Why to Not buy a Nvidia 8xxx card for DX 10

IMO, judging the 8800s based on a game made to use all the new hardware really isn’t worth it. Most games aren’t going to do so, and on top of that, the games that really use it won’t be out till the end of next year anyway. So if you are buying one of those now, you are doing so for the speed of current games. That’s why I’m buying anyways.

I bought a GeForce 3 at launch, cost me more than an 8800GTS is costing me today. It may not have been a stellar performer once pixel shader games started coming out for real, but that was well over a year after I bought it. That GeForce 3 is the only videocard I’ve purchased that lasted me over two years before I needed to replace it to keep good performance in new games.

So whether or not it’ll run Hellgate at a great framerate with all the bells and whistles when it comes out, fact is, I’ll get great performance until then, and when it comes out, you’ll still need to buy a ridiculously expensive card.

Oh, absolutely true Charles. And the 8800 is a beast for most games in the pipeline. I think it’s probably good for another 1.5-2 years if you go top of the line with an 8800GTX. I just know that a lot of people were waiting for an 8xxx card so that it would be DX10 compatible and would therefore “last forever”, and I don’t think that by the time you see games which really use DX10 the 8xxx series performance is going to be at all of interest. However, it seems to be kicking the pants off of the DX9 cards, and still offers the basic DX10 compatibility for early games and Vista (both of which are likely to use a scant subset of DX10 capabilities), and is well worth purchase (well, at least as much as any bleeding edge video card is) for that reason.

My 1950 Pro AGP shipped yesterday! Woot!!!

OK, it ain’t shit next to a PCIe 8800, but all I have is an AGP mobo, and ain’t no way I’m upgrading my whole system until Vista and DX10 have been out for over a year. Like everyone’s saying, that’s when DX10 hardware will start to hit its stride, given a few games ready to push it (which should exist by end of 2007).