This Gen vs. Last Gen Video Cards: Price and Performance

[ztrain727]

Hi Guys,

This is something that I find very interesting. With the rapid advancement in technology of electronics, it often does not seem worth it to purchase new expensive items when they'll be obsolete in 2 years or less.

Video cards, as well as many PC items, fit that category. I would like to dedicate this thread to comparing performance and price of the newest cards with those of the last generation.

I have three main topics, which could be added on to:
Basically, what card of this generation would be needed to match the performance of the best of the last generation? How much would one have to pay last generation to get cards of similar performance now? How does the performance of older cards compare on the newest games to that of newer cards?
Note: With generation, in terms of nvidia at least, I mean to compare 6 or 7 series to 8 series. Since 9xxx series simply doubles the gpu's, let's call the 8xxx series this generation.

The questions came up because I just bought a 7900gt. I learned that a voltmod allows you to reach 7900gtx performance, about the best performance of last generation. I thought a 7900gtx would easily outdo a 8600gt, but benchmarks on newer games imply otherwise, hence my interest.

Feel free to add whatever you would like, or discuss anything on the same general topic

 

[PC eye]

Performance boosts and price differences between two ATI cards could be one thing to add here. The last Socket 939 build here saw the MSI Radeon X1300 Pro 256mb PCI-E model there. Half Life 2 and other games still ran with high details set. That was with the 1280x1024 resolution on the old lcd. Price for the card when built? $70-

The recent AM2 build saw a move upto a mid range card since there was more time to plan it out. The MSI Radeon HD 2600XT 512mb Vista ready DX10 compatible card is in use seeing some noticible difference with the exact same games and apps yet Vista now being the default OS over XP. Price for the newer card? $135-

What price will be seen on the next build for a card there? who knows! Having seen AMD buy out ATI you'll notice prices on the newer lineup is lower when new then seen on the older X1xxx series models. The real problem is that the OSs are behind the hardware trends with the latest Windows having taken twice as long to be seen as with previous versions like the 3yr. gap between 95 and 98 1st edition.

XP was a rush job to recover from the ME flop originally until seeing SP1 and later SP2. But SP3 will seem to give XP a 3rd life for the time being.

 

[Narzinor]

yeah, about 2 years ago I got an X1350pro 256mb... it can only reliably play oblivion at low settings with a 2 year old system.

when I upgraded, of course, I didnt just upgrade the card. I upgraded everything (built a new one) to take full advantage of the new cheap technology out there (dual core and the like).

This time I got an HD3870 512mb. it can play Crysis on high standalone (with over 30 frames, I could play very high, but I wanted to balance quality and framerate).

Old One : Cost me $75us. Could handle oblivion on low...
New one : Cost me $250us. Can play Crysis on high

of course there was more to it than the card, but with new card comes the rest of the deal, its not very efficient to buy a new card but keep the old stuff running as well... P3 1ghz with an 8800gt =p

 

[PC eye]

One thing to note here was a review seen that made a comparison between the ATI X1950XTX card and NVidia's 8600GTS model when running Clall of Duty 4 on XP with both cards. The older Radeon actually topped the 8600 series card in XP while a newer card like that would obviously top the older Radeon in Vista.

Each new line is generally intended for best appllication on a particular version of Windows. The extended delay of Vista's release is what confuses most since you used to see a new version every 2-3yrs while Vista saw 6yrs.! The OSs and softwares for the most part have fallen well behind the rapid advances seen in the different hardware catagories in general.
(Yet an old Deer Hunter 4 95/98 game installs on Vista but not XP?)

And what about all those old games and apps? How about hearing as well as playing an old 8bit dos game on a Vista machine? The hearing is through 5.1 speakers instead of the small speaker on most boards!

 

[Ramodkk]

The 7900GTX PWNZ the 8600GT!!!

 

[ztrain727]

One thing to note here was a review seen that made a comparison between the ATI X1950XTX card and NVidia's 8600GTS model when running Clall of Duty 4 on XP with both cards. The older Radeon actually topped the 8600 series card in XP while a newer card like that would obviously top the older Radeon in Vista.

Each new line is generally intended for best appllication on a particular version of Windows.

Hmmmm. That's really interesting. I always assumed the operating system barely affected video performance. Obviously, the OS determines how much ram and processing power is used, but I never really thought of it changing the GPU performance.

So in that case, as I'm running 32bit xp and dx9, I wonder if an older card would perform better with my system than a newer 8 series...

The 7900GTX PWNZ the 8600GT!!!

Yeah! That's what I thought too. I've heard of 7600gt's beating 8600's. BUT, then I saw THIS. It could be the system, COD4 or Vista, but those results really surprised me...

Note where the Radeon HD 3850 512MB and Radeon X1900 XT 256MB placed as well.

 

[PC eye]

The problem when comparing cards like the 7900s and 7950s to the 8000s in general is that they run a game written for XP and then make statements about performance hits. Likewise the softwares and drivers alike for the older models was mainly intended for 2000/XP there over Vista while drivers are being made available.

When the newer Vista oriented DX10 games are commonly seen being tne new Windows the peformance gains if any will be more accurately measured. Simply mobing from a low end card to a mid range model despite being from a newer series was what saw the most difference in both XP and Vista alike. The overall expenses on upgrading cards along with other things is the nature of the build mostly.

Strictly gamers want the high end models for that type of build while most won't particular notice much for the occasional gaming session when generally seeing desktop apps in use. For higher detail quality more then performance along with higher screen resolutions being supported then you look at the better models.

 

[ztrain727]

Simply moving from a low end card to a mid range model despite being from a newer series was what saw the most difference in both XP and Vista alike.

In that case, wouldn't it generally be wiser to buy a high end card from last generation than to buy a mid-low range card that just came out. Especially if you're running an OS from last gen... A used 7900gt is the same price as a new 8600gt, for example.

Anyway, I understand why it is difficult to directly compare performance. The best idea would probably be to purchase a new, high-end card and continue to upgrade every year or two, selling the old card.

 

[PC eye]

Again that depends on what is actually needed out of a video card. I could have easily gone for an HD 2400 model for the new build but wanted to step up a bit without going elaborate expecting everything to count on frame rates in games!

Forget that one! The mid range in a newer model leaves a good working lower end card in the old case that is still is use when upgrading a family member. So the old card, cpu, memory, board, case, supply, etc. simply saw it's life extended. The 939 build replaced an older Socket A case with a 333mhz fsb and XP3000+ cpu and 1gb of DDR333 memory for the upgrade to an Atholon 3500+ 2.22ghz cpu and 2gb of memory.

That Socket A case plus an older build used here saw 2007 from 2004 when they were built then. The newer build here had to see more as a work horse type over what was even seen with the 939 case. A better mid range card for graphics plus getting out of any single cpu was the thought there. AMD still hadn't released a quad model at the time the newer build was prepared.