CPU Bottle Neck With New Shiny Cards.

[chrisf6969]

http://www.hartware.net/review_400_3.html - Quake 3
http://www.hartware.net/review_400_6.html - UT2003

Notice there is no scaling on Q3 until 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA/8xAF
and thats with a 3.2Ghz nice system

I cant wait to get my 6800 Ultra and play Quake3 at 640x480 with NO EYE CANDY at 900 FPS. lol
<-- with 5900

[TooNice]

Indeed the XTs scores look nice... so does all the 6800s. But the question is: If you look at one in 6 months, will the score still look nice? I'm not convinced The evolution goes extremely fast now...

Umm, to be honest, I don't think the "evolution" has got any faster than back in the 3DFX vs Nvidia days.

If think about it, the cards haven't improved that much until recently since the 9700 Pro. 6 months after its release, it still looked good. Sure the 9800 series dethroned it eventually, but it was hardly a beatdown.

I expect that the refresh for those card would improve the performance of those cards (obviously), but not by a margin that the current numbers look bad.

[Grey M@a]

the only time you will see any significant gain from a graphics card is when express pci rears its head and the cards follow suit, thats when you may see more of a performance increase, tied together with 64bit processor you should see it fly along

[chrisf6969]

the only time you will see any significant gain from a graphics card is when express pci rears its head and the cards follow suit, thats when you may see more of a performance increase, tied together with 64bit processor you should see it fly along

I doubt that.

The major jumps were when you get a new generation.
ex: when 9700 debuted
and now with 6800 & X800, the next release will just be a speed bump + blue crystals.

Like back in the day from GF2GTS to GF2Ultra
or 9700Pro -> 9800Pro

There wont be a new generation of cards for a year ++ and with this latest HUGE jump, I doubt the next gen will be that much faster. It will probably just bring the power consumption down on both cards and bring the technology to mainstream/budget and work on faster programmable shaders. But I dont see them putting out a 24 or 32 pipeline card anywhere in the near future. So 16 pipes is going to be it for a while.