Topic: Graphics card market booming

[Pugnate]

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/10/27/graphics-market-booming-while

That's a lot of GPUs.

[MysterD]

Given some of these game's minimum requirements are these days, not much of a surprise that there's a rise in sales for GPU's.

Far Cry 2, ACPC, Crysis, Crysis: Warhead, Mass Effect PC, Fallout 3 PC = GF 6800.
AITD 2008 PC, Stranglehold PC = GF 7800.

Most newer games recommend a GF 8800.

But, yeah -- 110 million GPU's is A LOT!!! You got that right.

[Pugnate]

Crazy stuff. This is all GPUs on PCs, and not on consoles. Obviously the bulk of these are the onboard solutions... But what is interesting is that ATi was the biggest winner, and they have the lowest percentage of onboard solutions by far. What that means is their recent excellent showing with their HD 4XXX series paid off.

Also, I would love to hear how many high end gaming cards are out there currently.

[MysterD]

Crazy stuff. This is all GPUs on PCs, and not on consoles.

Yup.

Obviously the bulk of these are the onboard solutions... But what is interesting is that ATi was the biggest winner, and they have the lowest percentage of onboard solutions by far. What that means is their recent excellent showing with their HD 4XXX series paid off.

Also, I would love to hear how many high end gaming cards are out there currently.

Well, NVidia really hasn't come up with something major since the GeForce 8800 GT, in terms of great bang-for-your-buck. Once that dropped, everybody jumped aboard.

Most that upgraded to that -- like myself -- ain't gonna jump for another NVidia board for probably a while. For me, won't be until I buy a new PC, I'd guess.

I don't think right now anyone's gonna jump on board for a GeForce GTX 260 or 280 right now -- too costly.

EDIT:
Looks like the GeForce GT300 will be bringing DX 11 out late next year

[Quemaqua]

It doesn't surprise me at all since I recently strolled away from Newegg with a 4850 for $150, and one at 512MB with good clock speeds.  Something had to be up just beyond the odd economic stuff of late.

[sirean_syan]

Yeah. It seems like games recently made a big jump in system requirements and graphics cards are pretty much the most cost effective way to upgrade right now.

[MysterD]

Yeah. It seems like games recently made a big jump in system requirements and graphics cards are pretty much the most cost effective way to upgrade right now.

Yeah, Crysis pretty much ushered in this trend.

[scottws]

Crazy stuff. This is all GPUs on PCs, and not on consoles. Obviously the bulk of these are the onboard solutions... But what is interesting is that ATi was the biggest winner, and they have the lowest percentage of onboard solutions by far. What that means is their recent excellent showing with their HD 4XXX series paid off.

Also, I would love to hear how many high end gaming cards are out there currently.

Really?  It seems like every laptop has a Radeon Mobility in it these days.

[Cobra951]

Yeah. It seems like games recently made a big jump in system requirements and graphics cards are pretty much the most cost effective way to upgrade right now.

*Sigh*  You still need the right kind of slot and the right kind of PSU.  Even 6-gen boards are out of reach for me at the moment, even if I could find one that works in AGP 4x.

 

[Quemaqua]

That's the problem Sy's having.  I was going to give him my old board, but he can't even make use of it since it's PCIE, and with the way mobos have gone, getting a new one might mean swapping too much stuff to make it feasible.

[sirean_syan]

Yeah. I built this PC about 8 months before PCI slots really came into being so I'm out of luck on the upgrade. Still, I'm pretty happy how my system's held up. It's nearing four a half years old with one graphics card update (to a GeForce 6800) and filling up the RAM slots has managed to give me most of what I want out of games and work. The next upgrade is going to have to be a generally new system for me. I'm going to have to figure out how to get the money together for Dawn of War II, Starcraft II, Diablo... and I guess school. For regular stuff, the I feel like the computer may start slowing down more than I like soon as well as parts start breaking down. While that honestly might be a while, it didn't bode well that I had a SMART warning about my primary hard drive for a couple days last week.

[Cobra951]

How did you get a SMART warning?  Do you have some sort of diagnostics installed?  Will the OS do that unprompted.  I worry about the age of my system every day now.  If I lose it, it's like going deaf and blind.  Scares the hell out of me.

[Pugnate]

Really?  It seems like every laptop has a Radeon Mobility in it these days.

Well on Daily Tech they said the biggest onboards went to to Intel and then Nvidia.

Yeah. It seems like games recently made a big jump in system requirements and graphics cards are pretty much the most cost effective way to upgrade right now.

Well...  Aside from Crysis... the 2 year old 8800 series seems to be able to handle anything and everything, unless you are talking resolutions higher than 1680x1050?

To me, the 9xxxx series, the GTX xxx series, the HD 4xxx series appear vastly overpowered.

Yeah. I built this PC about 8 months before PCI slots really came into being so I'm out of luck on the upgrade. Still, I'm pretty happy how my system's held up. It's nearing four a half years old with one graphics card update (to a GeForce 6800) and filling up the RAM slots has managed to give me most of what I want out of games and work. The next upgrade is going to have to be a generally new system for me. I'm going to have to figure out how to get the money together for Dawn of War II, Starcraft II, Diablo... and I guess school. For regular stuff, the I feel like the computer may start slowing down more than I like soon as well as parts start breaking down. While that honestly might be a while, it didn't bode well that I had a SMART warning about my primary hard drive for a couple days last week.

Ha... so we will be welcoming you back to the gaming fold soon.

*Sigh*  You still need the right kind of slot and the right kind of PSU.  Even 6-gen boards are out of reach for me at the moment, even if I could find one that works in AGP 4x.

 

Yea, I got a 650watts PSU recently, and now I understand the new cards require 8 pin connections -- which it doesn't have. (Will need a converter).

[sirean_syan]

How did you get a SMART warning?  Do you have some sort of diagnostics installed?  Will the OS do that unprompted.  I worry about the age of my system every day now.  If I lose it, it's like going deaf and blind.  Scares the hell out of me.

It actually came up during the boot sequence. After all the system checks and such from the motherboard, a new screen popped up with the warning and didn't proceed until I pressed a key. I wasn't even aware this stuff existed until then. On the off chance it was a fluke, I rebooted and got the message again. Strangely enough, it stopped coming up two days later. Problem was I had already ordered a cheaper harddrive as a replacement (still an upgrade from the current one, but I don't need the space). I'm still assuming that the problem, whatever it was, could come back at anytime or become a full blown problem so I won't be returning the drive, but I didn't want to have to spend the money on it and I don't want to take the time right now to install it and do a proper reformat for it(which is something I've been putting off for a while too).

Far Cry isn't the only thing asking for a beefy system. I had trouble with Oblivion at a resolution above 800x600 and most anything in that league since then. To be far, Oblivion wasn't the most optimized game out there, but it was become a sign of things to come. I also imagine my CPU (a P4 3ghz) isn't helping much these days either.

[gpw11]

You can usually enable SMART warnings in your Bios ...assuming both your mother board and HDD support doing so.

[Cobra951]

Now I can't find the other thread where this was discussed.  The search function is no help for some reason.

Anyway, it hasn't been long since I first heard of this either.  But it has been in place for a number of years.  I don't know that it extends back far enough to cover my BIOS, though.  From what I read, it's a very good thing.  It monitors the performance of HDDs across several parameters.  If it's telling you that yours is below spec somewhere, you should get a replacement and clone the failing drive over to it.

[scottws]

What Cobra said.  If you are getting a S.M.A.R.T. warning, then one of your hard drives is running out of spec.  If you let it go, it will fail on you.

Get a new hdd ASAP and move everything to it or image the old one to it or something.  Don't let it slide or it'll bite you.  S.M.A.R.T. exists for a reason and it's to prepare you.