When will I *need* a Directx 9 card?

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:02:22 GMT, Darthy
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 15:01:28 +0000, Mark Morrison
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:01:53 GMT, Darthy
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 13:12:49 +0000, Mark Morrison
wrote:
The jump from a GeForce 2 to a GeForce 3 or higher is quite a big one
- significantly faster, more memory, T & L in hardware.

I bought a GeForce 3 Ti not long after they came out (I had a GeForce
256 at the time, IIRC) and it was a huge step up.

A GF4 is a bigger step above a GF3, but overall, 3~4 are the same
family.

My next card will be at least a GeForce 5 (or whatever brand name they
gave it) but that won't be for a good long while. The DE2 demo ran
fine, and looked lovely. Along with Thief 3, this is the most
graphically intensive game I'm looking forward to.

??? The GeForce 5 has been shipping since last Spring. They're called
5200 / 5600 / 5700 / 5800 / 5900. The GeForce 4 was called "4mx /
4Ti" - but only the "4Ti" were true GF4 cards.

No, the GeForce 5 had a brand name - Power FX ? GeForce Power ?
Sothing like that. I'm not talking about the generation of cards,
just what they were called.

Errr.... With all these posts you can't figure out that they're called
"FX" and that they are are "GeForce 5", thats why they are 5x00 in
their model names.

They added the FX tag - Whoopie.

My handle is Darthy.... if I put FX-Darthy, I'd still be the same
poster. (unless someone pretends to be me).

GeForce 256, GeForce 2, GeForce 3, GeForce 4, Geforce FX.

Spot the odd one out.

--

Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes !
They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses !
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What do they need such good eyesight for anyway ?
Bunnies ! Bunnies ! It must be BUNNIES !

Following prompt first aid from the medic "J.Clarke"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 14:15:54 -0500:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 02:20:58 +0000 (UTC)
Seahorse wrote:

Following prompt first aid from the medic "J.Clarke"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 06:29:56 -0500:


1. Don't cross post.

Wrong. Cross post to all relevant newsgroups. That is the way
USENET is intended to work and that way everybody sees the post,
everybody sees the responses, and there is no duplication of effort.

Bad nettiquette as you well know.

What ever gave you that idea?

It does cause duplication of effort.

Nope. It _eliminates_ duplication of effort.

Scattergun posting is pointless.

Crossposting is not "scattergun posting".

I believe you have crossposting confused with multiposting.

No see:

http://www.netlingo.com/inframes.cfm

2. Xmas 04.

Wrong again. You need it when you encounter an application that uses
features not present in DirectX versions earlier than 9, you want to
use those features, and you find that enabling them on a board
without hardware acceleration of those features (thus forcing use of
the software implementation that runs on the main CPU) causes an
unacceptable performance penalty.

That means that for some folks the answer is "never" while for others
it's "yesterday", and for the rest it's somewhere in between.

To the OP the answer is "spend the bucks for an upgrade when you
encounter something that causes you to notice the lack".

Considering the distinct lack of games that actually implement any DX9
features - 2 to date I believe, it would hardly seem worth the effort.

If one of those games is important to you then it is worth the effort.
Do not assume that your priorities are everyone's priorities.

By the time they become common place your card will be one if not 2
generations out of date. The mystery features you refer to are more
likely than not disabled rather than CPu rendered,

Some are, some aren't. The vertex shaders are CPU rendered while the
pixel shaders are disabled, for example.


With the scarcity of DX9 available games this point remains moot.

but like I said,
its not likely that he has a game requiring it hence my realistic time
estimate.

How do you know what he has? Do you read minds?

The law of probability.

DX9 comparability is like AGP X8 on a box. Designed to shift units
rather than provide anything useful today...
---------
Rgds Mike
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Against stupidity, even the Gods themselves struggle in vain.
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Following prompt first aid from the medic "Lenny"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained message On Mon, 24 Nov
2003 09:50:31 GMT:


Considering the distinct lack of games that actually implement any DX9
features - 2 to date I believe, it would hardly seem worth the effort.

Do note that not only games use DX9-level features.

Yes, but it would seem unlikely for any other purpose.

By the time they become common place your card will be one if not 2
generations out of date.

Don't forget, most DX9-compatible cards run older games faster than their
equivalent DX8 counterparts, so it is still an upgrade worth having in the
meanwhile seen from that perspective.

Blowing nearly £400 to play old games slightly quicker does not make a
lot of sense unless you graphics card is very old and underpowered.
If you have a very old and under=powered graphics card, the matching
low spec PC is unlikely to benefit from your new beast. You would
need to replace mobo, cpu etc etc.

If you have a fairly modern card then currently there is little point
jumping ship for a couple of games that might have prettier or more
realistic visuals IMHO, which brings me full circle.

its not likely that he has a game requiring it hence my realistic time
estimate.

I think it was more like an arbitrary time estimate. Do tell the reasoning
that led you to come up with xmas 04 as a date...

Grey hair mostly...
---------
Rgds Mike
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Against stupidity, even the Gods themselves struggle in vain.
- Goethe

WWW.Dead-Fish.Com - Deep Sea Daddies...
http://www.dvdprofiler.com/mycollect...s=the_Seahorse

Following prompt first aid from the medic "J.Clarke"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 14:21:55 -0500:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 02:22:55 +0000 (UTC)
Seahorse wrote:

Following prompt first aid from the medic "Tim Miser"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 23:45:17 GMT:

1. Don't cross post.

Why shouldn't one cross post?

Because it's rude. See below...

http://www.netlingo.com/right.cfm?term=cross%20post

And of course "netlingo.com" is authoritative.

You might try http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html, which (a) is an
official RFC and therefore authoritative, and (b) explains the
circumstances under which crossposting is and is not appropriate.

Which states:

When sending a message to more than one mailing list, especially
if the lists are closely related, apologize for cross-posting.

I didn't notice one in the original post.

Or were you referring to:

In NetNews parlance, "Posting" refers to posting a new article
to a group, or responding to a post someone else has posted.
"Cross-Posting" refers to posting a message to more than one
group. If you introduce Cross-Posting to a group, or if you
direct "Followup-To:" in the header of your posting, warn
readers! Readers will usually assume that the message was
posted to a specific group and that followups will go to
that group. Headers change this behavior.

The lack of warning is also evident.

You could read this:

http://livinginternet.com/u/ua_cross.htm

However, remember that excessive cross-posting is considered bad form
without a good reason, because it multiplies the traffic on the
Internet several times without adding any new content. In the extreme
case, if everybody cross-posted every message to every group, then
every group would look exactly the same!

You should cross-post only when really needed, and usually not to more
than three groups.


He posted to 5 groups.

IMHO cross posting sucks...
---------
Rgds Mike
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Against stupidity, even the Gods themselves struggle in vain.
- Goethe

WWW.Dead-Fish.Com - Deep Sea Daddies...
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Following prompt first aid from the medic "Tim Miser"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 08:05:26 GMT:

"Seahorse" wrote in message
.. .
Following prompt first aid from the medic "Tim Miser"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 23:45:17 GMT:

1. Don't cross post.

Why shouldn't one cross post?

Because it's rude. See below...

http://www.netlingo.com/right.cfm?term=cross%20post

I know what cross posting is thank you very much, but you didn't answer my
question which was WHY shouldn't one cross post. Because it's frowned upon?
Why is it frowned upon?

-Tim

I and many other, but not all users consider it bad practice as best
and ignorant at worst. Not everyone agrees on this, see two other
posts this evening going into more detail.

---------
Rgds Mike
Remove XXX to reply

Against stupidity, even the Gods themselves struggle in vain.
- Goethe

WWW.Dead-Fish.Com - Deep Sea Daddies...
http://www.dvdprofiler.com/mycollect...s=the_Seahorse

Following prompt first aid from the medic xyzzy
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained message On Mon, 24 Nov
2003 12:57:33 GMT:

Seahorse wrote:
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained message

1. Don't cross post.

Why shouldn't one cross post?

Because it's rude. See below...

http://www.netlingo.com/right.cfm?term=cross%20post

Problem is, those who know very little tend to make anectodal
generalizations.

It's like a tourist visiting a country and being told, at a certain
occasion, that crossing his legs when sitting is rude. He comes home
and tells everybody he knows his newfound wisdom: "When you go there,
never cross your legs. It's very rude. They'll chop them off!" It
becomes a myth (*).

There are certain circumstances where it may be considered rude and
others where it's not and anything in between. Also, no country is a
homogenous blob. There are certain to be people or regions that don't
care. Our tourist is simply trying to replace good judgement with bad
generalization. Never (!) do that.

(*) Only, in our case, it's worse because there's a positive feedback
cycle: Usenet newbies who have come to erroneously believe that all
cross posting is rude will themselves start shouting bloody murder
when they see a cross-post. Thus, the myth ends up being reality.


Come down off the fence...
---------
Rgds Mike
Remove XXX to reply

Against stupidity, even the Gods themselves struggle in vain.
- Goethe

WWW.Dead-Fish.Com - Deep Sea Daddies...
http://www.dvdprofiler.com/mycollect...s=the_Seahorse

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:11:26 GMT, Darthy
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 02:03:03 GMT, "Max Longman"
wrote:

If you want to turn on FSAA and AF in any of the latest games, you
-will- need a -powerful- dx9 card, if only for the speed.

PLUS a powerful processor, don't think you'll see much of an improvement with any
Ati card over a 4200 if your still using an old Athlon2000XP.

Yes... and when you upgrade to an AMD 64... faster still.


AMD 64FX of course...............

John Lewis

My AMD 2500 is far faster with SETI @ HOME than my AMD 2000... about
twice. But in general usage - about 35% faster.


--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:24:09 +0000, Mark Morrison
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:51:48 +0200, Lynley James
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 21:30:40 +0000, Mark Morrison
wrote:


That's the one ! GeForce FX.

Anyway, my next card will probably be a 256mb FX, at least, but that's
some way off.

Half-Life 2, perhaps, depending upon how it runs on my system.

Problem is, I'll probably have to get a new CPU and motherboard at the
same time, as my 2000 Athlon would really push a FX to full capacity.

From what I have read you may be better off with an ATI card. The
FX's aren't such a great leap over the GF4's, at least up to the
5800's. Shop around first, I know that ATI have fixed the driver
support problems they used to have and I know a couple of nVidia fans
who have switched to Radeon's.

I have a GF 3 atm, so going to a GF 5 will be a big enough leap, I
think.

Sure, but it may not give you the performance you expect. I'm just
saying do a bit of research first as the ATi's might be the better
buy. Me I have a GF4 4200Ti and it beats the pants off the 5200.

Lynley

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:24:09 +0000, Mark Morrison
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:51:48 +0200, Lynley James
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 21:30:40 +0000, Mark Morrison
wrote:


That's the one ! GeForce FX.

Anyway, my next card will probably be a 256mb FX, at least, but that's
some way off.

Half-Life 2, perhaps, depending upon how it runs on my system.

Problem is, I'll probably have to get a new CPU and motherboard at the
same time, as my 2000 Athlon would really push a FX to full capacity.

From what I have read you may be better off with an ATI card. The
FX's aren't such a great leap over the GF4's, at least up to the
5800's. Shop around first, I know that ATI have fixed the driver
support problems they used to have and I know a couple of nVidia fans
who have switched to Radeon's.

I have a GF 3 atm, so going to a GF 5 will be a big enough leap, I
think.

Yep... you think... Do your home work. GF5 may not be a leap unless
you pay for it. $200



--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:25:22 +0000, Mark Morrison
wrote:

They added the FX tag - Whoopie.

My handle is Darthy.... if I put FX-Darthy, I'd still be the same
poster. (unless someone pretends to be me).

GeForce 256, GeForce 2, GeForce 3, GeForce 4, Geforce FX.

Spot the odd one out.

GeForce256 is AKA GF1 or "GF"

GF-FX is still a 5 series.

whatever.

At this point, you can stop cross posting.


--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!