[RandomTiger]

Your right though, if Im going to buy on the basis of s3.0, might be an idea to do more research on it.

[CP5670]

I will be getting a new computer once this new generation of cards has come out along with the socket 939 motherboards. It seems that the ATI cards are comfortably leading in most of the DX8 and DX9 tests, but the crucial UT2004 tests looked inconclusive (since many games I play run on that engine) and the nVidia cards' OGL performance would be a big boost in Doom 3. I will just wait until retail drivers come out until deciding on either camp.

I read a very convincing article that showed that 'currently' x8 AGP is not even slightly faster than x4. Currently no games utilise this extra bandwidth. Thats what PCI express is about, its not going to make much difference to graphics speeds until developers start making use of that kind of massive transfers.

I saw that article as well, although I can't remember where it was now. The only benefit I can see in getting a PCIExpress motherboard is that this interface will probably become the standard in two years or so and new cards might only be available for PCIExpress.

[ChronoReverse]

Originally posted by RandomTiger


Fry Cry is apparently getting upgraded to S3.0, 'apparently' the results are very impressive. I want this card to last me a long time, I cant afford to fork out every 6 months. ATI will eventually get s3.0 as well and I dont want to be left behind. But I want to buy a card now.

Also as a coder I might want to get into playing with making shaders at some point. I heard s3.0 can do loops and stuff.

My system is only a AMD 2400, its possible I may not see the top speeds that either card anyway. If I get s3.0 I will definely see the results.

Also it would be good for the SCP, as I imagine most other coders will go with ATI.

Careful about Farcry.  The nvidia demo was showing the difference between shaders 2.0+ and shaders 1.x not 3.0 and 2.0

[J3Vr6]

Originally posted by Darkage



My Mobo supports AGP4x and my card is 8x compatible, it works fine.

You see compatible, you can also use it on AGP4x slots.

That's why I said I wouldn't be getting the uber pci express card.  I was saying that I don't even have 8x so I wouldn't even consider the pciexpress thingy.

If anything I'll get an ati 9800-something or other.  No idea, I'm not really thinking of wanting to waste money, though.

[Taristin]

Why I intend to buy this when it drops a few more dollars.

[RandomTiger]

Originally posted by ChronoReverse


Careful about Farcry.  The nvidia demo was showing the difference between shaders 2.0+ and shaders 1.x not 3.0 and 2.0

There are some really dubious screenshots on the farcry site that arent meant to represent the difference between 2 and 3.

http://www.farcry.nl/nieuws/item/8541/

I think shot 3 is well below the quality of my GF4 so Im not taking them very seriously. Might play Far Cry tonight to try and get some screenshots to verify this.

[J3Vr6]

Random, you could play Farcry on your 2400???  I have a 2400 and I would have never have dreamt playing a game like that, even if I had a 9800...  Wow, I really should open my eyes.

[RandomTiger]

AMD XP 2400, GF4, Far Cry runs nicely at medium.
The water shader effects look great.
Why on Earth wouldnt it be able to cope?

[01010]

I don't know what people are talking about with Far Cry, I have every detail at the highest setting on my GF4Ti4200 and average about 25-30 fps, except for a few areas in the game where I have to set the detail to medium, the game runs fine.

[J3Vr6]

Well, for me, it's always that I had a really slow computer that I could NEVER play latest release games.  I was stuck with a 300 mhz and then a 400 mhz w/ the smallest amount of memory for YEARS.  It was only until a couple of months ago that I moved up to a 2400 AMD.

So my mind is already set that any new game that comes out will never play on my computer.

[Kazan]

it should be noted that Chrono is correct - there is no real difference between S2.0 and S3.0

[IceFire]

Yeah the FarCry developers have mentioned that there isn't anything you can do on PS3 that you theoretically couldn't do on PS2.0.  Apparently there are things that are available in PS3.0 that could in the future speed things up but in terms of image quality there isn't anything specifically new.

[RandomTiger]

I've heard its the first shaders to allow loops and it allows for much bigger shader scripts. Surely thats got to make a difference?

Theoretically theres nothing you can do in hardware that you cant do in software, but its doesnt make it a good idea.

[RandomTiger]

Originally posted by J3Vr6

So my mind is already set that any new game that comes out will never play on my computer.

Most good games allow you to scale the graphics options right down, doing that makes me sad but if you are willing to you can play loads of new games.

[J3Vr6]

I hear ya, but my motto has always been:  "Who wants to play at the minimum requirements anyway?"

[IceFire]

Its not even the minimum requirements.  According to HardOCP HalfLife 2's shaders don't even fully push the PS2.0 specification and essentially what PS3.0 does is open up some of the bounadaries.

Now thats not to say that a game in the next year or year and a half won't push that and start using shaders that utilize the extra abilities of PS3.0 but that should not be at the top of the list for decision making process.

I will not be buying either X800 or GeForce 6800.  Too expensive and really not worth it for me. I usually skip 2 or 3 generations at a time at each upgrade so I'll stay with my Radeon 9700Pro which serves me just nicely and upgrade in a couple of years time when the new Maddox games Battle of Britain game comes out.

[Turambar]

i have an FX, and a soon as i have a source of income, I'm getting a Series 6, and a good one.  I have this dream of building my own comp, and one day I'll make it a reality!  I suppose it'll have to wait till im in college (which i will be one year from now) and work from there.  One thing i want to do is put it into some old crappy beige intel box so people will underestimate it

[Kazan]

Originally posted by RandomTiger
I've heard its the first shaders to allow loops and it allows for much bigger shader scripts. Surely thats got to make a difference?

IIRC S2 has loops and the R420 pipeline is something near 65K instructions for a shader program

Theoretically theres nothing you can do in hardware that you cant do in software, but its doesnt make it a good idea.

Shader programs ARE software emulation - just running on the GPU since they've gotten sufficiently general purpose enough to be able to run some more generic routiens on pixels

[ChronoReverse]

Shaders 3.0 support _branching_.  Shaders 2.0 does not.

The primary benefit of this is that it will allow for optimizations to be done in _special cases_.


As a matter of fact, the real benefit of Shaders 3.0 isn't better image quality.  Shaders 2.0 can do anything 3.0 can do.  What Shaders 2.0 cannot do is do what 3.0 does at the same speed on the same hardware.
This is why it is quite easy to convert to Shaders 3.0 from 2.0



AFAIK, the X800 has almost everything Shaders 3.0 requires except for the infinite instuctions length and branching in the pixel shaders.  The vertex shaders should be 3.0 compliant.



Personally I think 3.0 shaders are a good idea.  However, I don't think that 3.0 is so important that I'd buy the 6800 for sure over the x800.

We'll still have to see who will get the cards out on the shelf first.  Additionally, it'll be more interesting to see the fall refresh cards (since that'll be when I'll probably get a new card).

[Grey Wolf]

The reason you don't see an ATI card with PS3.0 is because the R400 part had horrible yields, and was pushed back to R500.