Sure, usually @60Hz though. 1280*1024 at 75 or 85 was a lot more pleasant. The 19" monitors were usually little better either. (The consumer ones anyway, there were ones which did better but cost a lot more)
Yeah, I favoured 1280x960 on my 17" CRT. Which is why I always thought of the whole HD thing with consoles a bit nuts.
I’ve thought harder and I think I had a 21" Iiyama Vision Master which could do 2048 x 1536. That sounds more plausible. Sorry for derail :)
So I actually went ahead and did the obvious, for the purpose of testing. Downsampling, that is, which allowed me to try out Witcher 2 at 2550x1440.
And it appears almost playable at the resolution with my GTX 460! Fraps reports between 20 and 30 fps in Flotsam with everything maxed except for uber, bloom and depth of field. It also looks gorgeous without a jagged edge in sight.
How much you want that framerate to improve depends on how much you’re willing to spend. It won’t be easy to accommodate that resolution if you are on a tight budget. The quick-n-dirty solution is to add another 460. But in the long run, you’ll want more than 1GB of total available VRAM (SLI just mirrors the VRAM, it’s not additive).
Right now, it’s possible to find GTX 580s with 1.5Gb on Ebay, for about $350.
And it’s possible to find [B]2 GB [/B]Radeon 7870s for $330.
I was a bit surprised by the memory configuration on the GTX 680. The GTX 580 has 1.5 GB memory running at 1 GHz while the 680 has 2 GB running at a crazy fast 1.5 Ghz. But they also cut the memory bus from 384 bit to 256 bit. The actual memory bandwidth is thus 192 GB/s for both cards. This barely beats the 7870 (2 GB @ 154 GB/s) and is nowhere near the 7970 (3 GB @ 264 GB/s).
It’s been mentioned before that the 680 was intended to be the mainstream (as in “non-enthusiast”) model of the next generation, so that may have something to do with the bus configuration.
The fact it doesn’t need two full 8-pin power connectors, it’s reduced energy consumption, and reduced heat are also game changers… and it’s still faster than the 580’s despite that.
GTX670 news this week, maybe even a real release? I am betting on a paper release… sadly.
If the card turns out good I am going to get one, I don’t think I can wait for the 660ti late this summer.
Newegg has the 7870 for $ 299 ar today…
It’s kinda odd, since the 7950 and 7870 are very close (as in, like £30) different in the UK still. Grr.
I was able to resist last night, but this morning I had to order something else from newegg, and somehow the 7870 ended up in my cart…
ah well.
The 7870 has handled everything I’ve thrown at it so far. No complaints after a week of use.
I’m rocking the 7870 OC version from Sapphire. Love it. Cranking everything up on my games.