Direct X 11 Graphics Cards

[HoldenGameServer]

Id have to disagree with that ^ ive had no problems with vista.

---

Anyways, about directx. First I would like to say is ATI and Nvidia are both outstanding companies, Ive been back and forth between the two. In the long run my experience has been better with ATI mind you I know Nvidia is excellent as well. First things to accept are, Nvidia will always be the leader imo. Nvidia always has the fastest GPU, they always have the best driver support, mind you they always have the highest prices. But you get what you pay for, ATI is very good but they seem to be more targeted at gaming. But they are good overall as well, and they really have some benefits in the architecture of the way their chips are designed (mass amounts of lower powered stream processors).

DirectX is a API (Programing Interface), as most of you probably know, PC gaming is being limited by consoles right now. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing since PCs costs are super affordable and a PC build lasts a long time. Mind you most the games are ports or just ports with some extra eye candy added. PC will always be the enthusiast platform for games, and there will always be amazing exclusive games for PC.

We haven't seen the power of DX10 or 11 yet, of course Crysis, Dirt2, etc all claim to use DX10/11 which they do, they are not showing the full capability of it. Like I said before DirectX is a API and for developers to get used to that API and start developing ground breaking stuff with it doesn't happen over night. Its alot of coding and figuring out, its not like you just implement dx11 in your game and graphics look great. Along with DX11 and 10 are new shader models which imo are the most important. Shaders are so useful in games now days. Many people saw DX10 as a fail, but its not DX10 was a huge upgrade, DX9 was very bound on more of a software level. As for DX10 busted out the ability to use your GPU in more ways to process physics, sound, AI and more. Its been now almost 2 generations and we haven't really seen anything exceeding DX9 limits yet. Except maybe Dirt2 in a couple of ways and some other games. But really, you will not see the power of DX10/11 until consoles do the move. I believe the next consoles are targeted 2011/2012 latest.

In terms of you buying a GPU now, GTX295 would be the way to go to run things fastest. However the high end ATI's w/DX11 would get you some new eye candy features on some games and still do a fantastic job. Id say get a decent card like a ATI 5870 or GTX280 or something, maybe a bit cheaper if u just wanna play games not with everything max'ed out. If your planning on doing a new build wait for some of the new technology.

Mind you DX11 card isn't a bad idea right now, some new games coming out like AvP are going to be using DX11 tessellation (were the models incease polygons as they get closer to make them more smooth looking). DX10 also does tessellation but its a bit more advanced and efficent on DX11, but really its all up to coders for the most part. But if you can hold off for the DX11 version of geforces, that would be ideal since their performance will probably be a bit of a leap over the ATI cards.

I have a ATI tech demo for DX10 that shows off a bit of what it has to offer, not so much in a graphical sense, but processing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL72EmeZ1Vg

You can see how many polygons there are, and when you get close to a frog thing its triangles double or tripple. You also see how many dynamic AI driven characters are all being processed on the GPU (Graphics card) that demo was kinda neat, 90% of the stuff in there was handled specifically by the graphic card. My CPU usage was very low, and the frame-rate was good even when filming with FRAPS.

I'm really dragging on, sorry, to sum this up. Im gonna say the future, is a mix of triangles/traditional rendering methods as well as software rendering for various effects and voxel like implementations. Kinda like a hybrid approach, were you have programmable GPUs on-top of DirectX as a base. And then you go to town with voxels, polygons, shaders, custom coded algorithmic effects.

i agree what this guy said, i would just wait for the new Geforce, and for me its a good idea because i dont have like 600 dollars right with me right now, i dont even have a job yet! (by the way i am only 16) and i'm going to wait because i dont even have the latest core yet (quad core) i'm running a dual core 2.0ghz (kinda 2006-07ish)

[wongers]

im going with the ATI 5870 i think. screw nVidia. they arse around too much lol

[galaxyAbstractor]

lol the new ones is released in 2 weeks

[wongers]

well i get paid in like 2 weeks so we'll see what happens ;-)

[monkeymhz]

new GTX480 is pretty darn good. They really pushed the tessellation power on it but tbh I really don't think tessellation is going to be a super part of games ... Yet. Really, I find it kinda screwed up how theres this huge gap right now in gaming tech.

The PS3/Xbox360 are strides behind a modern day PC. Yet the games are being developed in accordance to the consoles, thus resulting in 2 things. 1. Your PC lasts ages before you have to upgrade and you can play games maxxed out for a long time. 2. Game advancement is no longer as rapid as it once was.

People might hate this, or people might like this. Tbh I think its a good time now since graphics aren't really being upp'd right now there's a bit of a break here till 2011-2012 when new stuff will have to hit markets. They should focus on good unique game play, I stopped playing games in general for the most part because I keep getting the feeling that each game that comes out is just a knock off of the last successfully released game. Its boring... I miss the days were I actually got excited for games, eg. Unreal2, Doom3, Half Life2, F.E.A.R, Max Payne, Oblivion,etc...

That's a bit off topic. Back to the GPUs, DX11, its good stuff. But sadly im going to say its going to be much like the Geforce 8000x series. DX11 isnt going to bring any drastic changes ... yet. We will once the consoles start developing for these higher end specs but that wont be till 2011-2012 next game consoles or at least till they start maxing out these current consoles to their very limits.

So its somewhat ridicolous that DX10 goes by and DX11 has to exist for a while until we see a game actually use the power of DX10/11. But its because the developers targets now days are for the game consoles. For 2 reasons, 1 larger target audience, 2 its easier to make a game for the consoles with OK graphics and port to PC, than to make a PC game with good graphics and have to downsize alot and turn off alot for the consoles. All I can say is keep your eyes open for Rage, Doom4, ... etc games like that, Mass Effect 2 I heard was good.

A victim of console porting was Bioshock 2, I just got that game for my PC and its textures are far lower resolution and the graphics are overall much more drab and less detailed than the first one because it was developed for consoles and textures were kept low and they didn't bother doing anything special for the PC version, quite a let down. But it still seems to be a solid title from what i hear. (The shock put me off from playing it for a while)....

As for ATi vs NVIDIA. Both good, GTX480 is onpar with ATi 5000x series when considering price/$... You really can't go wrong either way...

[archcode]

Right now I own the ATI 5770, No Nvidia cards use DDR5 OR have Directx 11, if you really want dx11 (which is great) And you want a cheaper card with more performance go with ATI 5000 series! They are cheaper and come with a double lifetime warranty if you get the xfx versions.

[wongers]

well performance wise nVidia are still keeping up with ATI even though they are still on DDR3 so that is neither here or there. I am not "overly" fussed on DX11 as, has been stated, its going to be a while before its put in to use. I have a feeling that new nVidia series will be more expensive and I do like the PhysX/CUDA technology available.

But I think over all I will be picking up an XFX 1GB 5870 card :-) i think that will see me right for a few years and then ill sli them when the cards come down in price and then i wont have to upgrade for years and years :-)

[archcode]

well performance wise nVidia are still keeping up with ATI even though they are still on DDR3 so that is neither here or there. I am not "overly" fussed on DX11 as, has been stated, its going to be a while before its put in to use. I have a feeling that new nVidia series will be more expensive and I do like the PhysX/CUDA technology available.

But I think over all I will be picking up an XFX 1GB 5870 card :-) i think that will see me right for a few years and then ill sli them when the cards come down in price and then i wont have to upgrade for years and years :-)

Just a friendly heads up when you put 2 ati cards together they call it crossfirex not sli (:

[xav0989]

I'm gonna say something I say with a lot of things: when something new comes out, wait for things to support it to go and get it.

[archcode]

couldn't agree more with you xav0989, when the ati 5870 first came out with there beta drivers my friend went out and bought it and got the drivers, he had worse performance then his old 4800 series card, just gotta wait till there stable.