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X1950 XT or DX 10?

zoozilla

Member
I REALLY don't want to spend too much money (who can afford to get a $600 video card?) and am really liking the deal for the Sapphire X1950 XT on newegg.com. However, technology can get really far really fast, so I'm really at a crossroads - stick with my X800 GT and wait for a good deal on a DX 10 card or upgrade now to something substantially better. Will DX 10 take over gaming as fast as I hope it won't?
I've got 1 gig of RAM and a Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz processor, if it makes any difference.
 
By the time DX10 "takes over gaming", any current gen DX10 card will be worthless. You're going to be fine w/ DX9 for now, although if you want the best setup for upcoming games like Crysis you'll need a DX10 card.

However, looking at your specs, I wouldn't say they're good enough to fully take advantage of an X1950XT anyway. Modern games like BF2/Oblivion and certainly future games are going to require 2GB of RAM to max out, and gaming on a Pentium 4 is not ideal. I'm not sure if it's a wise move to purchase a pretty high end card without upgrading the rest of your system.
 
You'll be slightly bottlenecked with a x1950xt but not enough to justify not buying it for that reason alone. Your system would be substantially better with the card and would extend the life of the system for gaming for, depending on your resolution and desired settings, another year or two.

If you're gaming fine now, I would wait though, as prices only go down and technology only gets better. I only upgrade when I need to or the hole in the pocket my money's in is thoroughly burning. 🙂

Edited for speeling.
 
Get a DX10 card when DX10 games are actually available, and those are still some months away. If you dont mind waiting, then stick with the x800gt and later on get a midrange DX10 card. If you dont want to wait then the x1950xt currently offers the most performance for its price, and will be a huge upgrade from an x800gt.
 
wait till spring time when many new cards will be comming out, including ati's r600. You want dx10. There is no point in upgrading if you will be compromising. Dx10 cards KILL current dx9 video cards in dx9 games, so if you spend a little more now, you will suffer less in the future. There is no such thing as not spending a lot of money if you want future games to run at full quality & over 60fps, unless you run over to someone's pc and rip his 8800gtx off of him 😉.
 
I'm still as unsure as before...of course, the X800 GT really isn't sufficient for today's games (only 128mb), so I might just grab the X1950 now, since I don't plan to get Vista anytime soon and hopefully any DX 10 games can run DX 9 as well. Then, when DX 10 really starts to become the norm, I'll probably just get a new computer, as my PC would seriously bottleneck the new cards anyway.
 
Originally posted by: zoozilla
I REALLY don't want to spend too much money (who can afford to get a $600 video card?) and am really liking the deal for the Sapphire X1950 XT on newegg.com. However, technology can get really far really fast, so I'm really at a crossroads - stick with my X800 GT and wait for a good deal on a DX 10 card or upgrade now to something substantially better. Will DX 10 take over gaming as fast as I hope it won't?
I've got 1 gig of RAM and a Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz processor, if it makes any difference.

x1950xt, get a mid-high range dx10 card later on when its actually useful.
 
If the card you have now if under-performing in games you play now, then go for the Sapphire X1950XT on Newegg for $244.

If performance in games you currently play is ok, sit tight for a month or so.
 
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