Widescreen Gaming Forum

If two high end cards dont beat two high end last gen cards I would be severely disappointed.

I think you misread what I said there.

If DX11 is as good as they say it is, two top shelf single GPU DX11 cards may beat 3 top shelf single GPU DX10 cards.

...then again, even the modern Nvidia chips that scale better seem to lose much of their scalability with the 3rd card in tri SLI setups. It's part of the reason I'd prefer to go no more than dual SLI. Heck, I used to be a hardcore cynic of SLI period until the GT200 chips came along.

[quote]Depending on the prices they go with, I could see myself picking up an nVidia 300 series around the holidays. Probably the highest single GPU card, whatever that ends up being.

That is if they are priced reasonably, like $300 for the best single GPU card.

From the latest I've heard it won't be until at least Jan before Nvidia releases their 300 series and I doubt the top shelf single GPU card will be that cheap. The GTX 285 hasn't even come down to that yet and it's been out a while. I think the best case scenario will be $400 and my guess is it will be at least $500. Reason being it isn't just a new series, it's a new die size and DX11 capable. They will however have to keep it in reason because DX11 will bring hardware physics, AI and post processing rendering on the GPU, so Nvidia's CUDA won't be so unique at that point.

It's just not worth more than $300 to me unless games actually take advantage of DX11 in a much larger way than DX10. With consoles being the focus, I am not sure that will happen... then again if Win7 numbers are amazing as I feel they might be...

From all reports so far, DX11 will do WAY more for gaming than DX10 ever did or could. Despite all the high resource games out there, the fact is there's a good p[ercentage of the GPU that is starved for data, which DX11 will change. The link I provided pretty much explains it. Add to that smaller die size on the GT300 chips and you'll see factory OCs that combined with DX11 really fully make use of a GPUs potential.

Soon there will be better DX11 demos showing the differences too, but keep in mind much of the difference will be raw efficiency. The ability to add much more detail in tesselation and shaders with minimal FPS impact and parallel commands sent to the GPU via the drivers, whereas before multi threading was relegated mainly to the CPU. These are not just minor differences, they're huge.

Another plus is there should also be less of a concern about the CPU keeping up with high end SLI setups, perhaps requiring less OCing on the CPU, as has been typical on high end i7 SLI setups. With the GPU now being able to hardware render physics, AI and effects and handle multiple threads via DX11, there will be much less demand on the CPU.

[quote]If two high end cards dont beat two high end last gen cards I would be severely disappointed.

I think you misread what I said there.

If DX11 is as good as they say it is, two top shelf single GPU DX11 cards may beat 3 top shelf single GPU DX10 cards.

...then again, even the modern Nvidia chips that scale better seem to lose much of their scalability with the 3rd card in tri SLI setups. It's part of the reason I'd prefer to go no more than dual SLI. Heck, I used to be a hardcore cynic of SLI period until the GT200 chips came along.

Opps that was a typo :< But yeah tri and above SLI is not so great.

Opps that was a typo :< But yeah tri and above SLI is not so great.

Yeah not so great in performance OR driver stability and compatibility with games. Not really worth it IMO.

I found a site that did a review on the PC version of DiRT 2. Not sure how that's possible if the PC version of the game isn't releasing until Dec. I thought they weren't allowed to call them reviews unless they're talking about an actual retail version. Otherwise it would be a preview largely speculating about the retail version.

http://www.cheatcc.com/pc/rev/dirt2review2.html

I found a site that did a review on the PC version of DiRT 2. Not sure how that's possible if the PC version of the game isn't releasing until Dec. I thought they weren't allowed to call them reviews unless they're talking about an actual retail version. Otherwise it would be a preview largely speculating about the retail version.

http://www.cheatcc.com/pc/rev/dirt2review2.html

arg no !!!! no flashback please :(

arg no !!!! no flashback please :(

According to the review it's not needed for avid racers and of course you don't have to use it. In fact on the highest difficulty level there are none allowed anyway, so don't sweat it. :wink:

[quote]arg no !!!! no flashback please :(

According to the review it's not needed for avid racers and of course you don't have to use it. In fact on the highest difficulty level there are none allowed anyway, so don't sweat it. :wink:

well I didn't exactly meant that ... my answer was probably not detailed enough

for me flashback = GRID like gameplay which then means horrid and obvious computer cheating (think automatic catch-up)

and since there's no way to check out your own different scores for each race easily, it gets difficult to know if you did better or worse on a particular run ....

plus there's the fact that even if you're the best all around, at the highest difficulty settings, the computer will be right behind, which then means you're not allowed a single fault

ok GRID is actually fun ... at start but it gets old and the fact that I can't really improve myself ...

heh what you are discribing is called catch-up or rubber-banding AI ;)

But I will agree, catch-up is not fun. Which is the main reason for the flashback system in grid, it allows you to make major mistakes and not have to restart the race.