Which dx10 card? Nvidia or ATI?

I'm in the market for a new dx10 card. Looking to replace my exsisting ati x1900xt. I love the card but want to be dx10 ready for games such as crysis.
I do tend to favor ati cards and I have about $500 to throw at a card. Would I be smart to wait a few months for the latest greatest? Should I go ATI or Nvidia (I know this question will ensure lots of arguing) :-)

i would wait, you have a great card and there are no DX10 titles out right now, so save your cash, maybe have more when the time is right. but right now it would be like getting a really really expensive Dx9 card haha,
and as for ATI right, they are not doing so good in the DX10 sector

I would wait until the DX10 games are actually out to buy a card, reason being that ATI may fix their drivers and be able to compete speedwise in the $500 range by then. If you want to get one right now then I'd say squeeze out another $50 and get an 8800GTX, if your PSU can handle it.

Yes, image quality, heat/power consumption and most importantly performance.

Performance wise it is to the 8800GTS but it uses more power, is hotter, cost more and typically gets beaten by the GTS when AA and AF are enabled.

Yes and let it be known that ATI clowns will argue that Nvidia had driver issues at launch as well which is true but they like to grossly over exaggerate this , HOWEVER the issues that Nvidia suffered at launch were no where NEAR the level of Severity as ATI is seeing.

ATI is suffering from bad performance with AA and AF enabled and there is really no way around this, new drivers will make minimal difference because-

1) AA performance, since the AA resolve is being done on the ALU's it takes a bigger hit, this has nothing to do with bandwidth, fillrates, ROP's, there is at least a 10% overhead for this.

AF, filtering hurts the r600 because it only has 16 TMU's, it gets hits more then the g80 because the g80 has more TMU's. No way around this

2) AA bluring is due to the CFAA modes, don't like them? Don't use em. X8 MSAA is the highest you can go against the competition. The g80 can go up to x16 CSAA and x16q

3) AA performance at x8 AA will be lower for the r600 look at point 1.


Nvidia launch drivers mainly suffered buggy issues with certain games, Performance however was awesome and off the charts unlike ATI's new card.

just wait it out. no one knows when crysis will be out or even how it will play, no one also knows how good or how DX10 forthcoming games will be.

i can guarantee one thing though. when games like crysis come out, there will be better cards out to play them with than there are now.

the only reason to by a 29 or 88 is for better dx9 performance, something which you are not in real need of.

im in the same boat i was waiting to see what the R600 came out like. now ive seen the results im thinkin do i dont i, should i go back to green (had a 6800gt before my x1900xt)
yesterday i realised my motherboard was crossfire compatable (ASUS P5B Deluxe) i was thinking of maybe 2 x 2600's instead?

It's never worth Xfirin'/SLI'n 2 low or mid range cards.

Yes he did...

Oops. I guess I got over focused on the title. When is a good time to buy or how to future proof are questions for which there is no answer.

If you're upgrading simply to be "Direct X10 ready" you're doing it for the wrong reason. Now if some of your games aren't running fast enough on your X1900XT, perhaps getting a new card now would be fine.