[Anton1382]

My friend is looking to get a nVidia GeForce 8800GTS but he is stuck. He is wondering which one he should get. There is one that has 640MB but then there is another one that has 320MB but it is 76MHz faster. Should he get the one with more memory or the one that has a faster Core clock and Memory clock?

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definetly get the one with more RAM and if your that worried about 76Mhz (which by the way is nothing) then overclock the RAM using an on-the-fly overclocker

not sure what Nvidea offer but something similar to ATi Tool
oh maybe Riva tuner will work not sure thou

but i would tell your friend to wait a couple of months until the ATi R600 comes out its going to be heaps faster than the Nvidea cards and will force the prices of the 8800's down but if i was him and had that much mioeny i would purchase the R600 when it comes out

troppo

[troppo]

definetly get the one with more RAM and if your that worried about 76Mhz (which by the way is nothing) then overclock the RAM using an on-the-fly overclocker

not sure what Nvidea offer but something similar to ATi Tool
oh maybe Riva tuner will work not sure thou

but i would tell your friend to wait a couple of months until the ATi R600 comes out its going to be heaps faster than the Nvidea cards and will force the prices of the 8800's down but if i was him and had that much mioeny i would purchase the R600 when it comes out

troppo

[warriorscot]

The overclocked 320s are actually faster than the ones with more memory, i would wait with the Nvidia drivers being what they are.

[Anton1382]

Thanks and also, when he goes to look at them, he notices that next to the Memory clock, it says 1700MHz Effective... what does effective mean because he sees other cards that don't have effective next to the memory clock.

[troppo]

basicaaly all it means is that for example the actual speed of DDR RAM is 200Mhz but because it's Double Data Rate then the EFFECTIVE speed is 400Mhz (PC3200)

thats a comparison to system RAM and Graphics RAM is the same but mind you its alot faster

now im not sure about teh acuracy of my cals but if its 1700Mhz and its GDDR3 then it should be something like 283Mhz with an effective clock rate of 1700 reasoning; 1700/(2*3)= 283.33' 2 because double data rate and 3 because of the DDR3 some body here might verify this as im not 100% sure

hope that helps

troppo