GunWillTravel
Junior Member
There's $400 burning a hole in my wallet, and I'm tempted to buy a new videocard to get better resolutions and rates on Doom 3 than my Radeon 9800 Pro provides in my Athlon 64 3000+ rig. But I have been thinking...
1. Is there any sense in getting a card that doesn't have 512 Mb? I don't think so. Doom 3 (and presumably games using its engine) are designed for 512 Mb cards. How big is the difference between Render Path 1 and Render Path 2?
2. Either a GF 6800 or an X700 card would let me go to 16x12 or 12x9 instead of 10x7, and use the top-level render path, but wouldn't I be kicking myself in 6 months when 512 Mb cards hit the shelves which can run Doom 3 -type games uncompressed?
3. How much longer am I going to be playing Doom 3, unless there is a lot more MP development? I've played through it twice and don't see myself doing it much more just to see it in higher resolution.
4. Shouldn't I wait until Half-life 2 hits, and see what cards run better on THAT game, rather than buying a card right now? It's a lot more likely I'll be playing CS using the HL2 engine over the next year or so than Doom. I will really be kicking myself if I get 6800 and find out 1 month later that the X700 has 50% better performance in Half-life 2.
1. Is there any sense in getting a card that doesn't have 512 Mb? I don't think so. Doom 3 (and presumably games using its engine) are designed for 512 Mb cards. How big is the difference between Render Path 1 and Render Path 2?
2. Either a GF 6800 or an X700 card would let me go to 16x12 or 12x9 instead of 10x7, and use the top-level render path, but wouldn't I be kicking myself in 6 months when 512 Mb cards hit the shelves which can run Doom 3 -type games uncompressed?
3. How much longer am I going to be playing Doom 3, unless there is a lot more MP development? I've played through it twice and don't see myself doing it much more just to see it in higher resolution.
4. Shouldn't I wait until Half-life 2 hits, and see what cards run better on THAT game, rather than buying a card right now? It's a lot more likely I'll be playing CS using the HL2 engine over the next year or so than Doom. I will really be kicking myself if I get 6800 and find out 1 month later that the X700 has 50% better performance in Half-life 2.
