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Tommy B

Tommy B

Tommy B

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Why exactly should consumers be expected to spend £400 on a 7900GTX or a 1900XTX when Direct X 10 cards are round the corner?

Am I missing something?
 
They're not round the corner + people want proper performance from current generation games at high resolutions which is only really possible (Especially with high AA, AF, SM3.0 and HDR) with the latest and greatest cards.
 
We live in a fragile age of ethics vs market exploitation. If we were on some Hegalian pendulmn we'd probably be approaching the zenith (I hope).

Technically though we as consumers have the power in us to boycott these prices and force manufactures to produce more market appropriate products, but modern economics suggests that the manufacturers/service providers are extremely influential in terms of what products are acceptable in society.

Further, the powers that be have no interest in balancing game design with hardware capabilities more than incidentally. Why create a game that will look as good as FEAR but run as well as Half-Life 2 if you can get a kick-back from hardware developers to consentrate your efforts in exploiting one of the newer graphical technologies rather than one of the more established but still under utilised ones. (Obviously the consumer could say 'this won't run well on my machine so I won't buy it' but the vast majority don't know that till they have purchased it and not knowing your product in these cases in not reason enough to get your money back. Again the system has been set up to expoit the market rather than let the market run free)
 
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They're not expected to, it's just that the option is there. For people who don't want to spend that much on a 7900GTX or X1900XT-X there are the 7900GT's, X1900XT's, 7800GTX's, X1800XT's, 7800GT's, and X1800XL's for much lower prices as a trade-off for lower performance.

I'm not sure why somebody who has a 7800GTX in their signature would be complaining about the prices of 7900GTX's, but that's just me I guess. I went from a 6600GT to an X800 GTO², and have just ordered an X1800XT 256MB which will last me until DirectX 10 emerges. All in all it's never costed me over £150 for a graphics upgrade, with this X1800XT being my most expensive ever at just under £200.
 
Exsomnis said:
They're not expected to, it's just that the option is there. For people who don't want to spend that much on a 7900GTX or X1900XT-X there are the 7900GT's, X1900XT's, 7800GTX's, X1800XT's, 7800GT's, and X1800XL's for much lower prices as a trade-off for lower performance.

I'm not sure why somebody who has a 7800GTX in their signature would be complaining about the prices of 7900GTX's, but that's just me I guess. I went from a 6600GT to an X800 GTO², and have just ordered an X1800XT 256MB which will last me until DirectX 10 emerges. All in all it's never costed me over £150 for a graphics upgrade, with this X1800XT being my most expensive ever at just under £200.
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I've just sold my GTX. It was a fantastic card, but I was by no means blown away tbh. It only seemed like a small step up from my Radeon 9700 Pro. I was also worried that it only had 256mb of ram.

I'm now in a position where I could upgrade to a X1900XT-X, but some people have said doing that is stupid if I'm only running at 1280x1024.

What's more is that I won't be able to play any games until July - and I've got a gut feeling that newer, better cards will be available by then, and so there's no point in splashing out £370 right now!

All in all, by the summer I just want a damn PC that will play games at 1280x1024 with EVERYTHING on max. That means a GFX, memory and CPU upgrade.
 
Tommy B said:
I've just sold my GTX. It was a fantastic card, but I was by no means blown away tbh. It only seemed like a small step up from my Radeon 9700 Pro. I was also worried that it only had 256mb of ram.

I'm now in a position where I could upgrade to a X1900XT-X, but some people have said doing that is stupid if I'm only running at 1280x1024.

What's more is that I won't be able to play any games until July - and I've got a gut feeling that newer, better cards will be available by then, and so there's no point in splashing out £370 right now!
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lol what did you play that made a 7800 gtx seem like a small step up from a 9700 pro? Solitaire?
 
kdd said:
lol what did you play that made a 7800 gtx seem like a small step up from a 9700 pro? Solitaire?
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haha. What I mean is that when I first got the 9700 Pro, I remember watching that Animusic Tech Demo and just thinking "Mother of God this makes Toy Story look like something from the stone age."

My GTX demolished FEAR completely, but it struggled with COD2. If I turned AA or AF on, the frame rate plummeted. When I spent £350 I was just expecting to be blown away again, and the 9700 Pro was no where near as expensive!
 
Games are hungrier than ever unfortunately. I blame over-estimation of hardware performance.
 
i blame bad programming,

also i have a x1900xt on order, cost me £300 inc vat and free delivery. reason i bought the card is bacause im not planning on being an early adopter of windows vista. i will probably jump on vista come december 2007ish.

also summer is comming now and i would like to have this system ready for some serious gameage. gonna have to book holidays from work soon. hehehhe

hopefully my x1900xt will not become obsolete next year.
 
I'm confused though.

Reviewers say the X1900XT and the X1900XT-X are seriously good cards, and will erase any game put in front of them.

They also say there's only a small step up from the 7800GTX, which IMO didn't "erase any game put in front of " it.
 
They're the best cards that will erase any game infront of them yes, but here we're talking in matters of 8fps less and you'll have unplayable performance. Good performance in a game is meaning less and less nowadays.
 
Tommy B said:
Why exactly should consumers be expected to spend £400 on a 7900GTX or a 1900XTX when Direct X 10 cards are round the corner?

Am I missing something?
Click to expand...


£400, am i missing something, £400+ for graphics card, £220+ PhysX card = £620+. :confused:


:p
 
Tommy B said:
I've just sold my GTX. It was a fantastic card, but I was by no means blown away tbh. It only seemed like a small step up from my Radeon 9700 Pro. I was also worried that it only had 256mb of ram.

I'm now in a position where I could upgrade to a X1900XT-X, but some people have said doing that is stupid if I'm only running at 1280x1024.

What's more is that I won't be able to play any games until July - and I've got a gut feeling that newer, better cards will be available by then, and so there's no point in splashing out £370 right now!

All in all, by the summer I just want a damn PC that will play games at 1280x1024 with EVERYTHING on max. That means a GFX, memory and CPU upgrade.
Click to expand...
If you want my honest opinion, you've made a bit of a mistake in selling your 7800GTX. Upgrading to an X1900XT-X would give you a big performance boost, but I don't think even they can play "the latest and greatest" in maximum detail (eg. Oblivion w/ HDR+AA) without low framerates (sub-30fps) from time to time.

What you could've done is stuck with the hardware you had and lumped it until the next generation (which will supposedly be a huge improvement over this one), or you could've found the cheapest possible 7800GTX (maybe even second hand) and gone SLi. Other than those options, really, you're not going to be making a financially viable decision if you want "maximum detail" with high framerates.

Personally, my standards are not quite that high, but high enough. I tend to stick with "the second best" graphics cards, or an older generation entirely, until they have outlived their usefulness. It's cost effective, and my games still always look fantastic.
 
Tommy B said:
Why exactly should consumers be expected to spend £400 on a 7900GTX or a 1900XTX when Direct X 10 cards are round the corner?

Am I missing something?
Click to expand...

DX cards are close but the games are not.Buy the time games fully use it the DX 10 cards that will be released soon will be old hat.

I'll upgrade my 7900 GTX when the games are out to support it.Not when the hardware is out with no games lol :p
 
Wasn't it around November time for DX10 cards, but seen as theres only Vista, and the new Crytec game using it so far, then i wouldnt go rushing out to spend £500+ on one thats for sure, as as said above by the time DX10 cards are worth buying (i.e more than 1x game using it), the R600/G80 will be old hat, were not exactly going to get flooded with DX10 games. :)

Bah i forgot, i meant £700+ as your gona need a PhysX card to go with it. :rolleyes:
 
Hawklord said:
I'd be interested too as my XT850XT PE is losing it's grunt now and really can't wait any longer :(
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Same here m8 - im thinking a 7900GT will be a good stop-gap card so i can still flog the X850 for a decent price on ebay. :)
 
Hawklord said:
I'd be interested too as my XT850XT PE is losing it's grunt now and really can't wait any longer :(
Click to expand...

Same here m8 - im thinking a 7900GT will be a good stop-gap card so i can still flog the X850 for a decent price on a certain auction site. :)
 
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