The new ATI cards are getting launched on Sept 10th. Whether they will be on the market to buy on the 10th or if we'll have to wait another 2-3 weeks is up for grabs right now. But expect to see 4800 series cards drop in price rapidly once they come out, because ATI has low/mid/high range 5800 series already laid out, and stated previously they would all release to market at same time.
Not saying don't jump on this deal, its a good one, but just be forewarned new cards are 7 days away
Surmoi
Member
posted: Sep. 3, 2009 @ 1:56a
stiltner said: The new ATI cards are getting launched on Sept 10th. Whether they will be on the market to buy on the 10th or if we'll have to wait another 2-3 weeks is up for grabs right now. But expect to see 4800 series cards drop in price rapidly once they come out, because ATI has low/mid/high range 5800 series already laid out, and stated previously they would all release to market at same time.
Not saying don't jump on this deal, its a good one, but just be forewarned new cards are 7 days away
I am waiting to replace my graphic card for starcraft II, so I got a lot of time, a lot of time...
SC2 will probably require nothing more than a 4800 series card. I can't see Blizzard putting hefty demands on resources. Not so hefty that it'd require anything more than $100-150 card, especially when the game finally does release that is.
Blizzard traditionally has made their products run on a very broad set of hardware.
This is a blue post (from a blizzard employee).
For Starcraft II, we wanted to maximize compatibility with less capable systems to ensure hassle-free game play for as broad a player base as possible. Yet we also wanted to utilize the full potential of any available hardware to ensure the game's looks were competitive. This meant supporting a wide range of hardware, from ATI Radeon 9800/NVIDIA GeForce FX's to the ATI Radeon HD 4800s and NVIDIA GeForce G200s
I think their main requirement was pixel shader 2.0 in the specs.
stiltner said: Not saying don't jump on this deal, its a good one, but just be forewarned new cards are 7 days away
The flip side of that is that these card companies have gotten good at keeping a minimum of these things in the retail channels, keeping up with demand but no more (low inventory and fast turnaround is good for business). I applied that "new cards will make the old cards' price drop" thinking in a few instances and got burned as stock of the old rapidly dried up, and prices on the older cards went up, not down. That isn't always the case, but has been enough of the time for me to guess that these price moves we're seeing now are designed to empty the channel, and given the decent price/performance ratio of these cards (as well as people looking to do second cards for Crossfire), I'd be looking for the channel to empty quickly. Like you, I'm not saying "jump", but people looking for a good deal on this generation should be thinking about dwindling availability from retailers.
As far as future gaming is concerned, even the likes of Crytek are paring down their hardware requirements for game engine iterations going forward, giving special consideration to the consoles and ports thereof...I don't forsee, with the dwindling market for PC games, any of the larger companies marginalizing their releases further by making high demands of graphics cards. Graphics whores are too niche a market for the likes of Blizzard to target.
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