Hi,

I've been waiting for almost a year to upgrade my faithful x1650xt and for the moment i'm a little bit confused with the graphics card options i have. I think i'll be upgrading by christmas and i would really like an opinion on things to come.

My price tag is around 180$. And i'm looking for a DX10 card (for gaming) and for the moment the one that i would find suitable is too expensive (8800 GTS 320).

thanks for the eventual replies.

well thats pretty much the cheapest worthwhile dx10 card to get.

anything lower than that card and you may aswell forget dx10 gaming.

There have been roumers flying around about the nvidia 9800 cards coming out soonish.. so who knows, by chirstmas the prices for the 8800 may have dropped a bit.

It's looking good!


Omg im bored...

no one say anything about G92, please

spuddy what do you know about g92?

to the op... If you don't have money maybe you can get a stop card like the 8600gts until better cards come out that are better suited for dx10.

+1

the next giant leap for gaming will happen when the PS4s or Xbox760s of this world are released because PC games are pretty much relative to console games (remember I am talking giant leaps here). So your Geforce 92 series might have 8800 x2 power its not really going to be used to full potential - thus save your money and enjoy yourself now.

LOL.... Yeah is that why Nvidia made ps3 chips and ATI made xbox?

Agreed. No need yet to buy a card for DX10. If your current card is getting the job done for you, wait some more. If it's not, then go with something like a X1950pro. It'll be a while yet before you really need to take the DX10 plunge.

Hi paul welcome to the forum you have it about right at the min i have a rig im looking to upgrade from a x1650xt(great card i think)and the 8800s are the next logical step.to be honest its all a bit wait and see at the min we are waiting for new cards from both Nvidea and ati as there last releases the 2400/2600(ati)and 8400/8500-8600s(Nvidea)just dont cut it in the gaming world.
I would seriously advise you to wait for the next cards the card spuddyt doesn't want us to mention G92 will be Nvideas and its the 2950 next for ATI.
I think that both will come with support for DX10.1 which we are hearing rumors about already i know the 2950 does but not sure about the G92(sorry spuddyt thats twice now)
The general feeling is that the cards we have at the min will strugle with native DX1o games as most out now are just patch jobs or DX9 games with a few effects sprinkled on top.
Mactronix

For a $180 price tag though, it will be a long while before you will be able to buy a DX10 card that will run DX10 games well. Like maybe another year and a half to 2 years.....If you are looking to make the move to DX10, and get a card that will run DX10 well, you WILL need to save up another $200-$300 to go with that $180 budget you have now.

Don't think of the 8800's as DX10 cards, they are way too weak to even be really considered. Just think of them as the last batch of high-end DX9 cards, and DX9 seems to be here to stay for the next 2 years as Vista is just bloatware that has poor support and left alot of people (who have alot of computer savvy!) strung out to dry until SP1. That is IF SP1 will even help that much for the horrible DX10 gaming performance.

My prediction for when Vista will be defacto standard for games:
Mainstream system spec for a sub-1500$ system:

-DX11 is out, and people are wondering if the 1st gen DX11 games are worth buying, if the 1st gen drivers will take a year to work properly, and if the 10850GTX PCI-2.0 with 2 GB of DDR6 vram could run the new games ok, or if it is only "good enough" for DX10.

-People are asking themselves if the graphics justify the price of the PS4 as they look last gen PS3, or if they should wait until DX11 is going to be better, or if the PS3 will ever get any games as the pile of dust on the system is thicker than the "pile of games" they promised.

-People will be checking the back of game boxes for system specs and seeing Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD versions, as games will move towards massive textures on large screens, plus all the ads and movie plugs you'll be FORCED to watch as you install the game on your 400GB SSD (solid-state drive) that you use as your game/OS drive to be able to load these monsters (games AND Vista). And yes, game companies will STILL release these games on CD-ROM, and everytime you go to Best Buy that will be the only version left. I promise.

-Mid range gaming systems will be Windows Vistax64
-16 GB DDR4 RAM
-Quad Core or some will have gone Octo-core, with a small minority gone 64 core as there are "benefits" to having 64 cores for 64 bit, and the new AMD 64 WAY-64 has fallen to sub-800 dollars BOX (HSF included with Fan-off throttling when system is in standby operating at 15 Watts).
-People will wonder if they should put a WAY-64 in 1 processor socket, and install a Fusion GPU/PPU in the 2nd processor socket and just get an 8800GTS 640MB in the PCI 1.0 Legacy slot to "make do" to run older games, as the current Fusion drivers suck and won't run Doom 3 properly (for some reason). People will be wondering if processor sockets are too close together on "Brand X" Rev. 1 boards to install "X" Zalman cooling solution, or if they should go Zalman on the Fusion and stick to stock HSF on WAY-64 and not overclock beyond it's 1.2 GHZ clock, or maybe just go to 1.4...

-Intel will still be working on some new case layout and nobody will be paying attention. It will probably involve hooking up your garden hose to it for cooling its "answer" to WAY-64.

-"Will this graphics card fit my Sonata IV"

-"HELP!! Can I run Crysis 2 @ 1440x900 DX 11 on medium settins with x driver or will it still look like FarCry"

-"Will my WAY-64 bottleneck my 8800GTS 320MB"

-"What are the system specs for Duke Nukem Forever, and will the game demo be included on "X" game and will I get a coupon for a free copy of DNF with this DX12 graphics card if I buy it now (of course, the video card will have 320 MB DDR9 vram)"

-People will find Vista 64 is "secretly" allocating 56 cores to DRM to "enhance the user experience".

-Computers won't overheat, they'll underheat. Requiring a 1200 Watt PSU to bring them "to temperature".

-People can't find a Wii in stores still, so they have rigged their PC games to use 2 mice. Yes, 1 in the left had, and 1 in the right hand. Even though a mouse + keyboard has been fine since Wolf 3D. And yes, the joypad people will still be arguing that if someone had a mouse and keyboard, EVERYONE would need one to win. And they shouldn't. Because it feels too much like being at the office playing a game, not sitting on your butt at home with auto-aim cranked to 10.

Well, I am just talking out of my butt, nobody forward this to the Inquirer please, I am too busy enjoying Oblivion MAXXED at 1440x900 on my 8800GTS 640 that I got for 379$ CDN to give them an interview as their "insider source".

Now now stop trying to confuse people you know as well as i do that you cant do that with a fusion gpu the quantum interlacing for the virtual texture buffers dont have the nescesary bandwidth to deal with it yet.
Mactronix

They can, you just have to connect the isolinear chips to the flux capacitor that runs alongside the laughter bar held in by the giggle pin.