Quote Originally Posted by Benfinkel View Post
So,

X700 > X1550 while X8600 < X8800. Core clock speeds don't matter, neither do amounts of RAM, ram bus speed or pixel pipes except of course when they do matter. A DX transition does matter, but the age of the engine of the game does not, in this case, come into play. There are some "series" changes in there, but you wouldn't know from the manufacturer, just from one online retailer.

On what criteria, besides running the game in question with various cards, can you make an educated guess at how well a card will run it?
You don't quite seem to understand. You were the one going all of on how the X1550 has faster ram and core speeds than the X700, so it must be better. You also don't seem to get what buckshot is saying, that a mid range card in one generation will beat a low end card in the next generation. Also, it's not X8600 or X8800, its 8600GTS and 8800GTX. ATi and nVidia are different.