How often do you NEED to upgrade your graphics card?

cherryghost

Not WANT, how often do you NEED to?

Just out of curiousity here. Higher end cards of course have a longer lease of life.

E.G. My friend is on a 6800XT judging by the settings and performance of the card, coupled with the slowdown on the graphics market, and on top of that, next gen consoles, and hence the next huge leap in graphical performance, wont happen in the near future, I dont think he NEEDS to upgrade his GPU for a few years to come, but I know he WANTS to. Games released 2 years ago play good enough on it and games released today still run fine.

lol sounds like I'm going in circles but I just want to guage your opinions. I have a gtx260 and I dont think I NEED to upgrade my GPU til sometime after the next gen graphics. But I WANT to beforehand :pac:

Blazer

A 6800XT...definitely needs to be upgraded. Simply not powerful enough to run today's games with all full settings on.

The GTX260..I'd say 2 years before you need to really upgrade it.

I've the 4870X2. On average I upgrade once a year to the top end card.
However this time around it'll definitely be another year before I upgrade giving me 2 years out of this card making it the longest serving card I've ever had

cherryghost

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

A 6800XT...definitely needs to be upgraded. Simply not powerful enough to run today's games with all full settings on.

The GTX260..I'd say 2 years before you need to really upgrade it.

I've the 4870X2. On average I upgrade once a year to the top end card.
However this time around it'll definitely be another year before I upgrade giving me 2 years out of this card making it the longest serving card I've ever had

no see this is what i mean. you dont NEED full settings on. most games still look pretty good on low settings these days anyway. you dont NEED to upgrade that 6800XT until games become unplayable, which they dont yet.

You dont NEED to upgrade once a year or every 2 years at this point in time if you have the mid-high range cards. You just WANT to because you want to see everything in its full glory.

EDIT: I'm not asking for an opinion on the cards I mentioned, I just want your view on needing and wanting cards.

Sierra Oscar

Dont upgrade until the DX11 cards come out. DX11 actually offers some neat improvements and features over DX10, but the main thing is developers are showing signs of willingness to make their games DX11 compatable.

I usually upgrade my card every new generation and then sell on my older one.

Since the 6th generation Nvidia cards, the only generation I have missed is the 9th - it just didn't offer all that much in terms of performance over the 8th series.

Amalgam

Sierra Oscar, any time frame on those DX11 cards? What about the new version of OpenGL, is that anything to take notice of?

ronkmonster

I've a 8800GTX for 2 years this month. Bar the odd game struggling (GTA4) most games run perfect at high quality and 1650x1080 (some games even with dual 22" monitors).

Until some new technology comes out (DX11) or games needing a lot more speed there is no need. Anything about 30 to 60 fps is not noticed anyway.

Even when Direct 11 comes out it'll be a while before few games come out with it so no rush even then.

Sierra Oscar

Amalgam wrote: »

Sierra Oscar, any time frame on those DX11 cards? What about the new version of OpenGL, is that anything to take notice of?

I think both the Radeon R800 and GTX 300 series are expected to be released Q4 of this year, November I would guess.

Dont know much about the new version of OpenGL, to be honest. OpenGL is still there though, holding its own - thats for sure.:)

uberpixie

I usually upgrade every 2nd generation e.g. I usually skip the speed bump releases and don't bother with a new card unless there is a significant jump e.g. 50-100% performance increase.

The only time I have broken this rule was when i had a 8800 GTS 320mb which started to blue screen after a certain revision of Nividia driver. Older versions of their drivers and the card worked perfectly for hours on end, new version random blue screens all over the shop.

That and I had just bought a 22" up from a 17" monitor.

Flogged it to a mate after only having it a year for €50 and it runs perfectly ofor him on a 19" monitor with no driver issues! And people complainabout ATI drivers! :eek:

Burgo

I've had an 8800gt for just over a year and a half,still chugging along fine. Might consider upgrading at the end of this year/ start of next year.

Blazer

cherryghost wrote: »

no see this is what i mean. you dont NEED full settings on. most games still look pretty good on low settings these days anyway. you dont NEED to upgrade that 6800XT until games become unplayable, which they dont yet.

You dont NEED to upgrade once a year or every 2 years at this point in time if you have the mid-high range cards. You just WANT to because you want to see everything in its full glory.

EDIT: I'm not asking for an opinion on the cards I mentioned, I just want your view on needing and wanting cards.

Well you do have certain things like draw distance etc..very important in fps gaming especially in games like COD4/BF2 etc.
With the low end or old cards you're not going to see the same distance as someone with a high end card.
So end result is you can't see them..but they can see you in which case you're dead.
Had this on my brother's pc...he couldn't figure out for ages how I was killing him and why he couldn't see me

BadCharlie

I seem to get into a bug and replace my cards every few months.
But cause times are harder now i have stop doing this.

But you should look at changing every 2 years i think, to keep up with the new games coming out. Also might need to upgrade computer along with video card.

TerrorFirmer

I upgrade every few months. I never usually own top end cards, just performance ones (like 8800GTS, 4870, 4890, GTX260, etc).

As for necessity, I'd say every few years - a 2.5yr old 8800GTS 320MB still copes with todays games pretty well for example at mid-high settings at 1440x900 downwards...

PogMoThoin

Being able to play on my 24' monitor at 1920x1200 dictates which gpu I like to have, hence I upgraded from a 512MB 4870 to a 4870x2, having only 512MB struggled with 1920 res. This 4870x2 with 2GB (1GB on each 4870 in xfire really) will see out directx 10 and hopefully last till the 2nd gen directx 11.

My other pc has an 8800GT and still copes with modern games, Young fella plays Arma 2 on it at the moment, but its only got a 19' monitor with 1280x1024. Your choice of monitor resolution will dictate which end of the scale Your gpu should be. A high end monitor (24") needs a high end gpu, whereas a simple 17-19" monitor copes fine with a lower end gpu

the_syco

cherryghost wrote: »

no see this is what i mean. you dont NEED full settings on. most games still look pretty good on low settings these days anyway.

Meh. As I like to snipe, I need a good graphics card so I can put max distance on it, be it in BFV, BF2, CoD4, etc. Nothing worse than someone shooting you, but not being able to see them, due to hardware limitation.

Usually upgrade every two years, or so. My last card (7800GT) lasted 3 or 4 years. My current card (HD4870)should get another 2 years out of it, I hope.

cherryghost

the_syco wrote: »

Meh. As I like to snipe, I need a good graphics card so I can put max distance on it, be it in BFV, BF2, CoD4, etc. Nothing worse than someone shooting you, but not being able to see them, due to hardware limitation.

Usually upgrade every two years, or so. My last card (7800GT) lasted 3 or 4 years. My current card (HD4870)should get another 2 years out of it, I hope.

Yeah then you see those arses playing games at the lowest settings just so they can see through the grass :rolleyes:

TerrorFirmer

cherryghost wrote: »

Yeah then you see those arses playing games at the lowest settings just so they can see through the grass :rolleyes:

or the ones that use the lowest detail and texture settings to get constant 100-120fps because they need it to maximise their mad skillz. ironically most of these people are totally average players.

Overheal

My Geforce 4 MX 440 NEEDED to be upgraded when I ended up buying 3 games which all required the Pixel Shader 2.0, which the MX series notoriously did not have. An FX 5500 did the trick at the time.

A GTX 260? You might not need to upgrade that for many years, until new games will flat out not run on the machine. Normally, for want of a specific function, like a pixel shader, or directX version or something.

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

or the ones that use the lowest detail and texture settings to get constant 100-120fps because they need it to maximise their mad skillz. ironically most of these people are totally average players.

I do love smoothness but not ridiculous smoothness of 100+ fps.

Anyway, this is coming from you

Mac daddy

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

I have missed is the 9th - it just didn't offer all that much in terms of performance over the 8th series.

Fully agree with you on this, I used to have a Evga 8800GTX what a card didn't even bother looking at the 9series when the Evga 55nm 260 were released I went for one of them instead.

Still using my 260Gtx rock solid card, might even pick up a second one next month.

kuban-83

Jad the last time for 2 years a ATI Radeon x1950, now I'm using a Geforce 9800 GT, and because I'm not a game maniac I will have it for the the next 2 years

christophicus

I keep my card for at least 2 Gens if possible. I am happy as long as I can play the game on medium settings with at least 60 FPS. Atm I have an 8800GTS 640, which I probably would keep till the new generation of cards come out, but I am moving to Germany, so I need to get a new PC, it'll probably have a GTX 260 in it. The 8800GTS is starting to show its age though. On Americas Army 3 I struggle to get a constant 30 FPS, even on minimum settings and a low res( 1024x768 ). Granted the game is pretty inefficient and buggy, but still, my mates with better cards are getting better framerates, so it looks like it would have been time to upgrade soon anyway.

TerrorFirmer

christophicus wrote: »

I keep my card for at least 2 Gens if possible. I am happy as long as I can play the game on medium settings with at least 60 FPS. Atm I have an 8800GTS 640, which I probably would keep till the new generation of cards come out, but I am moving to Germany, so I need to get a new PC, it'll probably have a GTX 260 in it. The 8800GTS is starting to show its age though. On Americas Army 3 I struggle to get a constant 30 FPS, even on minimum settings and a low res( 1024x768 ). Granted the game is pretty inefficient and buggy, but still, my mates with better cards are getting better framerates, so it looks like it would have been time to upgrade soon anyway.

that's definitely not due to the raw power of the 8800gts 640mb, you should be able to run it close to max settings. with gts 640mb sli i was still able to run crysis at 1920x1200 high-max settings pretty well, still great cards considering their age. at those settings you should be getting around 100+fps...it should be playable at pretty much any resolution at high-max settings.

christophicus

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

that's definitely not due to the raw power of the 8800gts 640mb, you should be able to run it close to max settings. with gts 640mb sli i was still able to run crysis at 1920x1200 high-max settings pretty well, still great cards considering their age. at those settings you should be getting around 100+fps...it should be playable at pretty much any resolution at high-max settings.

AA3 is just coded very poorly. Even on really high end systems it performs well below what it really should. I'm also thinking my CPU might be a limiting factor, e6400, that combined with the poor coding and memory leaks etc is probably putting alot of strain on it.