I'm Gonna Wait

[Lemur]

I've finally decided, I'm not going to build a new machine. It's just too close to Vista and Direct X 10, and I want to build a PC that will last me another five years. I'm gonna let my trusty old hunk of 32-bit Athlon, Radeom 9700 love mosey on for a few more months.

It's agon, though. I would love to play Oblivion with the settings turned up. It hurts to wait. I hate waiting. But I'm gonna wait.

I would really like it, though, if one of you would talk me out of waiting. My techno-lust needs to be fed, and the wait sucks. Please tell me why it's a good idea to upgrade right now.

[drone]

If you are waiting for Vista, I'm thinking you will be waiting a little bit longer than you expect. I'll be building a system soon, but it's getting XP Pro SP2. My feeling is that Vista won't be ready for use (i.e. safe to put on my machine) for at least another year and a half. It doesn't seem like it's even close to being viable at the moment, and I wouldn't trust it until at least the first service pack is released. DX10 may be nice and all, but you should be able to get games for XP for some time now.

If the OS is your main worry, why not get a new system now, and buy a Vista upgrade (are they going to offer this?) when you need it?

[Lemur]

Weeeell, the main thing is the videocard and the power supply. I've heard rumors that the first DX10 videocards are going to be 300-watt beasts. But if I build a machine now, I'll have a hard time justifying a kilowatt power supply.

Oh, I don't know. Yeah, Vista is going to be a clunker for at least the first year or two. I just ... oh, I don't know. Tell me more. Tell me why I should go ahead and buy parts now. It's what I really want to hear.

[The_Doctor]

Tell me why I should go ahead and buy parts now. It's what I really want to hear.

Live for today, for tomorrow you could...

You could, nay, should, build a nice PC now that will last you a few years, and wait until the price of the DX10 cards come down in price and Vista is more stable.

DX10 will only work with Vista.

[drone]

Tell me more. Tell me why I should go ahead and buy parts now. It's what I really want to hear.

I figured you were just looking for excuses to go ahead and build. I'll try to rationalize here for you. Do you have any relatives that would benefit from a computer, but don't need a high end gaming platform? Any small Lemurs that might need a PC in a couple of years? You could build a new one now, and cycle down your current PC to the next in line. Then in about 2 years, when Vista is ready for prime time and DX10 becomes the standard, it should be easy to convince Mrs. Lemur that you need a Vista-capable machine for new games, and recycle/upgrade down the line again.


How's that?

[Beirut]

I've heard rumors that the first DX10 videocards are going to be 300-watt beasts.

You mean our present cards can't run DX10? Can't we up the DX like we did from 8 to 9 and 9a to 9b... yada-yada, with a simple install of a new DX exe. file?

[Lemur]

Beirut, nope, DX10 is supposed to be a whole new beast, a radical departure. No more pixel and vertex shaders -- all cards will have to support a unified shader model. Also, for whatever reason, the story is that graphics hardware can't have its own private dialogue in DX10, so no more SLI or Crossfire.

There are even rumors that high-end DX10 GPUs will require their own power supplies, and that some will come water-cooled out of the gate.

In the absence of knowledge, the rumors are running rampant.

I want to thank everyone for encouraging me to spend money on new parts. You're gonna make me cry ...

[edit]

Tears of joy, just to be clear.

[edit of the edit]

Here's some old but confirmed info about DX10. Scary stuff ...

DirectX 10...and so it ends!

Backward compatibly with DirectX 9,8,7 isn't really necessary

There are troubled times ahead. Through one bold move, Microsoft has decided that it will not support, the already too “old” DirectX 9, not to mention DirectX 8 or any of the previous versions. But... it appears to be some logic hidden somewhere.

The new DirectX will not be named Windows Graphic Foundation (WGF) as it was planned and will remain at the old name, as in DirectX 10. It will be released with their brand new operating system Vista. This news API will be composed of new and faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and will run much faster (so they say).

Microsoft has decided that backward compatibly with DirectX 9,8,7 isn't really necessary as there will probably will be even less compatible with Vista.

Even so, dear Microsoft hasn't totally forgotten us. Some sort of “compatibility” will be available through a software layer (probably some emulation) which will have its price in system resources, as it will run much slower. The good news is that DirectX 10 will relieve some of the burden on the CPU.

And of course it will have support for the next generation of Pixel Shaders 4.0, although it will probably surface before even Vista's release due to the rapid development of graphic cards.

[drone]

And it's (stuff) like this that will send developers back to OpenGL. It's going to take a long time before DX10-capable machines achieve enough mass in the market to drive game development. I think M$ is going to shoot itself in the foot here, this will cost it Vista sales and they will probably have to patch in better support for DX9.

On the power issue, I thought more effecient, lower power PCs were the new focus of the industry. Aren't manufacturers getting some pressure from governments about power consumption?

(Language - Beirut)

[Spino]

The DX10 feature set itself will not merit a beefy power supply, it is the arms race between Nvidia and ATI combined with the overzealous attitudes of game developers that has driven 3D chip power consumption to ridiculous extremes. I'm sure DX10 compatible budget cards and integrated video chipsets with their typically low power requirements will be able to run Vista well enough. They won't be able to play cool games worth a damn but that's always the plight of budget hardware users.

MS' Vista venture is really rubbing me the wrong way...

Vista and DX10 may be on track for release by Spring 2007 but I firmly believe both MS and game developers are going to be seriously disappointed with the public's reception of the new OS. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of PC users do not need a new OS. Furthermore who in their right mind will want to pay $200 to upgrade to an OS that is, in terms of functionality and stability, no different from its predecessor? This is not the pre-XP days when most PC users sported systems running Win98, Win98SE or WinMe and bluescreen crashes, system freezes and horrendous driver issues were an everyday fact of life. For most users Win XP SP2 runs like butter and is rock solid stable. The only way Vista is going to penetrate the market in substantial numbers is through MS' adamant refusal to sell anything but Vista to PC makers (who will no doubt ****** and moan thanks to its less than stellar performance on less powerful budget hardware).

What really irks me is how MS is forcing users to purchase Vista just so they can use DX10. Do they really expect us to believe that DX10 couldn't be integrated into XP? This is as they say, a 'dick move'.

MS's delusions regarding Vista is a sign that it is suffering from ivory tower syndrome and only illustrates its arrogance when it comes to dealing with consumers. The sensible thing to do would be to milk WinXP for a few more SP packs until even low end PCs are capable of running Vista with nary a hiccup.

Last but not least MS's refusal to support DX8 & DX9 and their insistence on coercing PC gamers to purchase Vista just so they can use DX10 will only help to pound several more nails into the coffin we know as the ever shrinking PC game market.

I believe it will be at least two to three years before the public warms to Vista and its market saturation via new PC purchases will make gamers finally bite the bullet and upgrade. Until then developers will simply have to sit back and cater to the existing DX9 crowd.

I agree with Drone, perhaps this DX10/Vista nonsense might give way to a resurgence in OpenGL games.

(Language - Beirut)

[gunslinger]

When you take games out of the equation, there is truely no reason to upgrade pc computing power. A five year old computer is perfectly well suited for the normal jobs a computer is used for: word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail, and web-browsing (although maybe not for downloading crazy amounts of video). An old computer should even do fine for editing / printing photographs, although a newer, souped up computer may be needed for video editing.

The only legitimate reason I can come up with for upgrading Windows is to close up the multitude of loopholes used by malware. However, I'm not too confident that Vista will be up to that challenge anyway.

Eventually, the public is going to get wise to this. At some point the majority of gamers are going to look at the option of purchasing a $2,000 system (or maybe even a $1,200 system) so that they can buy the newest $60 game and say, "Screw it, I'll keep my old computer and spend a couple hundred bucks on a console instead." I say this even though I haven't owned a console since the Atari 2600.

I will miss the days of the strategy PC game, one genre which I believe the consoles can't compete, but I accept the fact that it is coming sooner than later.

[DukeofSerbia]

It's agon, though. I would love to play Oblivion with the settings turned up. It hurts to wait. I hate waiting. But I'm gonna wait.

Are you kidding? There is no PC which can run Oblivion with full settings with highest AA, AF and HDR! Not in 1600*1200 and as I know not even in 1280*1024. Oblivion is especially lethal for nVidia GeForce.

[tibilicus]

lol I got Oblivion on high don't think all the fancy effects were added in but the grapahcis were beutifal enough and I got no lag what so ever and that was all on a ATI EAX1600 pro on 1280 x 1024 resolution.

[tibilicus]

Also a note on vistae I personylr efuse to buy a new OS until it's proven to be stable and a service pack is released for it. Although that could take up to another year knowing MS..

Tib

[drone]

Spino rants better than I do, but I pretty much agree with everything he says. Why do we need Vista? We don't, XP SP2 works well enough as is, and is very stable if you can keep the malware off. Vista doesn't really offer anything that we need. Moving to Vista will only subject us to another 1-2 years of crashes and security bugs.

M$ is trying something new here, and it's going to backfire on them. They need the influx of money that a new OS has given them in the past. However, now they are trying to dictate a hardware leap as well as a non-backwards compatible API. Hope it bites them.

[Lemur]

You've all convinced me. Down with DX10! Death to Videodrome! Viva pinata!

I'm gonna go ahead and build a new PC for gaming, and it's going to be a DX9 beast. Oblivion had better watch out! Battlefield 2 won't know what hit it!

[Geezer57]

I'm looking for a good boot manager, then plan on switching to Fedora Linux for day-to-day use, with options to boot into WinXP-SP2 or Win95-OSR2 (or even DOS!) for games. Would like to be completely unstuck from Microsoft's teat, and never pay them another dollar again!

[Cebei]

There is always something to wait for. The whole computer industry is based on "that thing" which you want to wait for. When you get that, a new thing comes out 3 months later. I upgrade my computers based on the requirements of my fav games :)

[Beirut]

Well, I've seen pics of DX10 graphics and they do look mighty sweet. And I want them sweet, sweet graphics for my flightsims.

I find many of us live in a great computational paradox; we all desperately want newer and better, yet at the same time we get very upset when newer and better is "forced" upon us.

In a few years, Vista and DX 10 will (probably) be like XP and DX9 are now; the only way to go. Most of us are running XP with DX9 right now and looking with curiosity at those still using Win98 and DX8. (Stone knives and bear skins.)

Same poop - different OSs. Change is never easy.

[Papewaio]

Go either for a really good XP SP 2 system (conroe, 2GB ram, PCI-E graphics card(s)) or wait until PS3 has been released and the console wars have begun.

Then see if you want a 360, Wii or PS3.

Since MS is putting so much emphasis on 360 they ain't do many favours for PC gaming at the moment.

For Vista, I would wait until someone else breaks the ice with it and SP1 is released. You don't want to be the guinea pig. As it is you can get a XP system that is tried and tested with all the settings maxed out and you can play all the TW series without a major hassle on it for the next 5 to ten years. Or you can wait for a year to get Vista and you will have to invest to get the best performance out of it.

It is because of MS's latest temper tantrums (no DX 10 for XP for instance) that has got me looking more and more closely at PS3 or WII or even back to a Mac.

[Lemur]

In a few years, Vista and DX 10 will (probably) be like XP and DX9 are now; the only way to go. Most of us are running XP with DX9 right now and looking with curiosity at those still using Win98 and DX8. (Stone knives and bear skins.)

I really don't know. DX10 is a radical redesign, and Microsoft usually needs three tries to get something new working properly. I'm starting to think the move to DX10 might be long and tortured.

Heck, I know people who are still gaming on Win2k, and most games work for them.

[BDC]

Bail and get one of the sexy, cheap, powerful 24" iMacs. Then buy a tv decoder for it and boom, a good looking Mac/Windows machine which doubles as an HD TV.

[doc_bean]

A ps2 is around 100$ now if you want cheap gaming.

Personally I'm keeping my old system (2.6Ghz, 9700pro) for another year. It still runs new games rather well (Prey at 800x600, but I'm not a resolution freak) and I rarely game anymore anyway. I could probably last longer than a year with this system but I'm going to try and get some money out of my parents before I move out entirely

If you don't game you don't need new hardware/software. Win98 is outdated because it isn't (as much) 'internet ready' so a lot of people switched to XP. I still know people running win98 on (nearly) 10y old machines and being quite happy about it.