Pixel shaders

[Nobahar]

I'm thinking of upgrading a graphics card, last card I purchased was an Radeon 7500, but it didn't have pixel shaders 2.0 (that started with 8500). So naturally I couldn't play most of the later generation games.

Now looking at the new ATI cards, they're still on pixel shaders 2.0- GeForce 6200+ (I believe) all have pixel shaders 3. Now when I buy a card I like to use it a good 4-5 years until it is completely useless. I think in a few years games will start coming out on pixel shaders 3.0, how important do you think that is?

I love ATI's support for their cards. The performance between the ATI and Nvidia cards are similar, different strengths and weaknesses depending on what games you want to play. But not being able to play games cause of an old version of pixel shaders is the most annoying thing. Especially when equal Geforce cards had 2.0.

[Antonik]

I still havent seen a comparison between PS2 and PS3. All they show is PS1 VS PS3. What matters I think is how much you want to spend. If you go with Geforce you would need to get atleast a 6800 GT, and for pci-e those are alot more expensive than x800 xl. Getting a 6600 is not worth it since they barely keep you with current games anyway. Or you could mod a 6800 to GT or something to that extend,, but I'm not too certain how that works.

Only thing i could find about this was on a forum
"Visually there is no difference between PS 2 and 3. However PS 3 can accomplish the same effects in less passes (ie, operations) than PS2, so it is a quicker way of doing things.

There will be quite a few games coming at the end of the year that will utilise PS 3 effectively, and as already seen in Splinter Cell, some companies are bypassing PS 2 directly. This will be seen more, especially with cross platform games, since PS3, Xbox360 will all have PS3 as standard."

[infinitevalence]

In the last 2 years i have become a real ATI fan, my X800XL simply is awsome, it delivers great playback and was very much worth the 300 i paid for it. I would strongly recomend that you look at getting one of the most recent generation of ATI cards, if you want 4-5 years of use out of it. Yes they are a bit pricy and many use PCI-Express but they will diliver when it comes to game performance.