Explain this!

TLJester1 · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:03

I have to agree with Exsomnis about letting cards run until they no longer work will enough.
As I dont follow the tech that much these days. Could one of you enlighten me as to whether a x1900xt @£300 is a good buy?
Crossfire MB's and master cards seem to cost over the odds, compared to SLI setups. Though I do wander as to which cards will perform better with next gen games other then waiting for DX10 cards.

Darkwave · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:07

TLJester1 said:
I have to agree with Exsomnis about letting cards run until they no longer work will enough.
As I dont follow the tech that much these days. Could one of you enlighten me as to whether a x1900xt @£300 is a good buy?
Crossfire MB's and master cards seem to cost over the odds, compared to SLI setups. Though I do wander as to which cards will perform better with next gen games other then waiting for DX10 cards.

It's a bit of a multiple choice question in regards to 7900's and X1900's, because with DirectX 10 "around the corner" it seems the 7800's and X1800's have suddenly become popular again due to the cheaper prices and the fact that they have all the features that the new cards do. If you have the money though, and want "the best available", then by all means go for an X1900 because it is indeed an extremely powerful card.

I was considering buying one of the brand new ones, but I couldn't see how the performance difference between an X1800XT and an X1900XT was worth £100+ more just to tide me over until I upgrade yet again for DirectX 10 in late '06 or early '07. For the same reason I have decided to go for the 256MB X1800XT instead of the 512MB model, because it'll do until DirectX 10 is available, and the games I play (Oblivion in particular) don't even take advantage of 512MB memory at all.

LoadsaMoney · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:15

Just get a card now, don't wait, the cards we have now will still be doing the business for at least another year, maybe more, if you keep waiting you'll never buy, as when R600/G80 appear you'll be saying "hmm should i wait for the next ones in a couple of months", then when they appear...

TLJester1 · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:16

There is a good article about 256 v 512 over here : http://www.pureoverclock.com/article33.html
As I want to run 1600x1200 minimum, thats why I would want the extra mem.
My only worry is that these DX10 cards will be signifcantly faster as they are a completely new chip design, for running DX9 games.

The thing I like about the nvidia cards (7900gt) is that they are quite cheap, and going SLI is cheap too, however will the current ATI chips cope better with next-gen games ie UT2k7?

Zefan · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:19

What makes you think they'll be that different? A "Completely new chip design" is is brought out every time there's a new gpu.

TLJester1 · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:24

Zefan said:
What makes you think they'll be that different? A "Completely new chip design" is is brought out every time there's a new gpu.

new chip design rather then die shrink/clock speed boost

phatboy · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:25

tbf, i think that the specs and power on the news cards are more than staggering, but i really cannot bring myself to spend that much money on a single gfx card. Ive only got a 6800LE but it runs WOW, NFS MW, Quake 4, TOCA 3 etc, perfectly.

I guess you have to b pretty hardcore and want them graphics to be top notch, fair play to the peeps who get em as the results are more than likely beyond incredible

guess its just my opinion, maybe i will consider a DX10 card when i upgrade to 939

Ben

Darkwave · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:28

TLJester1 said:
There is a good article about 256 v 512 over here : http://www.pureoverclock.com/article33.html
As I want to run 1600x1200 minimum, thats why I would want the extra mem.

512MB is better than 256MB "in general", this is true, but with any graphics card purchase a big part of the decision is looking for a card that suits your specific games. A lot of sites benchmark 256MB vs. 512MB for specific games, and I tend to check these first if I am thinking about stepping up.

I already mentioned, for example, that Oblivion makes practically zero use of 512MB of video memory as opposed to 256MB, so that pretty much settled the decision for me as that's what I'll mostly be playing this year. You might find, however, that your games make a huge improvement with 512MB. Doom 3, Call Of Duty 2 and Quake IV are prime examples of this.

TLJester1 said:
My only worry is that these DX10 cards will be signifcantly faster as they are a completely new chip design, for running DX9 games.

From what I've read, DirectX 10 cards (particularly the ones that will have unified shader architecture) will indeed rip a new life into DirectX 9 games.

TLJester said:
The thing I like about the nvidia cards (7900gt) is that they are quite cheap, and going SLI is cheap too, however will the current ATI chips cope better with next-gen games ie UT2k7?

It depends on the card and its features, really. I could've gotten a 7900GT, but the X1800XT 256MB beats the crap out of it for £50 less and has all the same features (including the ability to do SM3.0 HDR+AA now, which the 7800 and 7900 series cards cannot.) An X1800XT 512MB costs about the same as a 7900GT and kicks the crap out of it even more.

Of course, the 7900GT also overclocks amazingly well (to GTX speeds and beyond) from what I have heard, but this has to be done with a volt mod. That makes it a worthy purchase if you don't mind volt modding, but if you don't like to do that (I wouldn't do it to my cards) then the X1800s is the way to go.

Darkwave · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:29

Zefan said:
What makes you think they'll be that different? A "Completely new chip design" is is brought out every time there's a new gpu.

They're going for unified shader architecture this time around, at least ATi are from the get-go and Nvidia a little later. I could be wrong about Nvidia though. Either way, it's completely different to what we have had the last few years.

TLJester1 · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:34

Exsomnis said:
They're going for unified shader architecture this time around, at least ATi are from the get-go and Nvidia a little later. I could be wrong about Nvidia though.

I read (somewhere) that the nvidia G80 is just the G70 (ish) with SM4 bolted on. unified shaders are sorted out in software.

Darkwave · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:35

TLJester1 said:
I read (somewhere) that the nvidia G80 is just the G70 (ish) with SM4 bolted on. unified shaders are sorted out in software.

Yeah I heard the same thing, but somewhere down the line Nvidia most likely will be going with unified shaders. It'd make no sense not to.

ATi will supposedly be doing unified shader architecture from the get-go, which means my first DirectX 10 card will probably be a red one.

Ladforce · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:37

i think the market is being exploited personally. it used to be, you payed say 200-250 for a top end card (tnt2 etc) and it would run everything at every resolution perfectly for about a year. things have gradually moved to the stage where a new card is 350-450, you need 2 of them, and you need a physx card. as youll agree, this cost increase is far above inflation so gaming on the pc is becoming more and more expensive. and they wonder why the pc gaming market is becoming smaller and smaller. i dont think piracy is why, like they always make it out to be.

Darkwave · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:52

Ladforce said:
i think the market is being exploited personally. it used to be, you payed say 200-250 for a top end card (tnt2 etc) and it would run everything at every resolution perfectly for about a year. things have gradually moved to the stage where a new card is 350-450, you need 2 of them, and you need a physx card. as youll agree, this cost increase is far above inflation so gaming on the pc is becoming more and more expensive. and they wonder why the pc gaming market is becoming smaller and smaller. i dont think piracy is why, like they always make it out to be.

IMO it's just a turn-around in the development process, because more breakthroughs are being made on the software side than the hardware side recently. It used to be that people would say "pwhoar you'll never use all the power of that graphics card", but now people are saying "OMG you'll never find a graphics card that can run that game at full settings."

Don't blame the developers and researchers for increasing the demand on hardware, blame them for simply becoming more and more creative and getting better at their work.

TLJester1 · 16 Apr 2006 at 13:54

I agree with you on buying a TNT and you could MAX out everything. I am still running a 9800pro and its just starting to let me down (F.E.A.R - 25FPS 1024 medium settings).
If I buy a card now I want to know for sure that it will last and let me play UT2k7, Quake Wars, maybe even Crysis, at high res 1600+ with MAX settings.
One game that scaled VERY well was/is HL2. I tried that on a 1ghz Geforce 2 laptop and it was OK @ 1024 !
So maybe the games developers need to stop focusing on tech that is 6-12 month away from release date, and make these things work maxed out on todays tech. Doom3 being a perfect example - designed for 512 graphics cards, which really only exist now...

Darkwave · 16 Apr 2006 at 14:00

TLJester1 said:
I agree with you on buying a TNT and you could MAX out everything. I am still running a 9800pro and its just starting to let me down (F.E.A.R - 25FPS 1024 medium settings).
If I buy a card now I want to know for sure that it will last and let me play UT2k7, Quake Wars, maybe even Crysis, at high res 1600+ with MAX settings.
One game that scaled VERY well was/is HL2. I tried that on a 1ghz Geforce 2 laptop and it was OK @ 1024 !
So maybe the games developers need to stop focusing on tech that is 6-12 month away from release date, and make these things work maxed out on todays tech. Doom3 being a perfect example - designed for 512 graphics cards, which really only exist now...

The problem with the games you've listed is that they're the same old game just remade over and over, so the main selling point for the companies is the way they've implimented brand new visual effects and that sort of thing. Crysis in particular is being marketed and hyped a lot on its ability to showcase DirectX 10 technology.

This goes for most current games. There's not been much in the way of innovative game design apart from graphics for a while now.

TLJester1 · 16 Apr 2006 at 14:10

Exsomnis said:
The problem with the games you've listed is that they're the same old game just remade over and over, so the main selling point for the companies is the way they've implimented brand new visual effects and that sort of thing. Crysis in particular is being marketed and hyped a lot on its ability to showcase DirectX 10 technology.

This goes for most current games. There's not been much in the way of innovative game design apart from graphics for a while now.

I cant think of an orignial game in the last 5 years TBH...
Yes visuals developments drive the games - look at Cell Factor (another game to my 'i wanna play it maxed out' list) that adds psyhics to its eye candy list. Lets just make sure the eye candy runs on todays tech.

Aparently all the videos of Crysis are from todays tech - DX9, single core CPU's. computer & video games article

turbotoaster · 16 Apr 2006 at 14:48

everybody keeps saying 'im gonna wait for dx10 cards' i wouldnt worry about it too much, if you see a card that you like buy it, when the new games come out, its not like you wont be able to play them, heck when cod2 first come out i completed it using a 2200xp and a 9200se and i enjoyed every minute of it, dont be worried, look at the x800-850 series came out, good cards, but because they didnt have sm3.0 that would in theory mean that they shouldnt have sold because they were inferior to nvidia.

just my 10 pence thrown in

Eliot · 16 Apr 2006 at 15:01

im waiting for dx10, cos im 16 and cant afford a new card every few months , and my x850p walks all over bf2 anyway, then turns and walks over it again.

easyrider · 16 Apr 2006 at 15:16

phatboy said:
guess its just my opinion, maybe i will consider a DX10 card when i upgrade to 939

Ben

dont you mean am2 or conroe

Darkwave · 16 Apr 2006 at 15:38

TLJester1 said:
Aparently all the videos of Crysis are from todays tech - DX9, single core CPU's. computer & video games article

Naw the Crysis video from a while back with volumetric clouds, soft shadows, advanced flora, advanced physics, and motion blur was supposedly showcasing DirectX 10. It's the main reason Crysis is so hyped, and rightly so, because I know I can't wait for it.