if your considering upgrading in the summer anyway, and you believe you will happily have the money then i say stick with the 7900GTO.
Thats an issue though, even though i am in a relatively nice job it did take quite a while to bank up this cash to be able to buy it all. I've always
planned to upgrade in the summer, but having the money at the time is a dodgy topic.
Lets be honest here, is having a GTO instead of an 8000GTS really going to hamper your gaming experience based on what you had previsouly. At the end of the day your going to see a huge performance increase no matter which you choose.
Very true, I'm currently running on an FX5200, and boy is it a POS.... But then again, if you're buying a new system you should always be comparing between the latest and greatest, if we compared with the current hardware ive got, i would most liekly be buying a 7600GS or something like that, by todays standards a fairly low card, but compared to the 5200, its 100x better. So basically, even though anything is going to be better than what i've got, i stil want to have the best i can get for my budget.
Go for the 7900GTO for now and then so long as you believe you will have the funds for it upgrade to a DX10 capable card in the summer. By that time there will be more competition on the market for cards and as such you will be more likely to get a cracking card for a decent price.
Of course, i can still take that method even if i do buy the 8800 now, i could still sell that in the summer and get perhaps one of the newer 8900's (depending on how they do).... again this is funds permitting, which might not get very far.
I simply dont see the point in currently going for a next gen card other than for bragging rights.
You doubt the size of my ego too much, i live for bragging rights...
A few comments:
First off, even though GPUreview shows that you might be able to unlock some pipes on the 8800GTS, unless someone has done it, it usually can't be done. Even if a few have, it is most likely on a certain revision of a certain company.
I will bear that in mind, 99% chance that you cant unlock them, fair enough, still a very good card none the less, i will be overclocking anyway so...
dragon