My observation on video cards nowadays

[Pershing121]

My PC is from 2007, early Core2Duo and a 7600GT. Modern games seem to have issues on my rig, even older games don't run as expected. Far Cry, for example, ran quite well on "Medium" settings on my old AthlonXP with a Radeon 9600 Pro, not it's running well on "Very High" on the new machine. I still can't turn on Anti-Aliasing (the holy ******* grail of GFX-Card butthurting), it can't handle it. Last week I was tired of beeing unable to play modern games and compared some low price cards with mine. It came as a surprise that the Geforce 240 chip isn't any faster than my 7600GT. Four years of development, three generations of gfxcards, and my old mid-class card still outruns a current mid-to-low card? It's the same damn price category!

Another big joke is the artificial rising of the minimum specs. Let's have a look at Serious Sam HD as an example: It looks like ***, the engine is everything else than modern, but it eats performance like a the slimer candy.

I remember back in the voodoo days each generation of cards at every price point would be leaps and bounds behind the previous ones. Compare voodo 1 to 2 for example. but now it seems they repackage them without changing much and sell them at a higher price.

 

[shadow187]

I remember back in the voodoo days each generation of cards at every price point would be leaps and bounds behind the previous ones. Compare voodo 1 to 2 for example. but now it seems they repackage them without changing much and sell them at a higher price.

This made may day (night).

You realize your observation was solely on nVidia, right?

 

[nforce4max]

Agreed and is why I research the cards before I purchase them. I will continue use my two 9800gt 1gb cards for a few years till they are to slow for the job and same for my 3870. I do have a 8800gtx on hand and it is good for when I need it and was very cheap even for today s prices ($32). I am a collector so that is why I have as many as I do. Even got a I740 card (Intel) but take some pride in my 3dfx voodoo 5 5500 agp with the 3dfx logos on the fans. As for modern cards it is side ways for nvidia while only a few ati gpus are really an upgrade. Drivers for both leave much to be desired. Last year I had to wait for months for a stable driver to play fallout3 on my 9800gt 1gb and 8800gtx so I ended up falling on a x1900xt to get my fix. Even when I had my 7600gs they would get decent fps in the game but it would crash here or there in the game while ever thing else but crysis would play well. Quality parts are getting hard to come by even when funds are not an issue. It is like fishing in the dark, you don't know what you caught till you got it into the boat.

 

[notty22]

What does Nvidia have to do with this ? A gt240 ddr5 version is 82.00 dollars. I don't care what company it comes from, what do you expect? We don't know what clock frequency the op has. A new gpu can only do so much, you need a balanced system.
A Gt240 is a LOW end card built on 40nm die, it uses less juice, more green. You want more power , a GTS250 is a solid jump.
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edit: I mentioned gts250, the op mentioned gt7600 and gt240, those aren't the same cards at all . The performance from them is not either. I had the exact opposite experience of the op, 140.00 for a gt8600 2 years ago, now a 100 dollar 4770 is 250% faster. You can be ignorant and go from a ATI 4670 to a ATI 5670 and gain no more performance as well. This is not a brand exclusive phenomena.

 

[shadow187]

What does Nvidia have to do with this ?.

I quoted "Repackaged with a higher price without changing much."

8800GTX->9800->GTS250

GT2XX->GT3XX

 

[lothdk]

Last week I was tired of beeing unable to play modern games and compared some low price cards with mine. It came as a surprise that the Geforce 240 chip isn't any faster than my 7600GT. Four years of development, three generations of gfxcards, and my old mid-class card still outruns a current mid-to-low card? It's the same damn price category!.

Do you have anything to backup this claim? According to Toms Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart the GTS 240 GDDR5 is rated 7 tiers higher than a 7600 GT.

 

[stridervm]

He has a point. However certain things are a little off in your observation compared to mine....

Newer generation cards run faster on newer generation hardware. It's because of this games like Devil May Cry 4 will run faster on a HD3300 (An IGP) than on a GeForce 7300GT DDR2. So this means in older games it's a better idea to run a faster older generation card.

As for Serious Sam HD, I doubt you can compare completely because the real first Serious Sam game doesn't even support widescreen resolutions.

Features like Pixel Shading, nor shadow over shadows, to summerize Serious Sam 1 is a DX8 game, while Serious Sam HD is a DX9c game and then some. The graphical improvements are just extra graphical and polygonal and wouldn't be much reognizable when you're trying to kill those hundred enemies going at you.

If you can run Serious Sam 1 at 1080p and then compare it to Serious Sam HD and see if there's any difference, it should be a lot.