I don't get some of the logic. If you were buying a video card right this minute and were looking at the $400-450 price range you'd pay nearly the exact same price to buy an X1950 XTX that doesn't always outperform the 8800GTS, and yet in XX months time would be completely outclassed when DX10 titles hit?

The 8800GTS is beating the single XTX card in FEAR, Prey, Q4, and Far Cry and both are priced EXACTLY the same right now.

Add to that the fact that the card now supports HDR + AA and I think its hard to argue too much in favour of buying an older X1950 XTX card versus a DX10 capable GTS. (newegg shows the XTX card ranging from $409 to $449).

My advice is that if you are unwilling to pay for the GTS because of concerns about when its power will become useful, then don't buy any video card right now above $250US. Stick with the older X1800 and X1900GT/GTO class cards, or the 7800GT class and wait until the titles come out, then buy a price reduced GTS or whatever equivalet G80/R600 card is available at the time that fits your budget. For goodness' sake don't plunk down $450 on last year's DX9 flagship.

I still find it ironic when ATI comes out with new technology that nobody can use they are praised for their forward looking planning. When NVIDIA does it the ATI fans complain about how overpriced the unused features are and how it will be months before it is worth buying .

This message was edited by Redemption on Nov 08 2006.

quote Tweaker

Why didnt Neo oc the E6400 to remove more of the cpu bottleneck on the card to see if it REALLY brings out the performance of the card?

The 6400 was oc'd to 2.66Ghz, though technically I think we should have pushed it as far as it would go (>3Ghz) b/c now we're going to have to do that for the GTX review.

X1950PRO would be a good stopgap to see how R600 stacks up against the G80. Now that NVIDIA have shown their cards, ATI has a chance to try to one-up them so it would definitely be interesting.