[cerberus]

jay..GO? what is that?

[jayinhongkong]

cerb...portable version. my laptop has a 256 MB Nvidia 7800. With 2.0 Core Duo and 2 GB RAM, it murders my desktop.

[JohanSWE]

Well i hate to break it, but anyone who thinks a GF7XXXgt what ever, or ATI X1xxx something something, is gonnas last over a year is dead wrong.
A GF7xxx Wont even be able to handle anything but the basic settings in nextgen games such as Cell factor and Unreal engine 3 based games.
Granted Direct X 10 and 11 will have support for Hawok API, and this is also a part why buying a super expencive card today is useless, they have no physics engine so even if DX10&11 will support Hawok your card wont!, unless you fork out £200 extra for something like the Ageia physics accelerator. But thats like paying today for tomorrows tech as Ageia suppoorted gaems today dont really gain much from it.

Just think hard of what you need instead of getting into the gamekid buying frenzy, all games today can be played decent even on last gen cards such as Nvidia 6600xx, ATI X800xx and they will save you money.

[insomniac]

well I hate to break it back to ya but anyone who thinks dx10 games will render old hardware useless is also wrong.

-DX10 is going to ship with Vista and won't be available for XP. When will that happen? Q2 2007?

-Every card that came out with initial support for a new version of directX has historically sucked.

-Crysis, probably the first game to support partial DX10, runs fine on current hardware. Check the requirements online. They'd be dumb to abandon existing stuff and about 99% of the market.

-Games that fully support DX10 features are atleast a year away.


You can throw out every buzz word you know, but if you think that a 7900gt won't last a year from now - you are smoking some good stuff. But with all that being said I'd probably get the new G80 cores because it's time to upgrade my 6800gt

[JohanSWE]

Granted i over exagurated, a 7900Gt will be able to play next gen games, not all but some. But it will be like playing BF2 on a gf4.
My point is, if you are gonna buy something to play the latest games, now is not the time to fork out al that cash for it, as todays Gcards are on the last straw and the next gen cards with like i pointed out, built in Physics engines will start to come out.

But you are totaly right about DX10 only being avaliable for Visa, which kinda proves my point thats its a waste of $$ to fork out XXXXHKD for a top model card today..since we are just a few month away from the "official" vista launch date.

Regarding Crysis, well sure it will run, but its not a true next gen game either its like a 50/50 nextgen.
But i was not refering to DX10 Shaders such as the comming havok FX (replaces the current Havko physics) that uses shader model 3.0, im refering to hardware features and API that's why i mentioned Cellfactor i would like to see anyone run that on gf7900 without an dedicated external physics engine.

Anyways its just my point of view, that its beter to save your money and get a next gen card instead of the most expencive Gf/Radeon card today as they will not remain the king of the hill for long.

[cerberus]

Johan, on the marco you make a valid point but i have to agree with insomniac, in that the current top cards will more than suffice in the next two years or so. also using Crysis as a benchmark was a valid choice. it will be the de facto standard over the next year.

jay..thx for the info!

[Curly]

Ok, bearing in mind your arguements, I'm heading down to Wanchai computer centre shortly and want to know what to get?

2 no. 7600 GS

1 no. 7800 GT

I'm very interested to know if the 'two no' option will last another two years.