woah ..... woah....

[g-relk]

HIS Graphic Cards - Power Up, Gamers!

Waddya think???? how much better would it be over the original????

[Tyreal]

Wow. 1GB? With today's games thats hardly necessary.

[g-relk]

ah, but the point is that it can also be for tomorrows games with a gig o ram, and DX10 support, i think it should keep me going for a while into the future

[Tyreal]

It's probably plenty fast but by the time you are playing games that actually utilize that 1 GB of memory there will be much faster cards and games demanding faster gpus.

[gvblake22]

With talk of a DirectX 10.1 update on the horizon (with an updated pixel shader model), I think the extra money would be better spent toward a newer graphics card with updated features for the newer shader models and DirectX 10 optimizations rather than just a butt-load of RAM.

[g-relk]

well thats fair cool, but will the DX10.1 update be incompatable with DX10 cards??? if so. thats fair shite

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by g-relk

well thats fair cool, but will the DX10.1 update be incompatable with DX10 cards??? if so. thats fair shite

It's going to be like when DX9.0b went to DX9.0c, the older DX9 cards could run the games made for it but with the newer settings disabled. The 10.1 update will be needed for the games based on that platform, but the older 10.0 cards will run them fine just with the updated optimization and support lacking.

As for the card itself, the 2900XT is better then the 8800GTS in DX10, sometimes surpassing the GTX in certain situations. It's architecture is just inefficient for DX9. And thats with just the 512mb card. The 1GB card is really just icing on the cake for resolutions 1600x1200 and lower, I'd only pay that much more for the extra ram if I was gaming on a 37" Plasma or similar. 256mb is adequate still, but more games are liking the added room of 512mb for larger textures. Thats the reason I went with the 640mb model instead of the 320mb even though my highest rez is 1280x1024.

In short, the 512mb is just fine for 1600x1200 and lower. If you plan on going higher, go with the 1GB model. By the time games roll out that need a full 512 for textures at the lower resolutions, you'll probably want a new card anyway.

[gvblake22]

HERE is a little look into how the 2900XT fares against the two flavors of 8800GTS in Lost Planet. Looks like it consistently beats the 320MB and is about even with the 640MB.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

The 1GB card is really just icing on the cake for resolutions 1600x1200 and lower, I'd only pay that much more for the extra ram if I was gaming on a 37" Plasma or similar.

Do you have that backwards perhaps? Shouldn't the 1GB of memory be more conducive to higher resolutions?

[Stormcrow]

No, what I mean is that the 1GB is pretty much just bragging rights at those resolutions. The 512mb is plenty for anything 1600x1200 and less.

[g-relk]

cool, thanks. I'll get the 512mb edeition then, coz my max res is only 1440 x 900. thanks for the input.