[Stealth]

i know someone that said that there's no new nvidia cards since the 6800, and that there's no ati cards since the x800, that rival the 6800 and x800 respectively.

i haven't kept up with cards recently, so is he right?

[vyper]

I believe that is the case. They're all scurrying around deciding how to market another minor iteration of their gpus.

[mitac]

Indeed, he is. While there have been some new versions of existing GPUs, no new model has yet been released. Both ATI and Nvidia are working on it, while squeezing the last bit of performance/money out of their products/customers.

For a recent overview on GPUs, check here, it's just a few days old.

[Grey Wolf]

The next generation chips, the G70 from nVidia and the R520 from ATi, probably won't be out until, at the very minimum, the fall, and the current modern chips should be more than competent enough to deal with anything for a while.

[Fury]

I've heard rumors that nVidia is ready to release G70 chips to manufacturers in few weeks. We'll see if that holds true. ATi is ready to release theirs at any time however.

[Nuke]

i never really can afford top of the line video hardware anymore. the most ive ever spent on a video card was 200, and that was on the then top of the line voodoo3. im going with a geforce 6600 this time around. it will probibly keep me happy for another 2 years.

[kode]

I've had a gf3 for a couple of years now, and it's still good.

of course, when I'm buying meself a new comp, it's probably going to be somewhere around top-of-the-line stuff. but that's then, and now's now. 'sides, I don't really play games anymore, and those I play work fine with what I have. and I have my seksi 'cube as well. yay games.

[Clave]

Hmm, I wonder how much I would gain with a 6800?  I have a FX5200 right now - ATI is not an option due to the ongoing problems with Lightwave...

It sucks that the new Macs are all ATI 9600 or 9650, otherwise I'd sell mine and get some dual-processor goodness.

But, I would like to get Doom 3 and I guess the 5200 would be a bit lacking?....

Bah, I can't decide - the 6800 is £400...

[Kosh]

It sucks that the new Macs are all ATI 9600 or 9650

And those are barely considered midrange anymore, which is pathetic considering how overpriced macs are.

[aldo_14]

I think nVidia want to concentrate on that SLI(?) dual card thing at the moment; means they can sell twice the cards........

[Kosh]

Originally posted by aldo_14
I think nVidia want to concentrate on that SLI(?) dual card thing at the moment; means they can sell twice the cards........

I read somewhere that there wasn't much of a performance boost with it it, despite the price. Why? Because the GPU is not the main bottleneck anymore.......

[Dark RevenantX]

Since I am still a minor, I have decided one thing:

To save up until I get out of college.  By then, I will have the cash for a top of the line computer, and it will not impede me in any way.

[brugger]

Originally posted by Nuke
i never really can afford top of the line video hardware anymore. the most ive ever spent on a video card was 200, and that was on the then top of the line voodoo3. im going with a geforce 6600 this time around. it will probibly keep me happy for another 2 years.

I just bought a 6600 and am very happy with it. it runs doom 3 on ultra  with no problems

[Taristin]

I have a 9600xt, and it's *still* a damned good card.

[FireCrack]

I have a 9800 pro, and it's still a good card, until the next ut comes

[Nuke]

im running a low end geforce 4 now, so the 6600 im getting should be a big improvement. one thing that confuses me is that you can get a 6600 with 256 megs of mem, but the 6800 are mostly 128 meg. did they do something fancy that makes the card run better with less memory? it seems like a step backwrds to me.

[phatosealpha]

Well, most of the vanilla 6600s with 256 MBs of ram use slower 500Mhz ram, while the 6800 with 128 MB use slightly faster 700Mhz ram.  Additionally, the 6600's use a 128-bit memory bus while the 6800's use a 256-but memory bus.  The 6800 therefore has less memory, but has considerably faster access to it.

This is of course refering to the non-gt versions of both cards.  The gt versions both use fast GDDR3 ram, but the 6800gt has the 256 bit bus while the 6600gt has the 128 bit bus, meaning the 6800gt again has faster access to memory.




As for SLI, well, it's largely a matter of what resolution/AA/AF you want to play at.  If you're playing on a 15" LCD limited to 1280x1024 resolution, you're unlikely to see any real advantage even with 8x/16x AA/AF.  On the other hand, if you're playing at 2048x1536/8x/16x on a 21" CRT, you'll definitely notice the difference.

[kasperl]

I;'ve got a 9800 backed up iwht a AMD64 300+ (2Ghz) and a gig of DDR. No performance problems whatsoever.

[Grey Wolf]

Originally posted by Clave
Hmm, I wonder how much I would gain with a 6800?  I have a FX5200 right now - ATI is not an option due to the ongoing problems with Lightwave...

It sucks that the new Macs are all ATI 9600 or 9650, otherwise I'd sell mine and get some dual-processor goodness.

But, I would like to get Doom 3 and I guess the 5200 would be a bit lacking?....

Bah, I can't decide - the 6800 is £400...

You'd get a pretty nice performance boost, as the 5200 is the low-end of the last generation, while a 6800 is the high end of the current.

Honestly, I have no problems with either ATi or nVidia. In this computer I have a 9800 paired with an AXP and 512MB of RAM, and in the other I have a 6800GT paired with an A64 3500+ and 1GB of RAM.

[Clave]

Hmm, reading this: http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/02/doom3/index.php
leads me to wonder why they didn't optimise the Doom 3 engine to use dual-processors better.  It seems like I need a better card and a faster processor to have any chance of seeing the full goodness of the game.  But trading my single-processor 1.8GHz for a dual 2.7 will not give a huge boost, or at least not as much as getting a 6800 card...

Maybe I'll just get a mouse and keyboard for the Xbox...