I've been wanting to upgrade my 7600GT to be able to play the newer games and boost performance with current ones, and after a little research I've realized an 8800GT is the way to go right now. After browsing Newegg a bit and reading some reviews/benchmarks, I've narrowed it down to 2 choices:
Gigabyte 8800GT 256MB OCed (700Mhz/1500Mhz) w/ Zalman cooler
Asus 8800GT 512MB stock (600Mhz/1800Mhz) w/ custom Asus cooler
So basically it's a 100Mhz core overclock plus a Zalman cooler vs 512MB of VRAM. Never seen that Asus cooler before, so I don't know if it's better than the "stock" coolers on most 8800s. I'll be playing games at my monitor's native 1440x900 resolution (equivalent to 1280x1024).
Edit: I've corrected the cards' memory speeds. Notice the 256MB version has a slower memory, even after overclock (stock memory speed for the 256MB version is 1400Mhz).
Gigabyte 8800GT 256MB OCed (700Mhz/1500Mhz) w/ Zalman cooler
Asus 8800GT 512MB stock (600Mhz/1800Mhz) w/ custom Asus cooler
So basically it's a 100Mhz core overclock plus a Zalman cooler vs 512MB of VRAM. Never seen that Asus cooler before, so I don't know if it's better than the "stock" coolers on most 8800s. I'll be playing games at my monitor's native 1440x900 resolution (equivalent to 1280x1024).
Edit: I've corrected the cards' memory speeds. Notice the 256MB version has a slower memory, even after overclock (stock memory speed for the 256MB version is 1400Mhz).