A PC Gaming Rant....

i think you over-estimate how good cards are these days. at one time, the voodoo 3 was the fastest on the market -- certainly you wouldn't expect that you could play half-life 2 anti-aliased, etc. just because the knob is there and you've got what is currently the best on the market doesn't mean you should feel compelled to turn it to 11. (incidentally, my gf6600gt runs the stress test in counter-strike with everything maxed out at 95 fps -- that is, when it's not having memory problems...)

pretend they didn't bother implementing aniso filtering and anti-aliasing and turn them off. that's what you want, isn't it?

computers only go so fast. if that's no fast enough, there's not much you can do about it.

 

If that's the case, why bother spending $500 on a new video card every 12-18 months when a new one comes out?

The whole point of my rant is exactly the statement you made above.

We're arguing two separate sides here.

In a world where you can pirate and download everything for free, video games are the only thing I actually PAY for, so that I may in some way support their growth. Im not against them, but I shouldnt have to "pretend" that features that are SUPPOSED to be fully implemented and supported have to be turned off, or non-existant. The whole point of paying for a $500 card is so that you can take advantage of these features.

EDIT: To also add to your statement, I would never try to play HL2 on a Voodoo3. And yes, I at one time owned that one as well. It is just unrealistic. On the opposite side of the coin though, is a new card that should have no problems running this game (which is doesnt really), but there are other better examples, such as FarCry.

 

AGAIN, the entire point of the thread is, YOURE EXACTLY RIGHT! Shouldnt games be designed around architecture that can actually take advantage of every feature of the game?

 

on what do you base your opinion that a 9800 xt "should have no problems running this game"? are you suggesting that they were lazy and didn't optimize the engine?

a game is generally developed over the course of many months. when they begin, they have to aim at what they expect people will actually be using. they try to make sure it runs well on the expected mid-level card. i'm glad they add the extra bells and whistles for those with better cards. and i'm glad they add even more bells and whistles for people who might pick up tomorrow's better card. i'd be really upset if i bought a $500 dollar card and only had quake 3 looking stuff to on it.

if you ran out and bought a $500 card every 12 months, you'd be rewarded by having a better gaming experience than somebody who buys a $200 card every 2 years. if that's not good enough for you, then you shouldn't do it.

 

This makes sense. I'm glad they do as well. No complaints. BUT, the game never hits the shelves before serious QA testing is done, on a variety of systems; mid-to-high end. They know, before it goes to publishing, how it is going to run in the current market.

This is more along the lines of what I'm ranting about. Maybe not so much to the extreme of the quakeIII looking stuff example you use, but along those same lines, yes.

I do buy a new card every time they come out. Voodoo3, to Matrox cards when they were hot, to nVidia cards, including the Ti4600 Ultra, to now the 9800XT. But I'd have a hard time recommending someone getting a 9800XT over the 9600XT ($450 vs $250) because they will both more than likely perform along the same lines in the current market.

 

you'd never have any inovation if that was how it worked. or worse, you'd be FORCED to buy a $500 graphics card every 6 months to play the latest games. people don't have that kind of money to throw around at computer games.

look at programmable shaders. most games are going with per-pixel lighting calculations now with programmable pixel shaders as the basis. that requires nv30+ and r300+ gpus respectively at the very minimum. so anybody with a geforce 4 or radeon 8500 is sol if they want to play these games?

and what about texture memory? should all cards just go with 32mb? i mean, if a game is not going to have a "high quality texture setting" to avoid upsetting people with cards that don't have enough texture memory, what's the alternative?

keep in mind your 9800xt 256mb is really nice right now, but in a year, most people will have that card and in another year, it'll be built into motherboards as the "base level" of graphics support. cards will have 1gb and the "option" of aniso filtering will seem quaint. but it'll be nice to still be able to fire up half-life 2 and not puke. i wish the same was true of games like total anihilation and diablo 2.

 

i'm still a little confused. what is your solution to the problem?

 

Wouldnt you love to run d2 in 16x12x32-bit?

I totally get what you're saying and we're on the exact same page as far as things go and where they're headed for the future. And a year from now, the 9800xt will be 2 years old and obsolete, AND IM TOTALLY OK WITH THAT! BUT! When I buy the next generation card, I expect to be able to take full advantage of whatever games are available on the market.

 

Then you're setting yourself up for failure.

[broken record]game engines are designed to be forward thinking in respects to hardware, so they can be licensed to other game developers for years to come, providing a steady revenue stream to the initial developers[/broken record]

 

Yo Krack, you ever run the 3DMark05 benchmark for that 9800XT? (http://futuremark.com/download/?3dmark05.shtml) It's got heavy duty DX9c graphics that will really tax your system. I'm curious to see what you get with your card versus my 6800nu. Granted, I unlocked the 4 locked pipes and the additional vertex shader, but it's still a 128meg (256-bit) card. Try it and let me know how you do...depending on how much I raise the clock frequencies, I can get somewhere between 3,600 and 4,100.