The Gaming PC Building/Upgrade Thread

[Garcian Smith]

Twistedpixel said:

Because DirectX 11 adoption may be the fastest in the history of DirectX http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20091211120431_Transition_to_DirectX_11_Will_Be_Fastest_Ever_Analyst.html

In addition to this, someone buying a card today, will probably not upgrade in 18months and with a DX11 card will not have to upgrade nearly as quickly. If it means another 6 months of useful life then the card bought to replace the current card will either be cheaper or more powerful. If price of DX11 card and present performance ratio is close to or equal with previous DX10 card then the 1-2 year prospects will always favour the DX11 card. Only people who are shortsighted or intend to upgrade rapidly will see greater benefit in the DX10 range of cards.

So says... a "graphics market analyst"? Some no-name analyst who may or may not have received industry payola is not an authority on the graphics card market.

The fact is, the remaining ATI DX10 gaming cards (that would be the 4850 and 4770, since everything else has been phased out by this point) have absolutely nothing to match them at their $100 price point. I mean, what are gamers on a budget supposed to buy instead? The 5670? I guess they could pay an extra $40+ for a 5750, but that's only a small performance upgrade from the 4850 for not a small amount of money, and that card isn't good enough to run DX11 games anyway.

And besides that, most intelligent PC gamers (i.e. those who don't try to "future-proof") upgrade their graphics cards about once every 18 months anyway. It saves money and gets you a better product in the long run.