I disagree, there will doubtless be plenty of titles released over the next year which push modern hardware to the limit (especially considering the fact that current titles such as cod2/fear are already too demanding for current hardware). People were probably saying the same thing 2 years ago, and then Far Cry popped up.
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Anyone sick of graphics card upgrades ?
- Thread starter Flanno
- Start date
Caporegime
Cyber-Mav said:
Yeah for the 360, but your forgetting its £500 and upwards for the HDTV.
HangTime said:
imo no they aren't too demanding for modern hardware... they're just not coded to take full advantage of the power of the high-end GPU's. Developers don't have the time to spend making the games run and look like a dream, that's not the way the competitive industry works. Engines are rarely as good or as fast as they could be given more development time, a luxury few development houses have.
LoadsaMoney said:Yeah for the 360, but your forgetting its £500 and upwards for the HDTV.
Well thats not really true...you dont NEED HDTV and you are buying a 27inch lcd TV for that, last time i checked a 24inch lcd monitor cost more than £500
Caporegime
I know you don't need a one, they do work on normal Tv's, but everyone is buying HDTV's for them, even though they say they look good on the normal Tv's, yeah right thats why your getting a HDTV for it lol, console section is full of em, they are all buying em up for their 360's lol.
As some one said in there, Micrososft must be on every HDTV manufacturers christmas card list.
As some one said in there, Micrososft must be on every HDTV manufacturers christmas card list.
Associate
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- 22 Nov 2005
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- 90
Personally I've upgraded for the very last time in my life. PS3 is coming with a mouse and keyboard (to play those FPS with) so it's enough for me. I'm getting a nice HD-TV and the PS3 and that's me done with PC gaming. The only 2 games i'm still waiting to play is Stalker and Project Offset. After that, PS3 will be out and about and my PC will be for web surfing only.
Associate
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- 23 Nov 2005
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- 37
ES4 Oblivion is coming out in the next few months i reckon that'll stress your SLI/CF, duel core setups, especialy with the 100+ user made mods loading down ya system further. It's the perfect excuse for me to spend out on a decent duel core and either x1800 or x1900 in CF (price depending), got £450 saved so far . Still my barton at 2500Mhz, nf2 at 230Mhz, 1Gb of cheap mem, and overclocked r9800pro still holds its head well above water at 1024/768 and 1280/960 for the time being. Only clocks in at 3k in 3dmark05, laughable compared to 18k with a FX57 clk'ed to 3.5Ghz and a couple of 512MB 7800gtx's in SLI, still it serves me well.
. Still my barton at 2500Mhz, nf2 at 230Mhz, 1Gb of cheap mem, and overclocked r9800pro still holds its head well above water at 1024/768 and 1280/960 for the time being. Only clocks in at 3k in 3dmark05, laughable compared to 18k with a FX57 clk'ed to 3.5Ghz and a couple of 512MB 7800gtx's in SLI, still it serves me well.HangTime said:
Well if you read my post again I was talking about games that interest 'me', that I think would push the hardware. And so far looking at release schedules I don't see much that interests me at all - at least in the first quarter of this year. In fact if you look at the next gen due out in Feb, there is really nothing in the line of heavy duty 3d games due out. And I disagree about cod2 being too demanding for current hardware. It runs fine on my rig at 1680 or even 1920, despite what Fraps seems to think.
I dont think the poorly coded pc ports are helping the situation either, yes i am fed up of it, because i get stuff like need for speed most wanted and it doesnt run very well at 1280 x 1024 which is unacceptable and annoys me, where as a well coded game like half life 2, or quake 4 runs perfect all the time, so i end up buying more hardware so need for speed runs well.
Just my 2p in there.
Just my 2p in there.
Associate
I don't opt for higher end cards (as you can see in my signature, I have a 6600GT which is nowhere near the top of the board). As long as I can play the games I like (CS:S, NFSMW, HL2M and BF2) at nice looking settings (not necessarily the highest, but aslong as the models don't look like lego men) and achieve a playable FPS (anything above 40/50) I'm happy.
M and BF2) at nice looking settings (not necessarily the highest, but aslong as the models don't look like lego men) and achieve a playable FPS (anything above 40/50) I'm happy.
Caporegime
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- 33,188
ok, lets get a few things out, firstly you're saying oo, next gen isn't that exciting, but nto everyone has a 7800gtx single card let alone in sli.
Someone builds a COMPLETELY new rig every day in this big wide world, new cards at same price mean better value for him. a lot of people here have a 9800 pro and lets be honest, would you prefer a x1800xt for £350 or a x1900xt for £350. it simply pushes more pixels, and will do that for its lifespan even 3 years from now.
as for upgrading, what difference does it make if you bough ta x1800xt for £350, sell for £250, buy the next card for £350, you lose £100, or you get a x1800xt, keep it for 2 years, sell it on for £50 buy next card for £350, you end up losing a VERY similar amount of cash, but one way you always have the fastest thing, the other way you don't. thats why i upgrade constantly i find i spend the same as friends who buy a dell £1800 pc every 3 years but i ALWAYS have the latest thing throughout that time and spend exactly the same.
whats wrong with value for money. lets say they delay the 1900xt until the next huge engine that is even more powerful comes out, say that was in october, then everyone who decides to buy a new pc between now and then pays £350 for a x1800xt instead of getting a better card for same money. its not JUST about upgrading, some people HAVE to choose a card because they need a computer, some people do have cards so bad they need to be upgraded to play farcry let alone anything newer.
not really wanting to sound bad but your argument has little merit, because i can't see a single reason for newer better cards replacing older ones for same money as fast as possible as being a bad thing?
also xbox 360, would you buy a 7800gtx to play in 640x480 resolution? exactly, tbh , and of course IMHO its quite ludicrous to get a 360 without a HDTV, ok i could get one and hook it too my monitor and get the right res, but big screens and multiplayer games are where consoles are at for me, and consoles utterly and truly fail at fps games in general, not a single one i'd prefer to play on a console than a PC.
and even for UNdeadInsanity, the fact that the 6800's, then the 7800's came out and the next cards are the very reason for midrange cards being good yet quite cheap, if there wasn't a 6800, and it wasn't followed by a 7800 then his 6600gt would have cost twice as much.
Someone builds a COMPLETELY new rig every day in this big wide world, new cards at same price mean better value for him. a lot of people here have a 9800 pro and lets be honest, would you prefer a x1800xt for £350 or a x1900xt for £350. it simply pushes more pixels, and will do that for its lifespan even 3 years from now.
as for upgrading, what difference does it make if you bough ta x1800xt for £350, sell for £250, buy the next card for £350, you lose £100, or you get a x1800xt, keep it for 2 years, sell it on for £50 buy next card for £350, you end up losing a VERY similar amount of cash, but one way you always have the fastest thing, the other way you don't. thats why i upgrade constantly i find i spend the same as friends who buy a dell £1800 pc every 3 years but i ALWAYS have the latest thing throughout that time and spend exactly the same.
whats wrong with value for money. lets say they delay the 1900xt until the next huge engine that is even more powerful comes out, say that was in october, then everyone who decides to buy a new pc between now and then pays £350 for a x1800xt instead of getting a better card for same money. its not JUST about upgrading, some people HAVE to choose a card because they need a computer, some people do have cards so bad they need to be upgraded to play farcry let alone anything newer.
not really wanting to sound bad but your argument has little merit, because i can't see a single reason for newer better cards replacing older ones for same money as fast as possible as being a bad thing?
also xbox 360, would you buy a 7800gtx to play in 640x480 resolution? exactly, tbh , and of course IMHO its quite ludicrous to get a 360 without a HDTV, ok i could get one and hook it too my monitor and get the right res, but big screens and multiplayer games are where consoles are at for me, and consoles utterly and truly fail at fps games in general, not a single one i'd prefer to play on a console than a PC.
and even for UNdeadInsanity, the fact that the 6800's, then the 7800's came out and the next cards are the very reason for midrange cards being good yet quite cheap, if there wasn't a 6800, and it wasn't followed by a 7800 then his 6600gt would have cost twice as much.
Richdog said:
I'm not going to disagree with you about engines not being fully optimised, but that doesn't change the fact that games are too demanding for modern hardware - the reason is irrelevant, bottom line is if you want to run FEAR in high rez/aa/afwith everything on max, even 7800gtx-512 SLI (a grands worth of graphics hardware) cannot provide constant high framerates. Obviously people with small monitors or ancient cpus may get cpu limited before then, but there is still room for improvement (chances are people who can afford that will have a decent cpu/screen anyway).
Flanno said:
Well, you asked a question in your topic, I just gave my opinion
Maybe, I'm not fully up to speed on when we will be seeing proper new hardware on retail shelves. Prey is penned in for March I believe though.
It may well be fine for you, not necessarily for everyone else, especially if you are getting low framerates. I think some people find COD2 ok at low fps (25-40) because it is fairly stable in DX9 mode, i.e. although its low it doesn't fluctuate much. I bet if you were to play in dx7 mode for a couple of hours, getting used to smooth frames, and then switch back, you would notice it feels slightly less smooth. I used to find constant 50fps for example to be fine years ago, its all a question of what you get used to.
HangTime said:
The reason is not irrelevant... it is not the hardware that is at fault, it is the games and game engines that are not written well enough to make full use of them. The hardware is perfectly capable of running games with more detail than that more smoothly than those two games.
Yes but thats my point... people seem to be ignoring the fact that this big hardware push is not directly related to advancements in software... the hardware is miles ahead and it is marketing driving the erm... market.
There are many games that look as good as FEAR or COD2 that run perfectly fine on lower hardware... that in itself makes those two games a bad example for saying they are 2too demanding for modern hardware" imo.
What I'm getting at though, is that from a consumer's perspective, there IS an advantage to be had from having faster hardware. Sure, in an ideal world, developers would be able to ignore pressure from publishers and churn out highly efficient engines (Quake3 is a good example of what I consider efficient - it still scales quite well with hardware speed even 6 years after release, and tests cpu, memory and gpu power).
For what it's worth, I agree with you that we are seeing a sort of diminishing returns, whereby 'demanding' (to use my definition
) games are not necessarily that much better looking than other titles. Ideally FEAR shouldn't be as slow and gpu-limited as it is. Halo was another example from years gone by. But at the end of the day, the only option we as consumers have is to upgrade if we want better performance:visuals ratio. We cant hold a gun to their heads and force them to optimise the code.
Incidentally, this is one reason why it annoys me when people don't pay much attention to performance in demos/beta versions of games. There is always a few people saying "oh don't worry, it's early code, the final game will run much much faster, there's no way they will release a game which chugs on a geforce6!". I remember this especially from FEAR beta. But in reality, the majority of the time once a game has reached that stage of development, most of the work is going into QA testing, polishing up the actual game content, installers and so forth. By that stage the engine is likely in a fairly evolved form and is not going to suddenly get twice as fast.
For what it's worth, I agree with you that we are seeing a sort of diminishing returns, whereby 'demanding' (to use my definition
) games are not necessarily that much better looking than other titles. Ideally FEAR shouldn't be as slow and gpu-limited as it is. Halo was another example from years gone by. But at the end of the day, the only option we as consumers have is to upgrade if we want better performance:visuals ratio. We cant hold a gun to their heads and force them to optimise the code.Incidentally, this is one reason why it annoys me when people don't pay much attention to performance in demos/beta versions of games. There is always a few people saying "oh don't worry, it's early code, the final game will run much much faster, there's no way they will release a game which chugs on a geforce6!". I remember this especially from FEAR beta. But in reality, the majority of the time once a game has reached that stage of development, most of the work is going into QA testing, polishing up the actual game content, installers and so forth. By that stage the engine is likely in a fairly evolved form and is not going to suddenly get twice as fast.
Soldato
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- 18 Oct 2002
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- 9,284
With response to the OP question, I'm literally fed up with the whole graphics card and upgrade thing.
Once a year I like to upgrade the graphics card so it sees me through the coming year. Last year I purchased a 6800GT that has served me well.
Only problem is the majority of graphics cards (ones that would offer a worthwhile upgrade to my current card) are all PCI-E. For me, that means spending more money on a PCI-E mobo and possibly new CPU etc.
Looked at games that where scheduled for release on the PC in 2006 and nothing appealed to me at all. Certainly nothing that warranted me spending a lot of money upgrading my system.
Looked at the XBOX 360 games list and there must have been 15 games that I thought "Wow! I really want to play that!".
So I spent the money on an XBOX 360 and haven't looked back since. Not played a game on my PC since the middle of November and don't have the desire to do so again. Currently getting loads of enjoyment out of this console. PC is now used for just web browsing, uni work etc, which I'm seriously contemplating selling and getting a small shuttle based system of comparative power.
Once a year I like to upgrade the graphics card so it sees me through the coming year. Last year I purchased a 6800GT that has served me well.
Only problem is the majority of graphics cards (ones that would offer a worthwhile upgrade to my current card) are all PCI-E. For me, that means spending more money on a PCI-E mobo and possibly new CPU etc.
Looked at games that where scheduled for release on the PC in 2006 and nothing appealed to me at all. Certainly nothing that warranted me spending a lot of money upgrading my system.
Looked at the XBOX 360 games list and there must have been 15 games that I thought "Wow! I really want to play that!".
So I spent the money on an XBOX 360 and haven't looked back since. Not played a game on my PC since the middle of November and don't have the desire to do so again. Currently getting loads of enjoyment out of this console. PC is now used for just web browsing, uni work etc, which I'm seriously contemplating selling and getting a small shuttle based system of comparative power.
Associate
I think the pc's days are numbered.
I only really play online fps and up until now nothing could touch the pc for this and so I've never minded having to shell out £300 + every year to upgrade either proceesor, mb or gfx, but with this next generation of consoles, they really are beginning to make an inroad into pc territory and I'm beginning to question spending this money. I'll propably stick with a pc for another few years as a gaming platform but I could see by the time playstation 4 comes out they will be virtually a pc, or will do what 99 percent of most people use a pc for.
I don't think the gfx manufacturers did themselves much favour either in changing agp to pci-e, If I'm not mistaken wouldn't agp still be capable of running all the current cards ? I think a lot of people have been annoyed that they have been made to spend a lot more than they wanted to, to upgrade their whole system, how many peeps will have thought sod this and bought an xbox.
Their will always be people who will pay anything for the next gen gfx etc, but most people want a good bang for their buck and slowly in my opinion the pc is becomming this less and less.
I only really play online fps and up until now nothing could touch the pc for this and so I've never minded having to shell out £300 + every year to upgrade either proceesor, mb or gfx, but with this next generation of consoles, they really are beginning to make an inroad into pc territory and I'm beginning to question spending this money. I'll propably stick with a pc for another few years as a gaming platform but I could see by the time playstation 4 comes out they will be virtually a pc, or will do what 99 percent of most people use a pc for.
I don't think the gfx manufacturers did themselves much favour either in changing agp to pci-e, If I'm not mistaken wouldn't agp still be capable of running all the current cards ? I think a lot of people have been annoyed that they have been made to spend a lot more than they wanted to, to upgrade their whole system, how many peeps will have thought sod this and bought an xbox.
Their will always be people who will pay anything for the next gen gfx etc, but most people want a good bang for their buck and slowly in my opinion the pc is becomming this less and less.
Soldato
I upgrade my gfx card every 18 months (approx) and I usually get the best card available. GF3, GF4, 9800XT, 6800Ultra. This way, with each upgrade I get a very noticable jump in performance, rather than just a few fps faster (which would feel like wasted money to me).
My 6800U can play almost everything at 1600x1200, high detail, 2xAA, 8xAF so I'm under no real pressure to upgrade, but I'll probably get the next 'new' card (from either company) for 'Oblivion'.
XBOX 360 query:
My mate got his son a 360 for Xmas, but he's been using the family HDTV to play it ever since, because his bedroom TV (or any normal TV) appears much too dark. His old Xbox works fine with any TV, so do these 360s actually need a HDTV?
My 6800U can play almost everything at 1600x1200, high detail, 2xAA, 8xAF so I'm under no real pressure to upgrade, but I'll probably get the next 'new' card (from either company) for 'Oblivion'.
XBOX 360 query:
My mate got his son a 360 for Xmas, but he's been using the family HDTV to play it ever since, because his bedroom TV (or any normal TV) appears much too dark. His old Xbox works fine with any TV, so do these 360s actually need a HDTV?
Associate
My last upgrade was PCi e, M/board/ DDR2/ X1800XT/ CPU/ ect ect: its fast and does everything i need, but like what has been said above, there are no games i want in 2006 maybe UT2007 and Final fantasy.
so like gurujockstrap has said i also bought me an xbox360 and iam loveing it! up and coming games look so good DOA4 for one. the 360 on HDTV just looks awsome and i dont see any need to upgrade my PC again this coming year! the 360 with Xbox live will take care of my gaming needs and iam now thinking about downgradeing my PC for web browsing ect.
GFX cards keep getting more expensive, the NV 7800GTX 512m £500 + only 4 weeks ago! thats an xbox 360 and 3 games+ ! then a top end CPU to get the best out of it, a high output PSU to run it, ram,m/board/ect. the list goes on.
How much would a pc cost if you only used it for web browsing and a few cd's, maybe some video encodeing or even some photoshop work. the GFX gameing side of PC's always takes the price way up! 3dmark 05 means nothing on an xbox 360, everyone is equal! no benchmark this, benchmark that on a 360, its just play games and enjoy!
I wonder how many here upgrade there pc because of gameing or benchmarks! would you spend £500 + to say hey i can encode 3.6 seconds faster?
I think the new Xbox 360 or the upcoming PS3 will have a few people asking why they need to spend so much on PC upgrades. after all we all say we buy the GFX cards to play games yet spend most of our time trying to get an extra 200 marks from the latest drivers in our favorite benchmark.
the fact is i quite like the idea of a silent small PC that i can use for listening to music, web browsing, some encodeing or what ever, let the 360 or ps3 take care of my gameing needs, after all i could now buy me a PS3 insteed of my next yearly upgrade of GFX card and still have change for a few games.
just my own opinion, no flameing!
so like gurujockstrap has said i also bought me an xbox360 and iam loveing it! up and coming games look so good DOA4 for one. the 360 on HDTV just looks awsome and i dont see any need to upgrade my PC again this coming year! the 360 with Xbox live will take care of my gaming needs and iam now thinking about downgradeing my PC for web browsing ect.
GFX cards keep getting more expensive, the NV 7800GTX 512m £500 + only 4 weeks ago! thats an xbox 360 and 3 games+ ! then a top end CPU to get the best out of it, a high output PSU to run it, ram,m/board/ect. the list goes on.
How much would a pc cost if you only used it for web browsing and a few cd's, maybe some video encodeing or even some photoshop work. the GFX gameing side of PC's always takes the price way up! 3dmark 05 means nothing on an xbox 360, everyone is equal! no benchmark this, benchmark that on a 360, its just play games and enjoy!
I wonder how many here upgrade there pc because of gameing or benchmarks! would you spend £500 + to say hey i can encode 3.6 seconds faster?
I think the new Xbox 360 or the upcoming PS3 will have a few people asking why they need to spend so much on PC upgrades. after all we all say we buy the GFX cards to play games yet spend most of our time trying to get an extra 200 marks from the latest drivers in our favorite benchmark.
the fact is i quite like the idea of a silent small PC that i can use for listening to music, web browsing, some encodeing or what ever, let the 360 or ps3 take care of my gameing needs, after all i could now buy me a PS3 insteed of my next yearly upgrade of GFX card and still have change for a few games.
just my own opinion, no flameing!