hey,
I want to buy a new computer, and it has been about 3 years since I bought the last one, so it's pretty old.
2.7GHz CPU (Pentium 4), 80GB HD and vid card Geforce 5600.
indeed, I believe it needs changing.
However, there is a problem with that. Now days, with all the 8*** coming out, it seems that somehow things gone wrong and 8600, which is supposed to be about half the price of the 8800 (the top), has only about a quarter of the power the 8800s has.
That's because something happened that delayed ATI's release that let nVidia rule the market (for the time) and made ATI to have to follow suit. Go figure.
In the mean time, there aren't quite that many DX10 games out there, and I haven't quite fulfilled the DX9 games. The problem is, that according to certain sayings, the graphic cards will have surprisingly low performance on these new DX10 games that should be coming this year, and with that there should be more powerful cards. This should be true to both ATI and nVidia.

The question are, what do you think I should do (within the limits of reason and money, of course) and how the hell does nVidia order their graphic cards?! all those GT and GTS and GTZ and who knows what else.

information that help:
FPS rates of most current cards: http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html
Also, if I'm buying a good graphic card this year, I'm not planning on buying a new one the next year. . . or anytime soon.

My dad recently bought the 8500 for his PC(since blowing his old one ¬_¬) And it performs really well, especially as it was pretty cheap. Now, I recently read a review comparing the 8600 with ATI's equivalent, after quite a lot of benchmarking etc on different games, in both DX10 and 9 environments, the nVidia beat it hands down.

I have a 8800 GTS which is awesome, I'd recommend it if you've got the money, or go for something cheaper like the 8600, but I'd definitely stick to nVidia

no the problem isn't nVidia or ATI, that doesn't matter to me though I think I'll go with nVidia. The problem is that it is said that those new DX10 games will not work so well on the 8 series cards, and it's rather annoying to buy a completely new computer only to find out that it's outdated a year later. However, this is all based on stuff either from that site, or from a guy that doesn't quite know all the details.
So does anyone know enough about this?

Wait till November till the 9800s are out. Hopefully that will put some sort of dent into the 8800's price range. If you plan on doing lots of DX10 gaming on that monitor you won then you will need a good card. I suggest an 8800gtx at the least for a monitor using that resolution.

New games like Crysis will need all the power they can get. A few of the testers running 2 x 8800gtx's in SLi have reported that they cant even run this game on max without it lagging. This could be nvidia's fault as the Vista SLi drivers aren't up to spec yet..

Basically we need some sort of a budget from you, and what you intend on using the computer mainly for before we can suggest cards to you

well, finally something more specific!
and that's annoying =/ having vid cards that don't give so much power.

mmm budget. around 250$, and I do intend to play games, though might not be on the highest possible quality, but I want to enjoy them to the very least.

Yeah I'd wait a little bit if I was you. You will probably need at least an 8800gts 640mb to enjoy some DX10 gaming. The 8600gt has as much processing power as the 7600gt. Its just not going to be any good for DX10.

if I would go for 8600, I think I would get GTS or something.
and at all, what the hell are those GTs and GSs and GTSs and all that stuff?

GTX > GTS > GT > GS

Its kinda like the ranking. But then you have the different series like the  7900gt would still be as good as the 7800gtx.

Have a read around at a few different reviews to determine what card is right for you. Don't forget if you are looking at stats, make sure your looking at the resolution you will be using.

bleh, it throws the order into chaos.
what's the point of naming a card 7900 if GTS is much more better than GT?

mmm I don't think I'll run things at resolutions so high, or too much quality. I can live with lower quality, but I don't want to run things at the bare minimum like I am now. Maybe I'll buy the 7300 for now, and wait until around November and buy (probably) 9600 or 8800, hopefully things will get better.