Does anyone have any information they can share about when we’ll see new generations of video cards? I’m contemplating a new card for half life 2 but don’t want to buy one and have the new greatest thing come out tomorrow. This is the first time I’ve ever thought about spending 400$ plus on a new card. I would like to get something that would leave me well set for awhile. I have a 9800 pro so its not like it’s incredibly necessary to upgrade.
Can I have your 9800pro when you upgrade? I promise to give it a real nice home and give it lots of love and attention.
“Knock yourself a pro slick. Gray matter back got perform us down I take TCBin man.”
-Amanpour
I had a 9800XT and upgraded to an X800XT PE. Not the smartest thing I have ever done but doubling my video card performance overnight was one hell of an upgrade. Well worth the price shock. :wink:
But your 9800Pro is still a great card. You might consider waiting until next year when ATI releases their Shader v3.0 cards.
I need to put a new card in my wife 's machine. So the choice becomes do I get a new card for me and give her the 9800 pro or just buy her a new one.
Well the very next wave of high-end cards are going to be the “speed bumps” from the current high-end. Just revisions using better manufacturing processes and the like to turn up the clock speeds.
I can’t share any specific information…what little I know is basically under NDA. But I can speak in general terms about the graphics industry.
The “speed bump” cards generally give you only 15-20% more speed than the current top of the line, and then only in situations where you’re limited by the graphics card and not the CPU. So they’re often not worth waiting for, in and of themselves.
However, when they actually ship in volume, they drive down the prices of older cards.
The true “next generation” cards, with a new architecture, probably won’t be available for purchase for at least six months. And then only in the really high-end expensive flavors. But if history is any indication, they’ll be 80-100% faster than the generation before, and offer new features as well.
If you really want the card for Half-Life 2, I don’t think the graphics landscape is really going to change all that much in the next two months. Maybe some previews or whatever will hit the web, but in terms of actual available shipping product, you’ll be playing Half-Life 2 for a long time on your old card if you plan to wait.
A 9800 Pro should run HL2 just fine if you don’t crank up the resolution real high and turn on anti-aliasing and aniso. filtering. At a reasonable 1024x768 with no or very low AA/AF you should be able to turn the details all the way up.
You might also consider an nVidia GF6800GT. Doesn’t have the ponderous power requirements of the Ultra or the ridiculous price. It blows the 9800Pro out of the water in all benchmarks and most other cards for that matter. Plus it supports Pixel Shader 3.0 so it will definitely be useful late into 2005.
Prices for the 6800GT are hovering around the US$400 mark.
Aren’t the x800s and 6800s already the next generation of video cards? All I can see for the next year or so are minor revisions based on their clock speed.
the 6800gt was the one I was looking at. I was wondering the same thing as Roger, if that is all that is coming for the next year I would just buy the 6800gt. It is significantly better than the x800 pro, isn’t it? Best buy does have a half life 2 bundle with the pro for 400 this week. The gt I would have to order online.
For reference, I have had good and bad experiences with best buy. The good experience was with a video card. I had two that stopped working over a year time period and they exchanged it for me no questions asked. I didn’t buy the extneded warranty either.
related question about agp. If I am reading sisoft sandra correctly my wife’s machine has a 4x agp slot. Will my 9800 pro work if it is an 8x agp card?
Yes, it will work but it will just negotiate to AGP 4X. There shouldn’t be a whole lot of difference except in games that are very memory intensive (lots of textures, using up all video card RAM, etc).
I’m a little bit concerned that next gen graphics cards will all require a 2 slot solution for cooling.
Only the nVidia cards. All the ATI solutions are single slot unless I am wrong.
You might also consider an nVidia GF6800GT. Doesn’t have the ponderous power requirements of the Ultra or the ridiculous price. It blows the 9800Pro out of the water in all benchmarks and most other cards for that matter. Plus it supports Pixel Shader 3.0 so it will definitely be useful late into 2005.
Prices for the 6800GT are hovering around the US$400 mark.[/quote]
Hm … I was a bit floored when I saw $599 from the 6800Ultra. For some reason I expected it to be $399. I’ll be looking at at 6800GT right after Thanksgiving. I can suffer through a bit longer in the hopes of a decent sale.
… unless someone’s heard of a great deal right now, of course. :)