Anyone in a dilema of wanting to buy a video card badly but not sure if they should wait. I mean should I buy now or wait? Whats coming out in the near furture and how soon? I have a pretty decent system now but my video cards are old. Then when the new video cards come out will I be in a dilema of "shoudl I but that gtx 275, 280, 295" now that they are so cheap.. ARGH!! I go crazy.

Anyways this is what Im running.

#2 PNY XLR 8800 GT 512  X2 RUNNING BOTH IN SLI

ASUS MOTHERBOARD M4N82 DELUXE TRI SLI

PHENOM 955

4 GIGS OF MEMORY 5-5-5-15 (G.SKIL) (8500) 1066

RAZER B ARACUDA SOUND CARD

WESTERN DIGITAL 640 MB 7200 RPM SATA 32MB CACHE

ANTEC P183 GUNMETAL CASE

ANTEX TRU POWER 650 WATT

23 INCH HANNSPREE WIDE SCREEN MONITOR 5MS 15:000:1 CONTTAST 1980 X 1080 PRIMARY

21 INCH GATEWAY LCD (SECONDARY)

The memory on the cards are  weak,a single GTX 295 will best your duals hands down,some will argue that the GTX mem is weak coming in at under 2 gigs but this is all relative and functional memory and much too technical to go into.

BUT

Don't get suckerd into this myth that 3 seperate GPUs and 2 GPU's are going to give you some massive benefit,most people dont run their games @2560  the majority right now run at 1280x1024 and 1680x1050 you WILL SEE A MINIMIM benefit to running multi gpus somewhere around 8-16 fps when running at standard resolutions, is this really worth seven to fourteen hundred dollars then yes look into it.

If you don't run a resolution of 2560 its kinda pointless to run dual gpus and,ridiculous if you do imo.If you have the money by all meens have at it but most of us don't and that xtra 400 to 600 dollars can be spent on things that will expand performance like memory and cpu.

10.1 DX  is another gimmick let the standard make itself and when 10.0 games are standard then I can see the the standard being expanded,as of now dx9.0 games make the majority of the market .

But hey some people they just have money to burn or no concept of the value of a dollar and for that capitalism thanks you ;)

Long answer above

Short answer yes,a GTX295 or Radeon 4870 will be a significant improvement over your dual 8800's and should keep you future proof for around 2 years.

I would wait 2 more months for the ATI 5870 DX11 cards. Even if they are too expensive for you to buy they will drive down the price of the DX10 cards a lot. DX11 will be adopted by devs a lot quicker than DX10 was, DX10 got turned into a gimmick API because nvidia wasn't ready to support the features that are now going to show up in DX11 instead.

I would totally agree with noquarter here. I would estimate once the dx11 cards come out you can grab the 295 for 2-300. Toatally worht it for me but im working on a small pc budget. If you want to spend 4-500 on a card now i would save that cash and get the new cards. 

so do you think ONLY a 295 gtx can beat  2 8800 gt 512 in sli? or would the 260, 275, 285 do the same hands down?

Here's a few links i found useful when searching for real numbers for your comparison that might help you decide on a video card. www.yougamers.com/hardware/stats/3dmark06/priceandperformance/

www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/Sum-of-FPS-Benchmarks-Totals,795.html

Now the first link isnt so helpful because benchmarks arent very accurate whan it comes to actually playing the game. Not sure how accurate the second link is but it puts the 8800 in sli right next to a 260 but the 280 a little ways in the lead, nothing on the 290s there though :(

Originally posted by noquarter

I would wait 2 more months for the ATI 5870 DX11 cards. Even if they are too expensive for you to buy they will drive down the price of the DX10 cards a lot. DX11 will be adopted by devs a lot quicker than DX10 was, DX10 got turned into a gimmick API because nvidia wasn't ready to support the features that are now going to show up in DX11 instead.

This.  Wait a few months, m8, gfx card prices will fall even lower for current gen cards.  Expect a 4870 to go for ~100 US in Sep/Oct.

EDIT: Also DX11 will have some backward compatibility with DX10 cards.  I don't have the link handy but iirc I read it straight from Microsoft's site recently.

I dont normally read these hardware forums, maximumpc.com is more my cup of tea BUT seeing as how Im here, the popular thing over there with their latest builds/upgrades is buying two 4890s and putting them in crossfire.

Although I like Nvidia, I find there boards to usually be overpriced.

btw 2 4890s will easily beat a gtx 295
and come in about 100 dollars cheaper.

EDIT--My bad, Im not sure if your mobo can run crossfire.
Checking, ----Edit Guess not.

I love this card though

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127439

Not a bad price either :)

got to remeber something though, even the best games out right now dont even touch the capabilities of top end GPUs.  so spending hundreds on a 295 is kind of pointless imo seeing as youll never use the total capabilitiy of the card.  but we all want the biggest and best, im guilty of that as well. 

alot depends to ono how long you want until you upgrade again so a 295 or similiar should have you set for at least 2-3 years.

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Originally posted by wheelman73
got to remeber something though, even the best games out right now dont even touch the capabilities of top end GPUs.  so spending hundreds on a 295 is kind of pointless imo seeing as youll never use the total capabilitiy of the card.  but we all want the biggest and best, im guilty of that as well. 
 
alot depends to ono how long you want until you upgrade again so a 295 or similiar should have you set for at least 2-3 years.

---

The best "MMOs" wont touch those cards.

But the best "Games"? Beg to differ.
Crysis being the most obvious choice.

I think I said this before in another one of your topics.  Don't buy right now.  Its not the time to replace 2 8800GT, you won't benefit from the trade-up.  Even if you want to always play games on max, you should still skip every other generation of video cards.  Considering nVidia didn't make a stride with the 9xxx cards, the generation to skip is the GTX2xx series.  Wait until January and get the GTX3xx card.

Imo, just wait for the 3xx series, your rig as it is now should run all the games just fine.

Originally posted by noquarter

I would wait 2 more months for the ATI 5870 DX11 cards. Even if they are too expensive for you to buy they will drive down the price of the DX10 cards a lot. DX11 will be adopted by devs a lot quicker than DX10 was, DX10 got turned into a gimmick API because nvidia wasn't ready to support the features that are now going to show up in DX11 instead.

this. the 4890 should drop in price when the dx11 cards hit.