What GPU is most future-proved for a new PC ?

Hi there,

I have a 2 year-old PC with an ATI HD3870 videocard in it which I am
using for gaming (first person shooters). I am going to assemble a new
PC by the end of the year. Understandably, I want to make it a future-
proved as much as possible.

And the future is, as I gathered from reading the news, is coming
DirectX 11, which is just an extention of DX10. No games are
supporting DX10 exclusively yet, and it is not a fact yet that the
games will go a road of DX10/DX11.

The other area of concern is PhysX capability of the nVidia card. ATI
cards do not have it and are not going to have it in the nearest
incarnations... again, it is not clear yet whether the future gaming
will go the PhysX road.

I was also thinking getting Windows 7 on my new computer.

Anyway, my question is, what card (from nVidia or AMD/ATI) should I
get ? Should I postpone getting a new computer, so that to get a much
more future-prooved configuration.

Antonio Huerta wrote:
Hi there,

I have a 2 year-old PC with an ATI HD3870 videocard in it which I am
using for gaming (first person shooters). I am going to assemble a new
PC by the end of the year. Understandably, I want to make it a future-
proved as much as possible.

And the future is, as I gathered from reading the news, is coming
DirectX 11, which is just an extention of DX10. No games are
supporting DX10 exclusively yet, and it is not a fact yet that the
games will go a road of DX10/DX11.

The other area of concern is PhysX capability of the nVidia card. ATI
cards do not have it and are not going to have it in the nearest
incarnations... again, it is not clear yet whether the future gaming
will go the PhysX road.

I was also thinking getting Windows 7 on my new computer.

Anyway, my question is, what card (from nVidia or AMD/ATI) should I
get ? Should I postpone getting a new computer, so that to get a much
more future-prooved configuration.


The situation with DX11 is that neither company has a set design yet,
it's too early. Buy for the now, videocards are ALWAYS changing, but
buy what you can afford and have fun with. Don't go overboard, spend
500-700 on an SLI setup and then be disappointed when you have to
upgrade 18 months later. A good spot right now is the GTX275 and 260.

There's no such thing as future proof.

With physics implementations, you shouldn't have to worry. The way
that's heading both companies are setup to adopt an open standard
(OpenCL) if all else fails. A proprietary Havok won't do AMD much good,
and so long as they refuse to use Physx (even though they could if they
wanted to), means that in the long run, both API's will be ported to run
as general code through OpenCL. I suspect you'll see a lot of
flexibility in that area. Probably in the form of wrappers and driver
level translation.

Get a GTX260. Get Win7 64-bit in October. Have fun.

A minimal investment in a decent single GPU configuration will more than
pay off when you can upgrade down the road without breaking the bank.

deimos said the following on 04/05/2009 02:26:
Antonio Huerta wrote:
Hi there,

I have a 2 year-old PC with an ATI HD3870 videocard in it which I am
using for gaming (first person shooters). I am going to assemble a new
PC by the end of the year. Understandably, I want to make it a future-
proved as much as possible.

And the future is, as I gathered from reading the news, is coming
DirectX 11, which is just an extention of DX10. No games are
supporting DX10 exclusively yet, and it is not a fact yet that the
games will go a road of DX10/DX11.

The other area of concern is PhysX capability of the nVidia card. ATI
cards do not have it and are not going to have it in the nearest
incarnations... again, it is not clear yet whether the future gaming
will go the PhysX road.

I was also thinking getting Windows 7 on my new computer.

Anyway, my question is, what card (from nVidia or AMD/ATI) should I
get ? Should I postpone getting a new computer, so that to get a much
more future-prooved configuration.


The situation with DX11 is that neither company has a set design yet,
it's too early. Buy for the now, videocards are ALWAYS changing, but
buy what you can afford and have fun with. Don't go overboard, spend
500-700 on an SLI setup and then be disappointed when you have to
upgrade 18 months later. A good spot right now is the GTX275 and 260.

There's no such thing as future proof.

With physics implementations, you shouldn't have to worry. The way
that's heading both companies are setup to adopt an open standard
(OpenCL) if all else fails. A proprietary Havok won't do AMD much good,
and so long as they refuse to use Physx (even though they could if they
wanted to), means that in the long run, both API's will be ported to run
as general code through OpenCL. I suspect you'll see a lot of
flexibility in that area. Probably in the form of wrappers and driver
level translation.


I thought the havok implementation was set up using opencl from the off,
thus meaning any graphics card could (in theory) accelerate on the GPU?
This would mean only physx is proprietary as only nvidia cards allowed
to use it (nvidia may offer access for a lot of $$$ I suppose).

I'm sure that's what AMD have been trumpeting about (being an open
implimentation, not using stream). I could have misread of course.

Get a GTX260. Get Win7 64-bit in October. Have fun.

A minimal investment in a decent single GPU configuration will more than
pay off when you can upgrade down the road without breaking the bank.



--
Les

Visit Maximum PC and read about Sparkle Introduces 2GB, Single-GPU Graphics Card. ... introduced what it claims is the world's most powerful single-GPU graphics card. ... (Also whatever ones are proven to work with linux out of the box, ... 8 NEW COMMENT(S) | 8 TOTAL COMMENTS. KICK ASS OFFERS. THIS MONTH's ISSUE

Les Steel wrote:
deimos said the following on 04/05/2009 02:26:
Antonio Huerta wrote:
Hi there,

I have a 2 year-old PC with an ATI HD3870 videocard in it which I am
using for gaming (first person shooters). I am going to assemble a new
PC by the end of the year. Understandably, I want to make it a future-
proved as much as possible.

And the future is, as I gathered from reading the news, is coming
DirectX 11, which is just an extention of DX10. No games are
supporting DX10 exclusively yet, and it is not a fact yet that the
games will go a road of DX10/DX11.

The other area of concern is PhysX capability of the nVidia card. ATI
cards do not have it and are not going to have it in the nearest
incarnations... again, it is not clear yet whether the future gaming
will go the PhysX road.

I was also thinking getting Windows 7 on my new computer.

Anyway, my question is, what card (from nVidia or AMD/ATI) should I
get ? Should I postpone getting a new computer, so that to get a much
more future-prooved configuration.


The situation with DX11 is that neither company has a set design yet,
it's too early. Buy for the now, videocards are ALWAYS changing, but
buy what you can afford and have fun with. Don't go overboard, spend
500-700 on an SLI setup and then be disappointed when you have to
upgrade 18 months later. A good spot right now is the GTX275 and 260.

There's no such thing as future proof.

With physics implementations, you shouldn't have to worry. The way
that's heading both companies are setup to adopt an open standard
(OpenCL) if all else fails. A proprietary Havok won't do AMD much
good, and so long as they refuse to use Physx (even though they could
if they wanted to), means that in the long run, both API's will be
ported to run as general code through OpenCL. I suspect you'll see a
lot of flexibility in that area. Probably in the form of wrappers and
driver level translation.


I thought the havok implementation was set up using opencl from the off,
thus meaning any graphics card could (in theory) accelerate on the GPU?
This would mean only physx is proprietary as only nvidia cards allowed
to use it (nvidia may offer access for a lot of $$$ I suppose).

I'm sure that's what AMD have been trumpeting about (being an open
implimentation, not using stream). I could have misread of course.

Get a GTX260. Get Win7 64-bit in October. Have fun.

A minimal investment in a decent single GPU configuration will more
than pay off when you can upgrade down the road without breaking the
bank.



--
Les

Havok originated in software, it's the exact same type of API Physx is,
except that currently Havok is software only. Intel/AMD have yet to
release a version that can run via "Stream" processors on an AMD GPU.
Porting it to OpenCL accomplishes the hardware acceleration end in the
same way that running code in parallel on a GPU has benefits. Also, for
the most part Physx is free (to use):

http://supportcenteronline.com/ics/s...sp?deptID=1949

But licensing probably complicates things a bit if a vendor wanted to
provide support for it.

Apple's acceptance of OpenCL and their close ties with Nvidia means NV
will most certainly support OpenCL as a standard, but OpenCL and Havok
are not synonymous; you don't need one to have the other.

deimos said the following on 06/05/2009 23:12:
Les Steel wrote:
deimos said the following on 04/05/2009 02:26:
Antonio Huerta wrote:
Hi there,

I have a 2 year-old PC with an ATI HD3870 videocard in it which I am
using for gaming (first person shooters). I am going to assemble a new
PC by the end of the year. Understandably, I want to make it a future-
proved as much as possible.

And the future is, as I gathered from reading the news, is coming
DirectX 11, which is just an extention of DX10. No games are
supporting DX10 exclusively yet, and it is not a fact yet that the
games will go a road of DX10/DX11.

The other area of concern is PhysX capability of the nVidia card. ATI
cards do not have it and are not going to have it in the nearest
incarnations... again, it is not clear yet whether the future gaming
will go the PhysX road.

I was also thinking getting Windows 7 on my new computer.

Anyway, my question is, what card (from nVidia or AMD/ATI) should I
get ? Should I postpone getting a new computer, so that to get a much
more future-prooved configuration.


The situation with DX11 is that neither company has a set design yet,
it's too early. Buy for the now, videocards are ALWAYS changing, but
buy what you can afford and have fun with. Don't go overboard, spend
500-700 on an SLI setup and then be disappointed when you have to
upgrade 18 months later. A good spot right now is the GTX275 and 260.

There's no such thing as future proof.

With physics implementations, you shouldn't have to worry. The way
that's heading both companies are setup to adopt an open standard
(OpenCL) if all else fails. A proprietary Havok won't do AMD much
good, and so long as they refuse to use Physx (even though they could
if they wanted to), means that in the long run, both API's will be
ported to run as general code through OpenCL. I suspect you'll see a
lot of flexibility in that area. Probably in the form of wrappers
and driver level translation.


I thought the havok implementation was set up using opencl from the
off, thus meaning any graphics card could (in theory) accelerate on
the GPU? This would mean only physx is proprietary as only nvidia
cards allowed to use it (nvidia may offer access for a lot of $$$ I
suppose).

I'm sure that's what AMD have been trumpeting about (being an open
implimentation, not using stream). I could have misread of course.

Get a GTX260. Get Win7 64-bit in October. Have fun.

A minimal investment in a decent single GPU configuration will more
than pay off when you can upgrade down the road without breaking the
bank.



--
Les

Havok originated in software, it's the exact same type of API Physx is,
except that currently Havok is software only. Intel/AMD have yet to
release a version that can run via "Stream" processors on an AMD GPU.
Porting it to OpenCL accomplishes the hardware acceleration end in the
same way that running code in parallel on a GPU has benefits. Also, for
the most part Physx is free (to use):

http://supportcenteronline.com/ics/s...sp?deptID=1949

But licensing probably complicates things a bit if a vendor wanted to
provide support for it.

Apple's acceptance of OpenCL and their close ties with Nvidia means NV
will most certainly support OpenCL as a standard, but OpenCL and Havok
are not synonymous; you don't need one to have the other.

I meant ATI's recent GPU implementation and hardware acceleration (of
Havok)was using openCL, not Havok as it began (and is, in terms of
physics middleware)!
--
Les

Antonio Huerta submitted this idea :
Hi there,

I have a 2 year-old PC with an ATI HD3870 videocard in it which I am
using for gaming (first person shooters). I am going to assemble a new
PC by the end of the year. Understandably, I want to make it a future-
proved as much as possible.

That's a tricky one. In mid 2003 I purchased parts for a new gaming
rig. They were all high-end components and they included the highest
spec gfx card. It was my gfx card (an FX5900 Ultra) that became dated
the quickest. About when the game Fear was the hot favourite was when
I really noticed this card is going to be a poor performer for future
titles. So, I'm under no illusion that, at best, the GTX295 I have now
will look rather feeble in two to three years. Just keep that in mind
when choosing your graphics card. It will lose its luster the fastest.

Tony.

--
email: fierce,guppy@paradise,net,nz
Christchurch, New Zealand.