I've tried to keep up to date. DX10 cards

[shambling]

Any info on dx10 cards in development other than the nvidia 8800?

Cards that are... well... affordable?


Eventually, as video card prices are want to do, the 8800 gtx's will come down. However, are there any cards that are dx10 complient in development for the budget gamer? I can't really see putting down $500+ for a new video card simply to play dx10 games. (nevermind the cost of an entirely new computer with mega-psu)

 

[cleeve]

Top-end comes first, mid and budget Dx10 cards will come later.

 

[rocket_sauce]

I understand...I'm waiting for info on ATI's (AMD?) cards...

 

[prozac26]

"Affordable" DX10 cards should come out this Spring, after top-line R600s come.

 

[mrbuzz]

The price of the direct x10 cards will come down once mid range cards come out that nvidia are supposedly working on and when competition from ATI puts the pressure on. You just have to decide how long you can wait or are willing to wait. I waited for about 8 weeks and did some research and my initial PC plan was AMD and a 7900. I got a sniff that the landscape was changing quickly so I held off for a few weeks to see what would happen and things changed to Intel and 8800. Prices will drop once ATI release the R600. How much nobody really knows. If you can wait then wait. 8 weeks was long enough for me to wait for my new system.

 

[shambling]

Well thats good to hear. I was hoping it wasn't an issue of dx10 requiring too massive of a video card.


Hmmm... spring sounds like it might be a good time to get a new computer to upgrade from my p4 2.6ghz 533fsb mobo/cpu. Pc 133 memory is quite dated. My poor radeon x1600 agp pro basically runs the games for my cpu. lol

Going to mean an entirely new computer, so I'll probably go with a e4300/mobo combo that is upgradeable. (can mobo's that support the e4300 be upgraded to quad core?) and finally get PCI-Express support. Then I'll get vista installed on that, with a medium class ($150) video card.


Well, as long as the new computer would provide better fps than my current one. lol

 

[crualtortus]

well since it is obvious you are going to go vista. you should look into buying alot of memory. dont short change that. 2 gigs min. 4 gigs recomended. vista is a hog and needs all the extra ram.

 

[The_Mean_Marine]

Extra RAM is always useful but Vista only needs 1 gig to run completely smoothly, running it on 512 at the moment with Glass on with only minor slowdowns every once and a while.

 

[shambling]

4 gigs?


Not to be disrespectful, but if I find that vista needs 4 gigs to run smoothly, it'll be uninstalled almost instantly.


I'll probably be starting with 1 gig of ddr2 (simply because its so horribly overpriced right now) and move up to 2 gig when I upgrade the cpu.


I'll probably stick with XP Professional with the computer when its brand new, and only upgrade to vista when the games that require it start coming out. I just don't want to buy a PCI-express card thats not going to support dx10 when I get all this.

 

[crualtortus]

i heard 2 gig isnt enough for vista. especially when it comes to game time.

 

[shambling]

That could be due to poor driver support right now though.


Any OS that requires more than $250 worth of RAM is not worth installing if its just for games/internet use. lol

 

[The_Mean_Marine]

I don't know where you heard it but I run my desktop at 1280x960 with all Aero Effects anabled and its runs fairly smoothly.

My computer is and AMD 2600+ on an ASUS A7V Mobo with 512mb DDR Ram with a 80GB Sata drive and a Radeon 9600 with 256mb of video RAM

As for game preformance my computer never preformed well on the latest games under XP and the same holds true for Vista. However as is stands now Vista uses around 75% of my 512Mb and XP was around 50% so you really need 384MB of RAM for Vista with nothing else if you want to use Aero and anything over that covers program overhead so with 1 gig of RAM you should have completely smooth preformance with Vista unless you open a 100 windows at once and at 1 gig with a good video card you should get average game preformance but step it upto 2 gigs if you want to run with all the eye candy at 60fps.

This applies for x86 if you use the x64 version as a rule of thumb double the RAM

 

[Malazan]

It doesn't need 4 GIG to run smoothly - that's rubbish.