Hey man,
I hear you. But while those issues exist, and they're a pain in the butt for developers... in practical use they aren't a consideration and I'll tell you why.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no game out there that a human being could see a difference on when running, say, a 6600 Vs a 6800. Even in screen captures, you'd have to use a utility to point out per-pixel differences.
To me, it's a bigger issue the differences between say, Nvidia and Ati drivers - Nvidia drivers still run a few optimizations by default that push what I consider the acceptable limits of quality vs. speed optimization - but whatever. These differences are pretty easy to spot in static screenshots, although once again - in real-life gameplay it's rarely an issue, so I find it hard to make as big a deal out of it as some people do.
So I think you're coming at this from a developer perspective... and that's totally valid, don't get me wrong - but I'm not sure it has an impact on someone looking for the best performance card for the buck.
I wrote the article, and I can tell you I didn't sit on the fence unless there were legitimate close performance runs.
The problem is, with different architectures some cards will win some benches and other cards will win others, it's difficult to difinitively say one is better than the other when they trade blows based on which game you're playing.
The reason there's 7 pages of article is because there's so damn many categories.
And for the record, I admit the AGP section I submitted was screwed up a bit. The $130 AGP section should have been omitted, that was a leftover from an old version... I've been doing this article on the forums for the past year and a bit. The $130 AGP category should have been the 7600 GS, X1650 PRO, and X800 GTO... which all do perform very closely.
Actually, feature support isn't ignored at all, it was heavily considered when the recommendations were written. I know this for a fact, because I wrote the article...:)
All geforce 6x00 cards carry the same Shader Model 3.0 support, the same as 7x00 generation cards and X1x00 generation radeons actually.
While Shader Model 3.0 is highly touted over 2.0, the only tangible difference in any new title - and there's only a very small handful of them, Oblivion, AOE 3, Serious Sam 2, and Far Cry (with a patch!) pretty much make up the bulk of the list - is OpenEXR HDR support.
OpenEXR HDR is nice, but it's pretty much limited to very few titles, and it's far from a 'must have' feature. It is pretty, but few cards (even the SM 3.0 compliant ones) are powerful enough to enable it in titles like Oblivion, anyway...
So it's a checkbox feature for the most part. In the lower price pojnts, it's not worth getting a SM 3.0 card over a SM 2.0 card just for the feature because the performance degredation is so high in some cases that it's unplayable anyway.
In addition, HDR in some titles like Half Life 2: episode 1 only requires Shader Model 2.0 cards like the old 9700 PRO.
So dmarksbane, let me assure you... feature support was not ignored in the slightest. I payed real close attention to it. It simply doesn't matter as much as you think it does because the higher price ranges all have equal feature support, and the lower price ranges aren't powerful enough to enable it anyway.:)
They're not way off.
Find me a new 7900 GT for $200. No, 'open box' doesn't count.
As far as ebay, the article clearly states the prices are for new cards... used isn't in the scope of the article.
Looks bang-on to me.
Maybe you should simply cross reference the amount you have to spend with your motherboard's interface instead of reading all seven pages...
I think that's the point.
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Hey man, I hear you. But while those issues exist, and they're a pain in the butt for developers... in practical use they aren't a consideration and I'll tell you why. To the best of my knowledge, there is no game out there that a human being could see a difference on when running, say, a 6600 Vs a 6800. Even in screen captures, you'd have to use a utility to point out per-pixel differences. To me, it's a bigger issue the differences between say, Nvidia and Ati drivers - Nvidia drivers still run a few optimizations by default that push what I consider the acceptable limits of quality vs. speed optimization - but whatever. These differences are pretty easy to spot in static screenshots, although once again - in real-life gameplay it's rarely an issue, so I find it hard to make as big a deal out of it as some people do. So I think you're coming at this from a developer perspective... and that's totally valid, don't get me wrong - but I'm not sure it has an impact on someone looking for the best performance card for the buck.
I wrote the article, and I can tell you I didn't sit on the fence unless there were legitimate close performance runs. The problem is, with different architectures some cards will win some benches and other cards will win others, it's difficult to difinitively say one is better than the other when they trade blows based on which game you're playing. The reason there's 7 pages of article is because there's so damn many categories. And for the record, I admit the AGP section I submitted was screwed up a bit. The $130 AGP section should have been omitted, that was a leftover from an old version... I've been doing this article on the forums for the past year and a bit. The $130 AGP category should have been the 7600 GS, X1650 PRO, and X800 GTO... which all do perform very closely.
The 7800 GT is not on the list because it is old and too expensive. The 7600 GT is though, but it's not nearly twice as fast as the X800 GTO...
Actually, feature support isn't ignored at all, it was heavily considered when the recommendations were written. I know this for a fact, because I wrote the article... :)
All geforce 6x00 cards carry the same Shader Model 3.0 support, the same as 7x00 generation cards and X1x00 generation radeons actually.
While Shader Model 3.0 is highly touted over 2.0, the only tangible difference in any new title - and there's only a very small handful of them, Oblivion, AOE 3, Serious Sam 2, and Far Cry (with a patch!) pretty much make up the bulk of the list - is OpenEXR HDR support.
OpenEXR HDR is nice, but it's pretty much limited to very few titles, and it's far from a 'must have' feature. It is pretty, but few cards (even the SM 3.0 compliant ones) are powerful enough to enable it in titles like Oblivion, anyway...
So it's a checkbox feature for the most part. In the lower price pojnts, it's not worth getting a SM 3.0 card over a SM 2.0 card just for the feature because the performance degredation is so high in some cases that it's unplayable anyway.
In addition, HDR in some titles like Half Life 2: episode 1 only requires Shader Model 2.0 cards like the old 9700 PRO.
So dmarksbane, let me assure you... feature support was not ignored in the slightest. I payed real close attention to it. It simply doesn't matter as much as you think it does because the higher price ranges all have equal feature support, and the lower price ranges aren't powerful enough to enable it anyway. :)
They're not way off. Find me a new 7900 GT for $200. No, 'open box' doesn't count. As far as ebay, the article clearly states the prices are for new cards... used isn't in the scope of the article. Looks bang-on to me.
Maybe you should simply cross reference the amount you have to spend with your motherboard's interface instead of reading all seven pages... I think that's the point.