7800GT performances

[Blood Hawk]

I'm planning on buying a new rig pretty shortly. It's going to involve buying a new everything (or near enough). The setup I'm considering right now is:

Antec Sonata II - 450W
AMD 64 X2 3800
Corsair 2GB CAS2 TwinX
DFI Lanparty SLI-DR Expert
Western Digital 250GB Caviar 16MB Cache HDD

I also plan on getting a new gfx card and was looking at the nVidia 7800GTs. (Not GTX as I'm having to replace a lot of other stuff, as you see, and I want to save for a holiday later in the year too, so money is a bit of an issue! lol )

Would I notice a great deal of difference between a 400MHz core clock speed and 450MHz? I am a gamer but mainly online games at the moment, which aren't all *that* graphics intensive, and some UT2004 - which is a bit meatier in the gfx department. Also, is there really much difference between, for example, the OcUK 7800GT @ 400MHz and the BFG @ 400MHz cards? Performance wise that is. Even though I'm saving for a holiday and things, I'm able to afford the extra £40/50 on the 450MHz/"big brand" cards if there's going to be some sort of noticable improvement for me.

I don't plan on going SLi right now (obviously) but might well do so in the future, hence the SLi-ready equipment I'm planning on buying.

 

[Blood Hawk]

Cheers for the responses guys!

 

[Blood Hawk]

Any particular reason you guys have the BFG cards? (Rather than, say, XFX or Leadtek, or maybe even a PixelView card - I've spotted it cheap somwhere else, etc?)

Edit: Oh, and which Zalman cooler are you referring to? I currently run an Arctic Cooler on my 9800SE card, but see there isn't one of those around for the 7800 at the moment.

 

[Blood Hawk]

they were on special a while back for £234 inc VAT and were the cheapest 7800GT on OC at the time, oh and 450mhz clock instead of 400.
Infact I don't remember seeing leadtek on OC when i bought my bfg.

Yeah they're 425 clock at the moment, and the most expensive GT card on OC. I'll give it some more thought over next couple of days I guess.

 

[Blood Hawk]

I got mine for £211.50 inc VAT!!
Just buy the cheapest card there, as they are all the same design, just different packaging!! BFG has a lifetime warrenty, although i invalidated mine by sticking an arctic cooler on and volt modding it. it is now running at 499/1190.

Yeah I figured this was pretty much the case, jsut thought I'd make sure!

Cheers guys.

I'll probably let it run at stock for a couple of weeks first (like the rest of my system) to make sure it works fine ... then I'll probably ramp up the speeds a little, see what I can get with the X2/7800GT