End of geek weekend....
Just so I could sleep at night knowing I made the right decision I tested the 8800gt vs. the 4850 in Xp64... Here are the results compared to the same tests in Vista64...
And since its easy to do in Pages here are the graphs ^ ^
In the real world tests the scores were very close for simple scenes... one character dancing around for example... but in the heavier scenes with detailed backgrounds etc the ATI nearly doubled the performance of the Nvidia card... This is reflected in Furmark as well as Furmark is a very intense test...
Final Observations:
The Ati card is more powerful than the Nvidia and they are at nearly the same pricepoint...How? Well the ATi card at stock idles at 80' but its very quiet... a fan hack is required to up the fan speed which increases the fan noise but cools the card down to 55' idle... The 8800gt has a huge heatsink and fan which keeps the card cool at all times... the ATi has only a cheap fan... So since the ATI is a higher spec card they kept the price down by having a cheap cooling mechanism... So crank up the fan a bit and I think its still a great deal... Both cards will get the job done though.Brought to you by professional weirdo M dot Strange.