How long would a good graphic card be good for

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kermit

New Member
I'm thinking of getting a new video: eVGA 256-A8-N344-AX Geforce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X Video Card.

In terms of video games how long would this keep me at high-end and then mid-end before I needed to replace it? Ideally, once the graphic card was considered low-end I would replace it again.

Basically: How long would would a good graphic card be good for (years)?
 
2, maybe 3 years?

Yet the next few years are iffy, because many new things have come out, or are going to come out (ie. DDR2, PCI-E, Windows Vista, more 64 bit processors, etc) which may or may not affect how useful your card is.

That card in particular I would say would last the 3 years at least though.
 
So a decent graphic card costs about a $100 a year then if the return for high end performance is about 3 years?
 
games are mostly using about 128 mb on the cards right now, meaning games havent come out for use of all 256 mb yet. i think you can count on 3 years til its mid-end.
 
the mb's it has isnt the real issue thatll make it obsolete.... and 3 years is stretching it. like the dude said earlier, in these next months/years new designs and hardware competely different from previous will come out. it just wont be boosting pipelines and clock speeds anymore.
 
If you can look back to around three years ago, you can see that one of the big boys was the ATI 9700 Pro. This was real high-end for then, and now, it would probably struggle on quite a few of the newer games. I'd probably say plan on that 6800GT lasting you for a year and a half to two years.
 
3 or 4 years will it last. my old M440 lasted 4 years.. and it could un everything. but now battlefield 2 didnt support it anymore.

as said.. the hardware is going fast. however, the software isnt.
i mean. somone who bought a 6800GT half a year ago, still can run the games released now on the highest settings. in the time i bought the mx440.. half a year after its release it coldnt handle the newest games on the highest settings anymore.

this mainly comes through the better information the Game producers get about the systems everyone has got at home (because of almost everyone having broadband internet) . so now they make games wich almost everyone can run.
(battlefield 2 is just a bigger step, becase it has gone to the next directx level.

So i say, a 6800GT will last at least 3 years, probably 4, before it cant run the newest games anymore. (but ten AGP pc's will be obsolete anyway :P )
but that just my opinnion on it :)
 
spamdos said:
three years but watch out for sli they are making graphics cards get older faster
Click to expand...

not true. the SLI pc's will only have an advantage. but when the gf6 series becomes opbolete, so most SLI pc's will be.
 
sure, that card is really good for now, and it may last you about 1-3 years. But with newer cards and newer games, they have different technologies that keep coming out, and newer versions of software (ie. DX10). So id say the 6800gt should last you around 2 years if you want to play all the newest games.
 
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