Max Longman said:That's easy, when your games are too slow to play.
Anybody know when you'll absolutely need a Directx 9 card to have any
fun with games? It seems that games like Halo and Max Payne 2 use
Directx 9 features sparingly, and therefore, it's no big deal if I
play them on my Directx 8.1 card (which is a GeForce 4 Ti 4200).
Are we talking 3-4 months maybe?
I'm just trying to get a handle on when to spend the bucks for an
upgrade.
thanks.
Geronimo_work said:what about 9500 (saphire) moded to 9700. i'm planning to buy this card this
week. is it going to be fast enough for some time, or HL2 and DoomIII will
require a faster one. is it a good card for 165$. thanks.
Mark Morrison said:Fair enough.
On Friday I say a graphics card with 256mb of onboard memory for
£100...
--
Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes !
They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses !
And what's with all the carrots ?
What do they need such good eyesight for anyway ?
Bunnies ! Bunnies ! It must be BUNNIES !
Possibly - I know they introduced something that the first 2 didn't,Geforce 3 were the first with pixel shaders weren't they?
Possibly - I know they introduced something that the first 2 didn't,
but thought it was T&L in hardware.
Dark said:The 9500 is very fast... the non pro has only 4 pipelines ( what a
shame ) but after a SUCCESFULL mod you should have 8 pipelines
working, change of succesfull mod. 50%
If you are smart, you buy directly an 9700 Pro, no problems..no pain!
They show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on BBC ?
How does the portrayal of "Giles", "Spike", and "The Council"
go over, over there?
Jago Illustration said:Any idea what kind of visual improvement I'll see going from a Geforce 2MX
to a 5900 Ultra, in terms of what Halo will look like? It was quite playable
for the most part on the MX but not exactly pretty.
The jump from a GeForce 2 to a GeForce 3 or higher is quite a big one
- significantly faster, more memory, T & L in hardware.
How does the portrayal of "Giles", "Spike", and "The Council"
go over, over there?
I was trying to figure this out a couple of months ago. What someone
needs to do is take a few screenshots and record a few gameplay demo
movies to show off the differences between DX8 and DX9 hardware.
From what i've seen so far, there really isn't much visual difference
seen yet. That just means no game has made use of the DX9 hardware
enough to show a real difference. I've seen a few screenshots of
Halflife 2 that supposedly showed the differences. It was only
apparent in the way the water reflected images or obscured objects
underwater. There was a *slight* difference between dx8 and dx9
cards. But barely noticeable.
The high density lighting is a bit more impressive but i think only
halflife 2 has this feature so far. Imagine standing in a dark room
that has a hole in the roof, and sunlight is streaming through the
hole. with dx8 hardware you get a sunlight colored beam coming in.
with DX9 high density lighting you really see sunlight pouring through
the hole. so far it's the only dx9 effect i've been impressed by.
I guess the dx9 shaders and whatnot must allow some things to be done
faster than their dx8 equivalents but i also know that the new dx9
features can slow your framerate just because they are so intensive.
So unless someone else has other examples, i'd say that there's no
visual quality reason to upgrade specifically to a dx9 card except
that they also happen to be more powerful and will therefore get you
faster framerates than your current out of date card. But once
halflife 2 is out, maybe that will change.
I was trying to figure this out a couple of months ago. What someone
needs to do is take a few screenshots and record a few gameplay demo
movies to show off the differences between DX8 and DX9 hardware.
From what i've seen so far, there really isn't much visual difference
seen yet. That just means no game has made use of the DX9 hardware
enough to show a real difference. I've seen a few screenshots of
Halflife 2 that supposedly showed the differences. It was only
apparent in the way the water reflected images or obscured objects
underwater. There was a *slight* difference between dx8 and dx9
cards. But barely noticeable.
Falkentyne said:If you want to turn on FSAA and AF in any of the latest games, you
-will- need a -powerful- dx9 card, if only for the speed.
Geronimo said:the card i'm planning to buy is 100% working as 9700 because the guy tryed
and told me that it works.
John said:Yeah, I got that sense after playing Halo. I have a GeForce 4 Ti 4200
so I couldn't access the DX9 features in the game, yet it looked
practically identical to what I saw on the Xbox. This made me wonder
what, if anything, DX9 was really accomplishing.
My understanding is that in Max Payne 2, DX9 only gives you reflective
mirrors and everything else looks the same as DX8.1.
I'm sure Doom 3 will change all of this.
They show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on BBC ?
How does the portrayal of "Giles", "Spike", and "The Council"
go over, over there?
Luck;
Ken
The jump from a GeForce 2 to a GeForce 3 or higher is quite a big one
- significantly faster, more memory, T & L in hardware.
I bought a GeForce 3 Ti not long after they came out (I had a GeForce
256 at the time, IIRC) and it was a huge step up.
My next card will be at least a GeForce 5 (or whatever brand name they
gave it) but that won't be for a good long while. The DE2 demo ran
fine, and looked lovely. Along with Thief 3, this is the most
graphically intensive game I'm looking forward to.
Hopefully, my next upgrade will be a year or so away.
(Well, I have just got a 160 GB hard drive and a 4x DVD Writer...)
Lynley James said:IIRC, it's on Sky or some other satellite or cable channel.
Not sure how it goes down though.
Lynley