I want a new graphics card

[Master-Athmos]

@Spawn_Retard:

Still it was a bit strange that you come up recommending something totally overpowered (8400 GS -> 9800 GX2 ?) also being nowhere in the 200$ budget (plus the fact that the 9800 X2 isn't produced anymore and such being hardly available)...

It also isn't surprising that if SLI works the GX2 will be faster than the GXT250 you had as that one is just a new labeled 9800 GTX+. SLI has the usual problems of not always working correct (although there are tools to help here) and not always getting a good boost for the 2nd GPU. Then there of course is the issue of micro stuttering making things not that enjoyful when the framerate starts getting below let's say 40fps (the exact value from which you'll notice differs though). That simply happens due to the AFR method currently all multi-gpu systems use for rendering (Video)...

but theres still stuff that ATI doesn't support

Could you give examples (and I'm not talking about PhysX oder CUDA here)?

[aegis]

Could you give examples (and I'm not talking about PhysX oder CUDA here)?

those are both good examples though

stereo 3d?
flat panel scaling?

[Master-Athmos]

those are both good examples though

Sort of yeah but I guess this wasn't what he really meant plus you can tradeoff that against DirectX10.1 and ATI's GPGPU language (whose name I just forgot)...

Apart from that ATI drivers should support scaling (didn't look up all recent options you have there though as I don't use that). If with stereo 3D you mean the method via shutter glasses I just say "headache". I tried that back in the GeForce256 days - it hurts after a couple of minutes...

[REVENGE]

Radeon 4770 is the sweetspot at the moment. You can also wait for a "deal" on a comparable GTX if you're so inclined, they'll both be good upgrades until the next generation of stuff hits later this year.

[Neddie]

The performance increase permitted by SLI is marginal at best and generally inconsistent. You draw twice the electricity, produce twice the heat and invest in twice the equipment for sometimes as little as a twelve percent gain. Not to mention you'll still hit those classic SLI/multiple monitor hangups if you actually plan to do anything real with your computer.

I bought a mid-high range GTX, sort of as an early birthday present, since my 8800 GT was dated and a screamer - even cleaning the fan couldn't change that. No complaints, over nine thousand FPS on a map without features at start, etcetera. I went over two hundred though. As a rule of thumb I recommend NVIDIA for gaming machines and ATI for everything else.

[Caydr]

flat panel scaling?

Eh? Mine does this. I have it set to always run in native.

I've always bought nvidia, until I got my 4870. ATI's just far better value lately. What really bugs me is when Nvidia came out with that range of "2xx" cards and they wanted so much money for them, a week later ATI comes out with theirs and suddenly Nvidia drops the price so dramatically. How much of a profit margin has Nvidia been squeezing out of us until now? What a ripoff. Every other industry has been getting tighter and tighter, and until ATI made its resurgence Nvidia's been making hundreds of dollars a card.

[rattle]

I replaced my now broken EVGA 8800 Ultra with a no name 9800 GT (1GB) and fail to notice much of a performance drop... the 9800 GT was pretty cheap by the way, ~100 Euros.

[Caydr]

The next generation of Radeon card is expected in 2009... dunno if that's cited on the wikipedia page or not, but I'm pretty sure it's right. From what I've read, it seems to be basically just a bigger, better R48xx board.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R800

In early 2010 Intel will be releasing their first attempt at a serious graphics card. It is currently known as Larabee, and it's basically an asston of Pentium 3 cores running at 1-2ghz soldered onto one PCB. This might be promising, if only because it means a third "real" competitor. (sorry matrox)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_%28GPU%29

Finally, Nvidia will be releasing their 300 series, according to wikipedia, in Q4 2009. Wikipedia doesn't seem to have a reference, but I doubt Nvidia will just slack off while ATI steals the spotlight. It will be featuring a completely new type of chip design, or something... inadequately explained.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_300_Series#Future

Now all we need are games.

[Master-Athmos]

Yeah - ATI will release their cards pretty much at the same as Windows 7 gets around i.e. somewhen around October. How "available" they will be totally depends on when exactly TSMC fixed the 40nm yield-rate now being somewhere around 60% (from somewhere around 20% which is why the HD4770 were so rare in the beginning)...

The exact specs of the new HD5000 series aren't really known yet - I'd just expect a simple upgrade of the HD4000 series meaning everything needed to support DirectX11 plus simply more stream processors made possible by the 40nm process...

NVIDIA wanted to release their new 40nm series in December but currently it's a rather safe bet they won't make it and will release in January but who knows. It's also said they still want to do the same as they did for the GT200 - i.e. create huge and powerful chips (although being expensive and power consuming too)...

[Spawn_Retard]

@Spawn_Retard:

Still it was a bit strange that you come up recommending something totally overpowered (8400 GS -> 9800 GX2 ?) also being nowhere in the 200$ budget (plus the fact that the 9800 X2 isn't produced anymore and such being hardly available)...

I thought everyone had a large monitor these days, thats why i suggested the 9800 series.

9800 x2 is better than the GS.

imo, all the 9800's ive had, have been the most reliable cards from personal experience.

[Master-Athmos]

Of course it's better - it's just that the 8400 GS pretty much is the weakest card of its class while the 9800 x2 is a dual chip combo of the best chips of its class. Apart from being out of the budget that's what I found strange about your recommendation. Plus you don't need such a card for high resoultions - max detail homies just won't get what they want usually though but I guess with his 8400 he's not one of those...

[Caydr]

Two interesting notes:

Nvidia's 300 series is probably not just going to be a 8800 > 9800 type improvement, ie, imaginary. While performance may not be like going from 7800 to 8800, they are apparently using some fancy new kind of... something or other... technical... whatever. Like, a different kind of chip or something, and it's very exciting and such. Regardless of my ineptitude at explaining technical things, there's the possibility it will come with some surprises.

Also, Intel's attempt has been shown to scale surprisingly well. For instance, going from a 16-core version to a 32-core version actually yields something like a 100% improvement, while it seems like GPUs tend to increase in performance in only small percentages with each generation. Mostly. 8xxx series was pretty awesome, but it's pretty much the only exception to the rule.

Besides this, because the "larrabee" is basically just an asston of CPUs, you will probably be able to do a lot of things with it that were traditionally CPU-based. Since we're talking about Intel, you can expect there to be some stronger industry support for GPU-accelerated applications than there have been in the past. For instance, computer animation, advanced lighting, accurate physics, etc.

Remember how the PS3 basically took over the entire Folding@Home project because of how overwhelmingly powerful it is (unfortunately, not for gaming)? Larrabee might be like the Cell processor, only with significant reductions in areas such as fail, grief, and massive damage.

Anyway, I would *really* strongly recommend you hold off on buying a graphics card just now unless you've got a lot of money to spend.

[Master-Athmos]

Well the only really new thing NVIDIA might introduce (although this was rumored for ATI too and some even expected the HD4000 already to be like this) is to actually have a multi-core chip. This would be interesting for various reasons and finally might give us nice idle power consumptions...

Apart from that there's currently nothing I know of a the horizon promising more performance besides simply more calculation units (or higher clocked). NVIDIA might get rid of just using 1D units here and change to something higher. ATI showed that their 5D units might not be so easy to fill with work but they seem to be easy to mass and produce while giving great performance (being the reason for the extremely high maximal GFlop rates the ATIs are able to provide)...

Concerning Larabee - well we're not even sure if it's going to be a "GPU" after all i.e. can use DirectX / OpenGL with a decent speed. My guess still is that it's going to be Intel's entry into realtime raycasting by starting to do someting e.g. science labs can use for their calculations and being more effective than GPGPU stuff that can be used for raycasting later on though. The point will come where it'll be a good idea to switch or at least do a hybrid and Intel might have a good position at that time with such projects...

It'd give Intel access to a market they currently can't reach (although they deliver the highest amount of chips )...

[Spawn_Retard]

Of course it's better - it's just that the 8400 GS pretty much is the weakest card of its class while the 9800 x2 is a dual chip combo of the best chips of its class. Apart from being out of the budget that's what I found strange about your recommendation. Plus you don't need such a card for high resoultions - max detail homies just won't get what they want usually though but I guess with his 8400 he's not one of those...

uhhh i guess the rescission has hit hard, because i swear to god, and i have the receipt right here, my 9800 x2 was less than $200

[Master-Athmos]

Well congratulations to your bargain then - they sure are sold cheap at some places nowadays!

They are pretty much sold out here and the ones still having them want 450+ Ôé¼ for them...

[Spawn_Retard]

Well congratulations to your bargain then - they sure are sold cheap at some places nowadays!

They are pretty much sold out here and the ones still having them want 450+ Ôé¼ for them...

lolwut, i could sell mine for quite a profit you think?

[Master-Athmos]

Well not for 450 Ôé¼ as that are fantasy prices nobody will pay...
But well a fair price for a new version would be around the same as that of a GTX 285 - probably a bit less. With those starting at around 280 Ôé¼ here - well by doing a pure calculation that'd still be like 400 US-$ (although the taxes here probably are a bit higher so when adapting to your prizes it'll be a bit less)...

Nevertheless if you've really paid less than 200$ for your 9800 GX2 I'd say yes - you could make a profit out it...

[CarRepairer]

Hopefully from ATI OR Nvidia

WHY LIMIT YOURSELF IN SUCH A WAY???!!!

[MidKnight]

Hopefully from ATI OR Nvidia

WHY LIMIT YOURSELF IN SUCH A WAY???!!!

Because video game developers don't want to write code for a hundred different card architectures.