Current two top Nvidia cards:

65nm :

GTX 260 (216)
SP: 216
TMU: 72
ROP: 28
896MB@448Bit

GTX 280
SP: 240
TMU: 80
ROP: 32
1024MB@512bit


Refresh based on faily solid rumours

55nm

GTX 285
Same as GTX 280 except faster clock speeds and lower power consumption.  About 10% faster.

GTX 295 (Dual PCB videocard)

SP: 2X240
TMU: 2X80
ROP:2X28
2X 896MB@448bit

The GTX 295 will be a fucking beast.  It will trample ATIs 4870 X2.

These will come next month.  If you have a decent videocard I can't recommend any of these though.  This is only a refresh meaning the same shit just a bit faster and more energy conservative due to the die shrink.  The "next gen" is slated to come out in Q2 '09.  They will be based on a 40nm development proccess.

Im probably going to be in the market for a new card in a few months.  My X1900XTX is dying slowly I think. 

Are the Q2 09 cards going to bring anything new to the table or is it still just a game of leapfrog in terms of raw power these days?  Can anything play Crysis yet? Still haven't played that game yet!

choupolo


Im probably going to be in the market for a new card in a few months.  My X1900XTX is dying slowly I think. 

Are the Q2 09 cards going to bring anything new to the table or is it still just a game of leapfrog in terms of raw power these days?  Can anything play Crysis yet? Still haven't played that game yet!

Nothing will ever play Crysis. The code is a shitty mess from an incompetent developer.

Nothing will ever play Crysis. The code is a shitty mess from an incompetent developer.

That's not true.  It takes a lot but 60 frames per second is becoming possible.  Even one GTX 280 runs Crysis decently, a GTX 295 should work very well.  After seeing more cards in action, I'm pretty sure the bottleneck is the texture mapping units in a GPU.  Which is not surprising considering it has better textures than any game, it's not that badly coded, the game does more.  But it also needs fast everything.  If your CPU is from the 90's gtfo.  Quad core is becoming an asset.  We're going to see more games coded for many cores.  This means that it's not efficient for any specidfic number of core the way most games today are coded for dual cores.  The trade off is it will use any amount of cores, if you have four cores it ill use them, if you have eight it will use all of them as well.  GTA 4 is a great example.  The game runs like shit unless you have a quad core. 

Refreshes are only minor, but it's worth waiting a month for imo.  Something like the GTX 295 does not exist for Nvidia and it will beat ATI equivalent.  It's like having two GTX 280's in SLI.  One GTX 280 typically performs between 50-100% better than a 8800 GTX. 

Something that might be worth holding out for is DX11.  I don't know when it's coming out though.  It could be in the spring or in a year.  We might hear from ATI, I expect them to go straight to their next gen products.  For sure a new architecure will bring a bigger leap than a refresh.  The days of doubling performance every generation are over but we'll see something decent.

If it was me I would just pick up a GTX 285 and upgrade whenever that is insufficient or when something radically better comes along.  The good thing about refreshes is that the R&D for that architecure is paid for, prices will be lower than the GTX 280 when it was first released.  On the other hand the GTX 280 is reaching it's EOL, if you hunt for a deal you might be able to snatch one up for under 300$.  Well you could if you lived in America at least, I don't know about the UK.  Point is, it should be possible to get a better price/performance with a GTX 280 now than with a GTX 285.  I would still go for the GTX 285 though, it will overclock better.      

EVGA and BFG offer a 90 day step-up program if you buy the card from a registered retailer.  They offer a window of three months to exchange a new purchase for another card.  If it's more expensive you pay the difference.  Just make sure you read the terms, keep the box and junk that shipped with your card.  I bought a GTX 260 (216) not too long ago, and I might trade up for a GTX 285 or GTX 295.  The great thing is that you get 100% of the value back based on what you paid.  I bought my GTX 260 when the prices were high so I can trade it for a GTX 280 now for nothing since the prices dropped. 

http://www.evga-europe.com/evga-step-up-terms-and-conditions.aspx
http://www.evga.com/stepup/default.asp

Thanks Agent.  I've lost touch with what's good these days.  Will probably shell out ~£300 for a new card when it comes to it.  Likelihood is I'll go all out and get a whole new setup for ~£1500. 

When does DX11 kick in and will it be as unexciting as DX10 was?  Did those heralded performance gains ever come?  It was never worth upgrading to Vista to find out...

DX10 was never about performance gains.  It's about removing limitations of DX9 such as individual texture size and unifying the shaders.  I don't get they hype with DX10, it was misdirected.  The hype belongs to the hardware that can use DX10 just because we've crossed a perfomance landmark.  Looking at a card like 7950 GX2, here's a dual GPU card much like the upcoming GTX 295.  Essentially two cards in one.  People critisized the card because it didn't perform as well people thought it should based on the hardware.  One of the reasons is due to a limitation in DX9.  GTX 295 should do better in DX10 over DX9.

Although it's hard to compare because to take advantage DX10 capable hardware you have to design the game only with DX10.  That's the only way you can completely eliminate the limitations from DX9.  At the same time they to have design the game exclusively for high end hardware.  We'll have a better idea of what DX10 is about with the next gen of consoles for this reason.

If you look at videocards before 8800GTX there is a huge gap.  DX10 was rushed though.  Hardware developers didn't have time to write proper drivers and MS had to cancel many of the more interesting features.  They should have waited until what we call DX11 was ready and just release everything as DX10.

Eventually DX10 will be mandatory for the best games.  This does not mean DX9 will disappear completely.  Even today still have new games that can run on DX8.  If you run games in DX8 mode you have to turn down the settings even with the same hardware.  Your frames per second will go up but you will have shittier textures and lose avanced lighting along with other features.     

DX10 hardware should be able to support many of the essential DX11 features, since it is based on DX10.  It seems like they are focussing GPGPU features such as encoding with DX11.  So it's not that important in terms DX10 hardware's ability to run future games. 

Don't worry about DX11.  If you wait until Q2, those cars will be impressive with or without DX11.  If you don't want to wait that long, the GTX 285 will be excellent too.