(edit: added poll to see how many at user's use lcd's and what resolutions they are running at. seems pertinent..)
first off, i'll preface my musings by stating that, while i am generally an early adopter of "bleeding edge" pc hardware, i'm not really enthused about moving to pci-e, which may at least explain partly why i wasn't very excited about nvidia's g70 launch, nor the subsequent ati r520 launch. i mean, i'm all for moving technology forward, but in the case of pci-e, i feel my hand is being forced by the video card industry to replace multiple components of my pc's without any significant benefit (multiple gpu's could be argued here, but i'll get to that later). this is compounded by the fact i have 4 pc's in my house which are in constant use, and every single one is used for gaming to some extent.
another consideration is several of these pc's have 19" lcd's. while i still have some fondness for crt's, the space/energy/thermal savings of the lcd's, along with the fact that 16ms screens are now reasonably priced and productive use -- which requires a great deal of dealing with reading text, another strength of lcd's over crt's as it's much easier on the eyes -- gives lcd's far more advantages that (at least for me) considering a crt today is silly.
which brings me back to video cards.... i've been looking for a video card upgrade for one of my systems (9800pro is definately getting long in the tooth). the core system is fine (amd athlon64, 1gb ram, etc), so i'm not excited about migrating to pci-e for no other reason than nvidia/ati is forcing my hand, so i've still been looking at last gen.
compusa has advertised x850xt agp's for $299 -- a great deal on a card, and from posts by ati loyalists should be hands down the best card of the last gen -- by far. yet limited by the native resolution of 19" lcd's, with 4xaa/8xaf, at least according to AT's review, the x850xt is really not better than a 6800GT i have in one of my systems, and in some instances not even as good.. and the same can be said in many circumstances for the 7800GT and x1800XL.
this is getting longer than i intended, so i'm going to assume most of you can see why i am questioning the reasoning of what is happening in this industry...
so why do we let the pc/video card industry drive us into a frenzy over $600 $700 video cards? worse, it's been to a point lately that people from both camps will stop at nothing to defend and/or slam the other side over video card superiority (far more in this generation it seems), and for what? i mean, we could buy 2 xbox 360's for the price of a single 7800gtx 512mb?? or soon maybe 2 360's and a ps3 or two for the price of an SLI setup? we're already seeing games being developed for the pc and console simultaneously (as opposed to being ported), and many which are initially being developed on consoles... where will this take pc gaming?
or the manufacturer's trying to expand a niche "dual gfx" card market into the mainstream... why? don't you see how this limits your options as a consumer? yes, i've played on systems with higher res than 1280, and while admittedly it's a bit better than say running at 1280 with high aa/af, the difference is not earth shattering.. yet we're driven to feel we need that SLI system deal with that "need" for higher res, etc. gaming, or that we're somehow inferior if we don't have it -- no need to look past all those who defend their postitions/opinoins in these forums to see that.
there's an underlying motive for this. buy SLI and nvidia has a much higher retention rate next gen (not to mention the consumer having to pay for 2 gfx cards rather than 1), regardless of which system is better (this will of course apply to crossfire when it finally arrives as well). will be much tougher to switch camps (regardless of product quality/features) if you now have to dump your SLI mb and 2 gfx cards to move to an ATI mb and 2 ATI gfx cards. who does that benefit? certainly not the consumers...
perhaps i am being cynical here, and we (consumers) drive the market, and not the other way around, but it sure seems to me we are being manipulated into not only desiring, but almost feeling we NEED what they are offering..
i mean, don't any of you guys feel like you're sort of like one of those greyhounds chasing that elusive rabbit around the track?
first off, i'll preface my musings by stating that, while i am generally an early adopter of "bleeding edge" pc hardware, i'm not really enthused about moving to pci-e, which may at least explain partly why i wasn't very excited about nvidia's g70 launch, nor the subsequent ati r520 launch. i mean, i'm all for moving technology forward, but in the case of pci-e, i feel my hand is being forced by the video card industry to replace multiple components of my pc's without any significant benefit (multiple gpu's could be argued here, but i'll get to that later). this is compounded by the fact i have 4 pc's in my house which are in constant use, and every single one is used for gaming to some extent.
another consideration is several of these pc's have 19" lcd's. while i still have some fondness for crt's, the space/energy/thermal savings of the lcd's, along with the fact that 16ms screens are now reasonably priced and productive use -- which requires a great deal of dealing with reading text, another strength of lcd's over crt's as it's much easier on the eyes -- gives lcd's far more advantages that (at least for me) considering a crt today is silly.
which brings me back to video cards.... i've been looking for a video card upgrade for one of my systems (9800pro is definately getting long in the tooth). the core system is fine (amd athlon64, 1gb ram, etc), so i'm not excited about migrating to pci-e for no other reason than nvidia/ati is forcing my hand, so i've still been looking at last gen.
compusa has advertised x850xt agp's for $299 -- a great deal on a card, and from posts by ati loyalists should be hands down the best card of the last gen -- by far. yet limited by the native resolution of 19" lcd's, with 4xaa/8xaf, at least according to AT's review, the x850xt is really not better than a 6800GT i have in one of my systems, and in some instances not even as good.. and the same can be said in many circumstances for the 7800GT and x1800XL.
this is getting longer than i intended, so i'm going to assume most of you can see why i am questioning the reasoning of what is happening in this industry...
so why do we let the pc/video card industry drive us into a frenzy over $600 $700 video cards? worse, it's been to a point lately that people from both camps will stop at nothing to defend and/or slam the other side over video card superiority (far more in this generation it seems), and for what? i mean, we could buy 2 xbox 360's for the price of a single 7800gtx 512mb?? or soon maybe 2 360's and a ps3 or two for the price of an SLI setup? we're already seeing games being developed for the pc and console simultaneously (as opposed to being ported), and many which are initially being developed on consoles... where will this take pc gaming?
or the manufacturer's trying to expand a niche "dual gfx" card market into the mainstream... why? don't you see how this limits your options as a consumer? yes, i've played on systems with higher res than 1280, and while admittedly it's a bit better than say running at 1280 with high aa/af, the difference is not earth shattering.. yet we're driven to feel we need that SLI system deal with that "need" for higher res, etc. gaming, or that we're somehow inferior if we don't have it -- no need to look past all those who defend their postitions/opinoins in these forums to see that.
there's an underlying motive for this. buy SLI and nvidia has a much higher retention rate next gen (not to mention the consumer having to pay for 2 gfx cards rather than 1), regardless of which system is better (this will of course apply to crossfire when it finally arrives as well). will be much tougher to switch camps (regardless of product quality/features) if you now have to dump your SLI mb and 2 gfx cards to move to an ATI mb and 2 ATI gfx cards. who does that benefit? certainly not the consumers...
perhaps i am being cynical here, and we (consumers) drive the market, and not the other way around, but it sure seems to me we are being manipulated into not only desiring, but almost feeling we NEED what they are offering..
i mean, don't any of you guys feel like you're sort of like one of those greyhounds chasing that elusive rabbit around the track?
Sure isn't a trade-off compared to my previous crappy shadow mask CRTs. I can now shoot Nazis for hours without getting eye strain and I don't feel compromised in any way.
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