Video Cards in 2004
 

I recently heard that a new type of video card will be coming out
this year, or somewhere around there, and the top video cards
now will be obsolete because of them.

Is this true? Whats it all about? What format will they use?
How much will they cost? etc.

I plan to upgrade near April, and I am a bit hesitant while going
to spend $500 on a video card only for it to be obsolete in a few months.

Thanks.

this is the story every year :P

seriously, I met someone who talked to the editor of maximumPC and he said the next generation ATI card will be well worth the wait.

Not many videocards can be "obsolete" in under two years unless they sucked when they were released (GeForce 4 MX series, low-end GeForce FX, etc.). I know there'll be some badass videocards released this year, but the older ones won't under any circumstances be obsolete. If they play the games, and they do, then they can't be considered obsolete. I wouldn't pay $500 for a videocard right now, though. I'd spend $200-$300 and get a Radeon 9800 or GeForce FX 5900.

-Lasereth

Thanks for your comments.

I was thinking about a 9800 XT, which is about $415
Would that be going too far?

Is it too early to tell if 256 MB of memory on it is useful?

if by "obsolete" you mean "something better exists" well... I hope you're rich if you wanna stay ahead of the hardware industry! New stuff comes out pretty continually.

The fastest machine I own is 800mhz.
It is not obsolete.
:p

Re: Video Cards in 2004
 

I built a pretty decent PC for less than that. I just don't see how people can spend that much money on a video card.

Buy a cheap card like me. I got a radeon 9600 pro and you can't tell a difference from the 500 dollar cards. Cost me 122 bucks. The only problem is it gets hot as all hell...

Yes there is a new arcitechture coming out called pci express that will replace the agp slot. But i wouldnt worry about any card becoming obsolete.

Does PCI express even solve an existing problem? Last time I checked bandwidth on the AGP bus wasn't a limiting issue in today's rendering pipeline.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't it also response time that PCI Express was to address in regards to current AGP options?

Bandwidth was a big factor but I'm sure that I read about the lower response time of PCI express and the ability to crack more watts through it instead of using an additional 12v plug.

Can't tell a difference? Maybe not in some games, but in newer games the $500 cards perform more than 50% better than other cards. I bought a 5900 Ultra this past summer, and even from my TI4200 it was a HUGE upgrade. It looked so much better.

Yes, the 256 MB of memory is useless. The only way that extra 128 MB will be tapped is if you run it at 8X anti-aliasing with triple anisoptric filtering on at a resolution of 1600*1280 with every graphical option turned to high while burning a DVD-RW in the background.

128 MB is enough. Like I said earlier, I'd save the money and buy a GeForce FX 5900 NON-ultra or a Radeon 9800 NON-Pro. Then again, if you DO have the money to spend, go for the 9800 XT or 5950 Ultra. They're amazing cards, but it will put ya back on the wallet.

-Lasereth

I think 2004 is going to be a big year for graphics cards. Think about it... both ATI and Nvidia haven't released any REAL improved cards in the last 10 months or so. ATI put out the XT's just to have something new on the market, but the performance wasn't increased very much. NVidia did the same thing with the 5950 compared the previous 5900 ultra card. Also, ATI's should be releasing the Catalyst 4 series. Could be an interesting year !!

256MB isn't completely wasted.
If you set Unreal to run with the highest resolution textures then some levels can exceed 128MB in textures. The less swapping from main memory the better because rendering pretty much halts while waiting on main memory.

PCI express will leave AGP in the dust -- but the market and software necessary to use it isn't there yet. Plus, there is the additional investment of the motherboard that supports it -- it's not going to be a cheap option. There will probably be a slow transition to serial ATA, PCIExpress, and the new motherboard format (BTX?) over the next couple of years.

The best thing about 2004 and video cards is that second-tier models from manufacturers are getting better and better, and they are the ones most people can begin to afford.

I don't get why everyone makes a big deal about PCI express
 

We are no where near saturating the 8x AGP bus. All the memory intensive rendering chores have to be done on the gfx card from it's own memory even with PCI express. PCI express is being introduced because of i/o considerations in other applications. The additional bandwidth that can be used for gfx cards is just an added plus for the distant future.

Don't be fooled into waiting for a PCI-express or paying 500 dollars for it. If you can get an AGP 8X version of the same card for less then go for it (Don't forget the premium you will pay for the motherboard). When PCI-express comes out and the benchmarks are done you will see that the performance difference between AGP 8x and PCI-express will be negligible in this generation of gfx hardware.

Ok, thank you all very much for clearing that up :)