Q: Which is better (mostly for gaming) ?
A: To be honest, neither... When dealing with Nvidia cards, try to avoid any models where the final 3 digits aren't at least 600. The 7600, 8600, 9600 - those are the entry-level gaming cards for their respective generation of cards, and pretty much the lowest you'd want to go. Cards with higher last 3 digits are faster (7950, 8800, 9800 etc) The first digit is just the series, or how recent the card is... The 9000 series is newer than 8000, but an 8800GT is still faster than a 9600GT- likewise the old 7800 and 7900 both still outperform the newer 8600. Letter-wise, GTX cards are best, GTS cards 2nd-best, GT cards are standard and GS cards are the low-end versions. Cards like the 8500, 8400 , 9500 etc aren't really for gaming- they're just slow, inexpensive cards. For serious gamers, the minimum these days is an 8800GT. For causal gamers an 8600 or 9600 is fine. Oh, and if your budget goes as high as $170, consider the ATI Radeon 4850- it's king of that price range, far better than a 8800GT. Its slightly better than a 9800GTX, but costs a lot less. .