Splak.net

Can anyone tell me what kind of video cards are good, how much GB of RAM is considered a good amount etc? I was looking through some best buy ads or w/e u call em and I saw a comp with 6GB of ram 1TB hard drive and a NVIDIA GeForce 9300 GE Graphics
but I googled it and people said it isint good for gaming, anyone have any recommendations? >_>

or get a shop to build it for you

When you look at graphics card numbers, here is the "rule of thumb" for nvidia:

They are all in a number XXXX (except the new series), for example
8800, 6600, 6800, 7800, 9800 etc

The 1st number is the series, like the "year model" 8 series, 7 series, 9 series, etc

The 2nd number is the power of the card, nvidia has for the past 4 years used "800" for the high end, "600" for the mid end at series start. As the series becomes more mature they will release new versions, some higher, some lower. If they tweak the high end 8 card, they may release a 850, or a 900, and the weak cheap cards become the 500 and below cards.

So:
9800 = 9th series, 800 card (high end)
9600 = 9th series, 600 card (mid end)
8800 = 8th series, 800 card (high end)

Typically as a new series comes out, the 600 card matches (or close) the power of the previous generations 800 card. So a 9600 more or less matches a 8800, a 7600gt matches a 6800gt. Sometimes series have huge jumps, 5 to 6 series was a HUGE jump, the 5900 is weaker than a 6600 by far.

How nvidia used to do it is there would be a xxxx card, and a xxxxgt card, the gt meant faster memory, like a 6600gt matched a plain 6800 on benchmarks, slower cpu, but faster memory (gt), since then they have bastardized the naming scheme badly.

The series name comes from the GPU processor name, the 8 series was the G80 processor, the G70 was the 7 series, etc.

It all started to go wrong half way though the 8 series. 8 series came out with 2 cards (3 if you count the different memory amounts)
8800 GTX 768mb (high dollar)
8000 GTS 320mb or 640mb (mid high)

This was all good, the G80 was a great chip, and many of us are still using a G80 based chip, they are still made except the higher end chips.

Well the G80 was good, but was large, and ran hot, so they shrunk it down, this optimized and shrunk G80 was named the G92.... no clue why, why not the G81, or anything, now here is where it got really really retarded. The first G92 chip came in a 8800gt chip, so now nvidia sold:

8800 GTX 768mb (high dollar 600ish)
8000 GTS 320mb or 640mb (mid high 300-400)
8800 GT 256mb or 512mb (250 range)

Looking at that above you would think the 8800gt would be weaker, but in reality it beat the GTS in all benchmarks, and beat the GTX in higher resolutions, the G92 processor was about 2x as powerful as the G80, but the GTX has faster ram). Then they threw in a 8800GTS 512 2 weeks later, which is the 8800gt with a 2 slot cooler, more gpu power (higher clocks and unlocked pipelines) and faster memory, and cost in the mid 200 range and beat their own $600 GTX card, talk about shooting yourself in the foot. The G92 was now a huge cluster fuck of names because people saw 3 seperate 8800GTS cards (320, 512, 640) and the 512 was by far the most powerful (G80=24000mt/s vs G92=42000 mt/s gpu power, but with slightly weaker memory, 64gb/s vs 58gb/s):

8800 GTX 768mb (high dollar 600ish)
8000 GTS 320mb or 640mb (mid high 200-300)
8000 GTS 512mb (mid high 250 range) <---- the most powerful and best buy
8800 GT 256mb or 512mb (200 range)

They did the same thing with the 7 series, but called the updated 7900 the: 7850 and 7900.

Oh but I am not finished, someone in PR decided "we have held on to the 8 series name for wayyyyy too long" lets rebadge current 8 series cards with 9 series name.

The 9800 GTX IS THE EXACT SAME CARD as the 8800gts 512 G92, except with like 5% more power due to higher clocks. The 9600 is still a G92 also, with 1/4 of its processor stripped down.

The brand new series came out with a GTX 280 and GTX260, I really dont want to get started on that again but there are 3 VERY different GTX260s (with no name difference), a GTX270, a GTX 285, and a GTX295 (2 GTX 270s). They are all GT200 processor based, hince the new name, but then wtf, they go and fuck it up more with a "GTS 250" wtf is that, oh, its a G92, infact is is the exact same card as the 9800GTX+, with a smaller board, which is a shrunk down 9800GTX, which is a re branded 8800gts 512 g92. ugh.

Oh.... side note, laptops just got 2 new nv cards, GTX 280 and GTX 260, but the GT200 processor is too hot for laptops, so both of those are G92 based..... yeah....