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greenmedic88 on 27 September 2009
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Smidlee said:
Soleron said:
PCs have much higher theoretical graphics power. The PS3's GPU is a 7900GS, and current GPUs such as the HD 5870 have maybe eight times the processing power of that, in fillrate, TFLOPS, shader count and everything else.

The limitation is that games can't get much better visually without spending enough money and time to make the whole game unprofitable. Until we get raytracing to cut graphics engine costs and find a cheaper to model things.

I believe you hit the nail of the head. Crysis is almost 2 years old yet it still uses as an example top PC graphics. So in the future I believe graphics will be limited by cost instead of hardware limitations. While 5870 has a lot of power I haven't seen too many PC games where I need that power. 

For DX11? Really trying to convince myself that Dirt 2 in DX11 will blow me away.

Because they exist?

Currently, you're really better off just buying a pair of HD4850s or HD4870s if you want to go a bit higher in resolution due to the length of time on the market and the appropriate drops in price.

The 5870 will probably cost about $300 for the near future which would buy you a pair of 4870s.

Until we see that first killer app that fully capitalizes on DX11 and really sells VGA cards, it's a tough sell for anyone who doesn't upgrade video cards every year or even every other year for little reason other than faster cards are available. At that point it's more of an issue of what resolution are you planning on running at what you consider to be playable frame rates and buying the appropriate VGA solution.