undecided

[reverancepavane]

Time for a new video card. ATI are out of consideration, primarily since the ATI drivers have really sucked for linux. So, that really leaves only nVidia, who are winning the graphics war at the mpment in terms of performance anyway. Since the remaining available old school (Series 7) nVidia card (7950GT) that seems available doesn't run DivX10 natively, it's probably not a wise purchase if I dowant to run any of the new generation games. That leaves the nVidia Series 8 cards. The 8600 series are mainstream cards for the occaisional gamer (which probably describes me). The price break for the 8600GT really is unbeatable (being half of what I was thinking of spending) and the performance is not too bad, especially since it readily does everything I generally use a computer for (I'm really not a big graphics-heavy game player). Paying an extra 66% for the 8600GTS probably doesn't seem worthwhile for the 20% increase in performance, especially considering that both cards are limited to a 256MB memory with a 128-bit pipe. In the modern games coming out at the moment, it is the card memory that generally determines the ability to run the new games, so both cards will hit this limit at essentially the same time, regardless of what is effectively factory overclocking. Which is a pity since the 8600GTS is about the price range I was originally looking at. The 8800 series is the big brother designed for the serious game player. Not only has it a GPU that is 3x larger in terms of thread capacity, it comes with either 320MB or 640MB of memory and a 320-bit data-pipe (the price difference being negligible at that level, the 640MB is the sensible choice for avoiding false economies). However it's also twice the price I was really looking at (or even three times if I considered the GTX - I have the misfortune of tending to take a look at stuff by percentage increase in cost for performance increase, thus a tendency to spend even more money once I have overcome my natural parsimony). So what I'm really looking for is fallen in the gap between the 8600 series and the 8800 series. If I go 8600, then the cheap 8600GT seems killer value, since the performance boost to the next step appears negligible (although there are important physiological/psychological perceptile thresholds that may make it worthwhile), especially since it can handle most of the tasks I want to do (since I'm not really that much of a computer game player). In contrast, the 8800 seems overkill to me simply because I might want to run some modern games in the future, although a gamer friend tells me the memory limit can be a real killer in modern games. So which way do people think I should go? Given that there are people on my friends list with slightly more experience (by a big margin, really) with the state of game requirements these days. What sort of cards do you have? [Especially since the only game that looks marginally interesting is something like Neverwinter Nights 2, and that only from the basis of wanting to maintain the Dungeon Exchange Program, which I have yet to get around to doing anything seriously with, anyway.] Of course, knowing me as well as I do, it's a conflict between not having to part with as much money as I thought, or having to part with more money than I really wanted. Surprisingly, I have considerable inertia when moving in either direction.

Comments

[maelorin]

$500 *sigh*

i can just imagine the fun i could have with a working 1/30 abrams around campus - especially once army.au gets regular use of their 'new' toys of the full size.

oh well. :D

mayhap a tank might not be quite right for an office in the new law school in any event. perhaps i ought to be looking out for a 1/30 pirate ship? [though a 1/30 scale tardis would be hard to go past ...]

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

But would you want to sail it down the Torrens? You'd have to clean it after...

[maelorin]

the model would be for my office ... i have no plans to flood that :P

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

Now if it was a fully-functional 1/30th scale M1A1 I can see how that would be quite useful. APDUDS anyone?

[maelorin]

ooooh!

but the constant maintenance would get tiresome.