nVidia GeForce 9600GT 1024MB £79





or





- nVidia GeForce 9800GTX 512MB £189





Is it really worth over £100 more for it?





What signifficant changes could i find?





For playing games like Call of Duty 4,Crysis,Half life 2 etc

Is there a major difference between these Nvidia Graphics cards?
hi james


in a nutshell,speed and memory,the geforce 9600gt is by no means a slow card but as with any geforce series the gtx prefix after the name allways signifies power,and a better card


taking a more indepth look the 9600gt has a 650mhz core clock compared with the 9800gtx core clock speed of 675mhz,this isnt much of a increase however every mhz counts when running todays high end games


then the memory speeds are also slightly different,for example the 9600gt has a 900mhz(1800mhz ddr effective) compared to the 1100mhz(2200mhz ddr effective) in the 9800gtx


these are the main specs you look for when considering buying a new graphic card,however another important specification is the memory bandwidth and memory bus interface


and allthough both cards have 256bit memory interfaces the better memory clock in the 9800gtx gives it a much better 70.4gb/sec memory bandwidth compared to the 57.6gb/sec in the 9600gt


and allthough the 9600gt,s bandwidth is nothing to be sneezed at,if your after a card thats gonna give you that bit more then the extra bandwidth is a must


as for games,well the difference in these cards would be increased frame rates and higher detail in the 9800gtx,however i have found the latest games like call of duty 4 and crysis extremely playable when set to medium


direct x 10 has made games played on low to medium look like games played on high detail in direct x 9


half life 2 is especially good when played on these new breed of cards,also assassins creed and bioshock are also worth checking out


finally is the extra £100 worth paying?...well i think so..while the 9600gt becomes swamped by the newer and more demanding games the 9800gtx will still hold its own and will still be the card of choice in at least another 2 years


any problems let me know


good luck james !
Reply:1024MB of video memory would practically NEVER come into use. You'd have to be running some ridiculous resolution before the graphics card utilized much of that, and at that point the 9600 would lack the power to run it well anyway. The 9800GTX is by far the better card, no matter what you do with them. Video memory can be a little deceiving--it only really matters if all else is equal, and in this situation it is not.
Reply:You can check relative performance here;





http://service.futuremark.com/hardware/g...





but I wouldn't pay an extra £110 and lose 512Mb personally!