X1950PRO versus 8800GTS 320mb

[shadin]

I just want to reiterate, I don't think anyone is saying that the 8800GTS isn't a better performing card than the X1950PRO. But before your argument throws this post way off course, I want to revisit what the OP said:

While I do most of my gaming on a 360, I do like to play a game on pc from time to time (c&c3, stalker etc). Now someone recommended me a X1950PRO videocard, as this should be able to run these games pretty well for a decent budget.

On the other hand, a 8800GTS would cost me 'just' an additional 150€. Fact is though, that videocard-land is progressing rapidly and since there are not that much dx10 titles available now, maybe I should wait it out a little and get a cheaper card like the X1950pro for the time being and get a decent DX10 card once games really demand it.

What do you think? Will the X1950pro be ok for a while? Or would I be better off just getting the 8800GTS? How much performance difference can I expect between the two?

Hence the reason some of us are recommending that he saves that 150 and gets a better DX10 card later.

 

[rainless]

I'm sorry, but that's just not correct. From the official Bioshock FAQ:


These are native DX9 games with some DX10 features patched in. Unreal Torunament 3 uses Shader 3.0, which is DX9, but once again the game does have some DX10 effects in it.



This is the reason why some people (myself included) are not spending $300+ on a graphics card right now, when some of the <$200 cards will run everything out and coming out this year at great framerates at the loss of a few effects. Native DX10 games are going to be awesome, it's way easier to develop in DX10 than previous versions, and there's lots of cool things that the native engines are going to be able to do. However, I'd rather not spend the money now and instead invest in what will inevitably be better hardware when games come out that are going to effectively utilize it.


Who is getting nostalgic? Oh, and anyone who doesn't buy an 8800, despite the fact that it's basically double the price of the alternatives we're suggesting, isn't smart? I guess everyone should just look at your rig before building theirs, because obviously you have the only viable setup that makes sense.


Good for you.. not sure why you'd want a video card for nostalgic purposes, but whatever. Then you didn't think twice about the 8800. That's great and all, but some of us skip certain stages of hardware because of price/performance ratio at the time it's released. Sometimes, not to steal your awesome lines, but that's the SMART thing to do.


I'm sorry that it really frustrates you to see people think that the high-end DX9 cards are still good performance cards at a very low price. Oh, and I've never whined about my hardware, because I always do my homework ahead of time. I'm about to retire this 7600GT, and this has probably been the best card I've ever had when it came to price/performance ratio. Been playing Quake 4, Oblivion, D3, UT2K4, some EQ2 and Supreme Commander at great frames and high quality. But I know that Bioshock and UT3 will be a bit much for it, so going to bump it up some.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6174799/index.html?tag=topslot;title;1

 

[shadin]

Well, we're looking at that article in two different ways. I'm noticing things like:

Smoke billowing out of the husk of a burning tank will simply move upward along a pre-rendered path in DirectX 9, but the DirectX 10 version sports soft particles that allow the smoke to part and act realistically with the environment.

To me it sounds more like proving my point. These are DX9 games that have optional DX10 particle effects hacked into them. The game engines, however, are DX9, which is why they require DX9 to run.

But DX10 is so much more than a few particle effects, those are frivilous. The ability to offload the majority of the rendering that occurs through the Direct3D API to the GPU itself with only minimal input from the CPU is huge. Shader 4.0 is also going to provide a great boost in the artistic department, and performance, because once again the GPU is now responsible for ALL the geometry data for NEW objects, not the CPU. Before that wasn't even possible, the CPU had to generate all that data and the GPU could only work on the exiting portion. But the engine has to be built around it, and the card is going to have to be more powerful than what we have now.

The unfortunate side effect of Microsoft making DX10 Vista-only is that it's going to greatly delay the coming of a true DX10 engine. The industry can be slow, anyway, as we all remember with the delay of seeing DX9 engines come around (originally released in late 2002, first engines crept up late 2003-2004). But now they're saying to developers that if you want to build a true DX10 game utilizing the entire API, your game will only be playable on Vista.

 

[Shakir_Akbari]

shadin - you've convinced me to get the 8800 gts320

from the article, it seems that Crysis will make heavy use of the DX10 features; imho - "fully destructible environments" with enemies reacting to that environment might mean that the game play on a DX9 card will seem outdated. the other games looked meager in the DX10 use (although hellgate: london sounds fantastic, the pic is blah. lets see what it looks like when they release)