MDK22 said:
Not to mention the fact that you really should go back and look at the scores instead of just qouting what you read at the end of the review.
Well, the bottom line is, most of the reviewers conclude that if you're using an AGP system, and want to upgrade to either the X850 or the 7800GS, you should definitely get the latter,
and don't you think they also read the scores before arriving to that conclusion? What's your point?
trog100 said:
one thing that puzzles me about this SM3 stuff is that being as we all know ati and nvidia love to slag each other off.. how come SM3 has only just become a big plus point.. how come nvidia havnt been slagging ati off for not having it when they did and ati didnt..
now they both have it.. its something we must have.. when only nvidia had it.. it never got a mention.. ???
the nvidia 6000 range had it.. the ati x800 range didnt have it.. what kept nvidia mum if it had something so bloody wonderfull..????
i think the hidden downside to SM3 is all the stuff it can do will take lots more horsepower.. to me its a "tommorow" thing and the type of cards we are talking about wont be up to the job when it really does start getting used a lot..
trog
Funny you would mention that, as a matter of fact, if memory serves me right, nVidia did promote SM3.0 from the day they released the series 6 cards, but both Ati video card owners (myself included) and hardware review sites downplayed it, and rightfuly so, as back then, there where no games that made use of it. But nVidia promoted it using catch phrases like:
Does Your GPU Have the Power of 3?
Anyway, I find it ironic that even though Ati carefuly avoided the fact that their flagship cards didn't support SM3.0, as soon as Ati got the R520 based cards, their new motto would be "Shader Model 3 Done Right"
yogurt_21 said:
because the early 6800's couldn't handle sm3 with aa and af, which made the technology pointless. so now that the 7800 series is powerful enough to run them and ati has a few cards also powerful enough to handle it it becoms an issue. but honestly when running 3d06 I can't determine a difference between the sm2.0 hdr and the sm3.0 hdr.
Would you care to provide a link that proves what you're saying? right now I play all my games at highest detail, at the highest resolution my monitor supports, 8X AA, 2X FSAA, and some of them do use SM3.0 and I don't see my video card (a series 6 nVidia video card mind you) being slower in these games than in SM2.0 games, where do you get the notion that SM3.0 make 3D applications slower?
Didn't you read the SM3.0 specifications I posted before? or the comparison in benchmarks that use SM2.0 path and SM3.0 path? because in case you didn't notice, SM3.0 is actually
faster and more efficient than SM2.0, allowing for especial effects that would be too slow or even imposibble to render using SM2.0.
Please show me a respected hardware site that proves the contrary.
I think that what you're trying to say is that the first cards with SM3.0 support will default to using SM2.0 rendering path in future games or something like that, well let me tell you that in my experience, that is not the case, in fact you sound exactly the way nVidia fanboys sounded back when Ati released the first SM2.0, Direct X 9 video card, the R300 based 9700Pro, back then, M$ hadn't even released DX9 for download, and yet Ati already had a video card that met the specification. I remember nVidia fanboys trashing the card, saying that by the time SM2.0 games would arrive, the R300 would be too slow to render SM2.0 only effects, even though every respected hardware site praised Ati, and recomended the 9700Pro as an upgrade because of the fact that it was a future proof product when compared with what nVidia was offering at the time.
Using your logic, you would rather have a SM2.0 video card rendering a native SM3.0 game with degraded IQ, than having a bit slower but much better looking game when using the SM3.0 render path, cause that's exactly what happened when Valve released HL2, a lot of ppl who bought "faster" nVidia cards like the FX5900 had to default to Direct X 8.1 rendering to get some decent framerates, because of their faulty SM2.0 architecture, while venerable SM2.0 cards like the 9700 allowed it's users to play HL2 in all its glory, funny how history repeats itself, don't you think?
So maybe I won't be playing those games with AA, FSAA enabled, but at least I will get all of the effects most SM2.0 video cards will be missing; and if you think about it, after all, who would prefer to play HL2 with DX8.1 effects, instead of DX9 effects, even without FSAA and AA?
Anyway, arguing in this thread is pointless, the person who posted the original message hasn't posted in a long time, so I think that by now, he has already picked one of the two cards anyway...