A question of upgrading PDF Print E-mail
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Written by huddy   
Tuesday, 24 November 2009 15:21
It used to be that it was only a matter of time before that newly purchased graphics card would soon be as useful as a chocolate fireguard. Newer, faster and better cards were always welcome and sometiomes with very big differences. I remember my 10 month old 5900GTX struggling like mad with Far Cry, and then again later my 9800GTX with FEAR. But things have changed and this hasn't been the case of recent years..
 
I’ve been looking at my system over the last few weeks scratching my head with boredom, wondering why I’ve not upgraded anything for a few years. In fact, my Geforce 8800gtx is now approaching its third anniversary and still going strong yet it can still play most of today’s titles at 1920 x 1200 with high settings. I’ve only noticed a slight pixel meltdown in Fallout 3, Broken Steel a few weeks back but other than that nothing that I would say warrants an immediate upgrade. With the introduction of AMD’s 58**  series and NVIDIA’s forthcoming Fermi along with other high-end products such as Lynnfield, one would think of these upgrades as an unprecedented leap forwards in terms of performance yet although the benchmark numbers are impressive they haven’t made the impact on real world gaming as one might believe.
 
Has the performance leap since the G80 been that difficult to follow up? Or are current games not stretching these older cards enough, let alone today’s current breed of pixel pushers. It seems until the launch of next generation consoles developers have no financial reason to be investing heavily in to the PC gaming market other than straight forward portals and that may not change for a while yet and understandably so. The market is incredibly niche and un-uniform. PC gamers may have along wait on their hands to see the likes of PC only games such Crysis.
 
So is there any point or need for buying newer faster equipment in this case?  I say no. Why change anything that works and still works well.  Sure the introduction of DirectX 11, Open Source for example, brings new dimensions to future possibilities but we’re not going to see this for a while yet. So why are the graphics cards manufacturers pushing out high end cards knowing too well it’s unlikely we’ll see them work to their full benefit? It's a bit like buying a performance car and sticking a brick under the accelerator pedal. Lots of potential performance but you're gaining nothing. The fact that I'm still using my 8800gtx only goes to prove this. It amazes me the number of mis-guided people who go out and buy these technologies based on the benchmarks and marketing hype they read. Following like sheep without really understanding what they are buying in terms of both value and performance. Of course, this all sound cynical  but all I’m saying is that at the moment, there is no need to spend £300 on a  card that performs no more than £100 one when gaming, not until the game developers come up with the goods.
 
I would like to see more analysis and benchmarks based on the differential performance of more mainstream upgrades as well as those in the same product class. For example, people are more likely to be upgrading from a Q6600 with a G80/G90 than an i920 4870. In a nutshell, I want to be seeing examples of how Fallout3 will perform between a 8800GTX and a 4870 using the same CPU. On paper, of course the new card will be faster but will i notice any difference? and thus my point.
 
With that all said, I’m missing all the fun of upgrading but at the same time, it’s been a welcome break on my wallet and I can now feed and cloth the kids.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 24 November 2009 15:36