The new 8800gtx GPU

S

sjhaycroft

Geek Trainee
Im making a gaming system at christmas and im just wondering if this card, 768Mb XFX 8800GTX PCI-E, priced at £480 is worth the money. could anyone else tell me their opinions on what I should do. If I were to buy this card would it be able to play games say 2-3 years down the line on high quality
 
The 8800GTX is certainly one hell of a card, the difference in performance is similar to the difference between the FX 5xxx and Geforce 6 series.

2-3 years is a long time in graphics industry though, so I would say it would run games comfortably but not at the highest quality settings.
 
so should I buy that card or get a pretty decent one for now and then upgrade in like a year when newer stuff comes out?
 
It's the fastest card you can buy. It's faster than 2 SLI'd GeForce 7900GTX's.

Video card cycles are pretty rapid. 2-3 years ago, the Radeon 9800 was king of the hill. It can still pull off most games pretty well, but it's definitely showing it's age.
 
In 3 years I still think it'd be kicking. Not every game is going to scream on high, or at least not with everthing on high but it'll still play anything you throw at it assuming the rest of the rig is similarly bleeding edge (though processors tend to last a little longer, 4 years is certainly possible). The X800 series came out is about May of 04 or so and still runs just about every game today quite well on higher settings. The 8800GTX is a pretty major upgrade and with a boat load of memory and a forward thinking DX 10 design I could see it going about 3 years. Whether or not it'll peg that number or not is hard to say but one thing's for sure, in three years, at the pace games are evolving it'll be pretty impressive if the card shows that long a lifespan. I suppose the true test is how the card will fare with upcomming DX 10 games like Crysis.
 
Looking at the graphics on upcoming games like Crysis and Bio Shock... How much better do you think graphics are going to get?

Crysis looks sweet as

These faces are impressive

I'm finding it very difficult to imagine game graphics progressing much more than they have already... Perhaps the future of gaming will eventually rely on CPU for amazing AI and RAM for absolutely huge environments and maps?

What say you?

Mike
 
I think we'll see games still make some pretty major leaps in the graphical realm. People have been saying that they can hardly imagine anything looking better than what was currently available for a long long time. It's an easy conclusion to make but I think at this point the real burden isn't technology, it's time. It's taking developers that much longer to crank out these games and the scale and complexity is only growing. But in this day and age people won't settle for a standstill in graphical complexity, I think developers will always push things to the limet as far as hardware is concerned.
Of course we'll probably see more advances in AI and physics too but AI for one is a far more difficult task. Making units behave logically and convincingly under a countless number of different occasions is no small task and it's something that will probably take more time. As far as large enviroments are conerned RAM really isn't the factor. It's harddrive space for all those textures and maps involved but that's not so much of an issue as even current massive games don't take up more than 9 gigs or so and there's plenty of room to spare on media like BlueRay disks when we're looking at those figures.
 
lol I agree with those people who wonder how much better graphics can possibly get. It does seem to me like there really isn't much progress left to achieve. But I also realize that my opinion is worth nothing because I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to computers lol, and I'm sure Exfoliate is right. So I'll just take your word for it, Ex. :) Perhaps my (probably wrong) opinion comes from the fact that I really don't care much to see all these great improvements in graphics. Even if there truly is so much room for further graphics advancement, what's the point? The latest graphics really do look stunning already. Why do I need better? Lol, I happily play old games that were made in like the late 80's, early 90's with graphics that only had 256 colors...
 
Yeah Crysis is some pretty. And keep in mind these are still DX 9 based screenshots we're seeing so there's even more room for improvement here.
 
Im seruiously thinking in investing in the ASUS 8800 GTX but theres two things im worried about:
1. when will there be a successor
2. will it be worth the money
 
There's always something bigger and better in the works. If you keep waiting for something better, you'll always be waiting. They guy with 8GB of RAM, a Core 2 Quad X6800, dual 8800GTX, a 5TB RAID 5 array, and a 1000W power supply is out of date. Intel, AMD, nVidia, Seagate, etc all have something they're working on that's better, faster, more efficient than what you can buy right now.

There will be a successor for the 8800GTX. The 8800GTX is the successor to the 7900GTX, which is the successor to the 7800GTX, which is the successor to the 6800 Ultra...

The 8800GTX is the fastest single-GPU card you can buy right now. While AMD's DX10 Radeon is slated to hit about the same time as Vista, we don't know how it will perform. That could be worth waiting for to see what performance it brings. nVidia and AMD are for-profit businesses, so, of course they're going to come out with a successor for the GeForce or Radeon families.

Is it worth it? Well, until we see Vista and DX10, it's very hard to say for 100% certain simply because we HAVE NO DX10 GAMES to test it on. Given that it goes far beyond the requirements to be DX10 compliant, and that it's the 8800 family is the only available DX10 cards right now, it's not a fair question. We do know that it wipes the floor with any other available graphics solution.

The gaming expectations you have along with the money you're willing to spend is going to determine if it's best for you. If you can afford the best available and want the best, then you should go for it.
 
All 8800 GPU's are HDCP enabled.

Vista is set to hit January 30, 2007. If you buy XP now, you get a voucher for Vista.
 
Vista's due Jan 30th (I'm pretty sure the delays are finally over) so we'll see ATI's latest at that point. All sources seem to predict it to be a easily superior card compaired to nVidias but without games to test it on as B said we can't really be sure who's better and even how well the cards can handle DX 10 games in the first place. But I'd wait at least until ATI comes out with them so you'll see a price drop from nVidia anyway. As far as the sucessor to the 8800's? Well generally it's a Winter and Summer thing for larger releases if I recall and spring for more minor upgrades and newer midrange cards for example.
 
If you don't have to have it now, yeah, that would be worth waiting just to see what it offers. I just wouldn't keep waiting.
 
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