Graphic Cards How long does a GPU last...

A

Anish

Forerunner
Having just bought a 6 series GPU I was quite upset about the 7 series so soon :(

So guys how long will this GPU actually last me ? The 5 series seems to be wiped out already and the 5950 Ultra can barely manage to play the latest games like SC : CT and Doom 3.

So like how many years before I will have to either lower the AA, AF or lower the resolutions to get decent FPS ?
 
Fx 5950 was a hopeless card, but it runs Doom 3 well enough. Geforce 6800 will last you atleast 2 years in 1024*768 resolution, only exception to this rule was radeon 9700 pro which is a 3 yr old tech and yet plays most of the games with AA, best card made ever.
 
the thing is to not let the computer get over ya.. I bot a 9800 Pro and shortly afterwards it conked out.. i fell back on to a MX440 (which was gathering dust for over a year) and it still played the recent games pretty well. If u wanna keep ur 6-series card then u cud still find ways (tweaks) to run the latest games.. like its been said b4, u'll need to cut down a little on the eye-candy..
 
yep..i'm still stuck with mx440 but it doesn't support pixel shaders.
so..some games are not playable. still it plays most of the games well enuf for me.
now since gta : sa is released, i'm wondering wat to do :P
 
Will there be any Card in the NVida 7XXX Series that will be in 10-12K Range so i will
better wait before i purchase.
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There will also be a Geforce 8xxx in the same range so forth and hence. Technology is gonna update no sense in waiting, eitherways it will be atleast a yr before Nvidia's mid range card hits Indian shores.. And when they do G80 will be on the horizon... Buy a card now and then slug it out till WGF 2.0 which will make a hiuge diff.
 
PC-Gaming is a demanding b**ch-always drains ur money down the drain.I would give the GF6 series an year at best(for everything maxed out+generous aa and af).Even less for the X800 series due to its lack of sm3.0(aces don't start again...).
Moreover,I think 128mb cards will have an increasingly difficult time in the months to come.
 
Even less for the X800 series due to its lack of sm3.0(aces don't start again...).
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Christ even rt now the Nv4x cannot play with AA and AF at SM 3.0 and you give it a year ?

Aces170 posted 1.12 minutes later:
undertaker said:
Wasn't that supposed to be WGF 1.0?
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Nope afaik WGF 1.0 is gonna be DX 9.0c aka SM 3.0, I maybe wrong there.

Aces170 posted 5.92 minutes later:

Yep am right :

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/longhorn.html

A nice article give it a read.
 
Lets not forget that X800 can't do SM3.0 forget aa and af with it. :rofl:
Anyone who believes X800 is better than the NV4X is pure and simple a blind FanATic. :tongue:
 
undertaker said:
Lets not forget that X800 can't do SM3.0 forget aa and af with it. :rofl:
Anyone who believes X800 is better than the NV4X is pure and simple a blind FanATic. :tongue:
Click to expand...
Well since you brought up the question of SM3, here's a frank opinion about the current state of SM3 hardware from me as a coder not as a gamer... When ur coding a shader in HLSL, its hard to distinguish between SM3 code and SM2 code. The only SM3 'feature' i've used till date is vertex texture fetch as it does provide something useful. Other than that, you won't even realize whether ur code is finally gonna be SM3 or SM2 if ur writing in HLSL until u give it a target configuration to compile for. Most compilers provide loops and flow control in software... i.e. they unroll the loops if you give the target as SM2 hardware and leave it as it is if its SM3 hardware. I've hardly ever used branching so cant comment on it.

As far as performance is concerned, well first thing is NV40 cannot do antialiasing with floating point textures enabled. There's some form of transistor reuse due to which the AA unit gets disabled and its circuits are used for fp blending when fp textures are enabled. Also everyone knows about the performance drop if fp blending is used courtesy farcry. The raw fill rate is cut to something like 1/4th of the maximum. Vertex texture fetch is so slow that unless you absolutely need it, u'll avoid it. Initially i believed it was driver related but after mailing the Nvidia dev relations guys, found out that it'll get fixed in the next gen hardware and no driver can fix it :(. So in the current state, SM3 doesn't offer much other than the fact that it allows certain shaders which needed to be multipassed to be rendered in a single pass. The real features which ppl have been waiting for haven't been found in any game for a reason... the current gen hardware is just too slow when its used.
 
I think that the current 6800 cards definately outperform the X800 series...

The X800XL is a different matter, should be compared with the 6800GT when its 512MB version is released soon, the extra 256 will make a difference as the X800XL 512 beats its 256 version.
 
Of course Quad, the X850 is a different card altogether with a very very hefty price tag. What i am saying is that the 6800GT will benefit with 512MB memory.
 
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