How often do you upgrade your video card? (poll included)

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Krakn3Dfx
Have been testing out the card, and it's scoring quite a bit better in UT3, 3DMark, and L4D than my GTX260 was. Going to see how it is stability wise, but if it holds up well, I'll probably keep it.

You can find reviews of newer cards like the HD 5870 in which the HD 4870 is included with the latest drivers, that's that I do when I want to do comparison with other cards.

 

[boran]

A simple list of my 3D cards (some are "3D" but no matter)

Ati Rage IIc
Nvidia TNT Vanta
Geforce 2MX
Ati Radeon 8xxx (cant remember exactly)
Geforce 3 Ti 200
Geforce 4 4600
Geforce 7600GT
Ati Readeon 4890

Looking back I only started upgrading less frequently in recent times. But the age between TNT and Geforce 4 was one of extremely rapid technology advances.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Painman
I usually skip a generation between upgrades, but I'm making an exception right now and grabbing an rv870 unit. Practically all of this is because 285s like to die on me for some reason, and if it weren't for that, I'd be sitting tight with the 285 probably until 2011.

I usually skip too ,however I really only upgrade when I feel I need to for my gaming needs,money is not normally the issue so its really down to when I need to upgrade,I do like to get my money's worth out of my cards as they say .

 

[kreacher]

Every other generation but these days considering what is the next generation is getting muddy with Nvidia (I've never bought an ATI card).

 

[JimmiG]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
When I got my 4870 512MB I had a 22" monitor with no plans of upgrading. That card ran anything and everything I had without a problem. I came into some extra money out of the blue and went to Best Buy one day, they had this Westinghouse 26" monitor on clearance. I forgot what I paid for it, but I want to say it was somewhere around $250 (from $500). Now when I play Conan, if I go DX10 with AA it's pretty choppy. I think 1920x1200 res is a little too much for 512MB at this point. I'm really looking forward to a 5870 or 5850 in the upcoming weeks.

I think you and I are some of the very few who played Two Worlds. That game started out well enough, but the main quest was a joke. It was a pretty game and you could kill plenty of hours on it though.

I also have a 22" monitor at 16x10, but I don't expect to upgrade it any time soon. The 4850 512MB is still fine for this res, although 4x FSAA isn't playable in all the latest games. 2X AA or even no AA looks OK to me, but I can't stand playing a game without aniso. When I upgraded from a Voodoo5 to a Radeon 64MB I lost the AA but got one of the first cards that could do aniso at decent frame rates. Overall it was a big improvement over the blurry Voodoo5 image. Since then I've always rated a sharp image higher than a completely smooth one. Besides, many new games make heavy use of transparent textures, so the FSAA setting tends to not make a very big difference since it only affects the edges of polygons. not foliage for example.
Ideally, I'd like to have both 4xAA and 16x aniso, but as a student, I can't justify paying more than about $200 every 1.5 - 2 years for a new video card and the 5770 isn't a big enough improvement to justify an upgrade for me, while the 4870 isn't future proof enough. Maybe the 6770 or a price-dropped 5850 at $199 later...

I wasn't overly impressed with Two Worlds, but the game definitely had potential. It just needed some polish and a more fleshed out main quest. It looks like the sequel will provide that, among other things, which is why I'm pretty excited about it. I only hope it will run OK on my rig...

 

[RussianSensation]

2001 - ATI 8500 64mb
2006 - PNY 6600 256mb
2007 - EVGA 8800GTS 320mb
2009 - MSI 4890 1GB

 

[Ayah]

I'm still kicking 7800GTX SLI.. Waiting for actual 5850 stock in Canada.

 

[Mattdoommaster]

I upgrade about every two years. My latest upgrade was a Radeon 4870. I probably won't upgrade until sometime towards the end of next year.

 

[KingstonU]

From 1st to 2nd video card was almost 5 years Now that I am out of school I hope to be able to keep up to once every generation and be in the "performance" segment as opposed to the value segment.