Sorry for the delay on the reply, I've been sucked into video game world.
Anyway, yeah, I could easily say this card is five times better than my old 8500GT, I could barely run Grand Theft Auto 4 @ 1024x768 with everything turned down on the 8500GT 512MB GPU. I've got the 8800GTS 640MB 320 bit GPU running it at 1280x1024 @ medium high settings @ about 30-60FPS average, though the FPS drops to about 5-25FPS when I record with FRAPS.
I have Fallout 3 running at Ultra High settings @ 1280x1024 @ about 40-140FPS.
However, my GPU, it's still the bottleneck in my computer, my CPU never goes above 75% utilization, and my RAM never exceeds 60% utilization (3GB DDR2 800, would have 3.5GB but the WDM driver eats 512MB of RAM as shared VRAM). I think I'll wait a while and swap the GPU again later on when GTX 260's become affordable. That will most certainly be the last upgrade I do to this machine aside from maybe installing a quad core, though that's unlikely. My overclocked Core 2 Duo E4500 performs very nicely, seeing as most programs do not even support multithreading in Windows XP. I will probably upgrade this system to Windows 7 64 bit if that operating system becomes affordable (and stable) before I replace this system.
This isn't to say, however, that I am at all unsatisfied with my graphics card. It has far exceeded my expectations, I'm sure the card that replaces it will do the same. Though that will not be for some time, I'm content with the performance this card is giving me for now, it's the best graphics card I've ever owned.
As for tests on the card, I ran 3dmark06 on my 8500, I scored less than 4,000 marks, with the 8800GTS, I scored over 10,000 marks. I'm sure my system could score much more than that with a better GPU, but as I said, I am more than content with the 8800GTS. Though, I will say, I'd rather have a 8800GTS 512MB 256 bit G92 based GPU than the 640MB 320 bit G80GTS based GPU I have, but the G92 version only performs a slight bit better. In all honesty, the 9800GTX+ 512MB 256 bit is only about 12% better than this graphics card, so my next upgrade will have to be a leap larger than that. The GTX260's are more than 25% more powerful than this GPU in most cases, so, once the Fermi core GTX 4xx GPU's start to become popular, I'll get a GTX260. Until then, I am more than satisfied with this graphics card, though, my computer can now effectively be used as a space heater in the winter, all I have to do is run 3dmark06 maxed out @ 1280x1024 and the GPU will get to about 160F.
