8800 GT to 9800GTX+ - reasonable change or not?

[Kevin Ascher]

Hey guys,

with my current setup of a Quad core @2.40Ghz
4 gigs of RAM and a 8800GT graphics card by Nvidia I am not able to run iRacing smoothly with medium settings. On newer tracks or in traffic I drop to about 30 FPS and it gets real hard to drive at times. I may have the chance to upgrade to a 9800GTX+ graphics card at zero costs.
Will that make a big difference?


PS: I'm running Windows 7 64bits

 

[Ryan Callan]

It should make an excellent improvement, yes.

 

[Adam Vaughan]

8800GT is an old card but sounds like to me your running on DDR2 ram and also a Q6600. Maybe time for an overall upgrade if possible as games like iracing etc gona start killing your FPS. If you can get 9800GTX it will make a difference but in a year or so might wana start thinking about upgrading to a little more.

Sorry for going of the question subject

 

[Peter]

You don't see mutch improvement, 8800GT/9800GTX/250GTS are the ''same'' . if you want want real improvement you have to move on.
But upgrade to a 9800GTX+ graphics card at zero costs that's a good thing If you have to pay for it don't do it, it's not worth it.

 

[Jim Cole]

In order for a graphics card upgrade to be worth the time, it should be an upgrade that is substantial rather than minimal. On just about any chart you look at the 9800GTX is only 1 Tier better than the 8800GT so the improvement will not be noticed.

Have a look here to see where your card falls into place and remember that you don't really want to upgrade to anything that is less than 4 Tiers above what you currently have. :www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6950-1gb-geforce-gtx-560-ti-gaming-graphics-card,2857-7.html

I am wondering why you are having issues running the game at the settings you want to run. The 8800GT is no slouch on graphics unless you have the 512meg version of the card and are trying to run with huge image size. I would go through the system to see what is running in the background and see if there is anything that can be shutdown to lower the load on the card a bit to see what happens. Also, I think your information may be a little off as 30 FPS is very doable when it comes to just about any game. Granted there is still a slight possibility that you will see stutter at that frame rate, but the stutter should be minimal when getting 30 FPS. If it dropped to less than 20 I would be concerned.

 

[Damian Henderson]

If it's for no cost at all it's worth it, but as said above the 9800gtx+ is not that much faster, but you will see some gains.

 

[Eric Estes]

No cost, same drivers, no brainer. A lot will depend on the memory difference between the two cards. If your 8800 has 256 mb (there were some made) and the 9800 has 768+, you'll see a major upgrade.

 

[Matt Hunt]

Having done the 8800GT 512mb a 9800GTX+ 512mb

The jump in not that great. yes it's better there's no doubt in that but not worth spending money on thats for sure, Not now anyway!

But for free then yes do it!