[Harrison]

Originally Posted by Kalean

The cheapest 3850 is 130 dollars for a 256mb model. With the 512 coming in at 150, the 9600 GT can ALSO be had for 150.

Price depends on your region, but definately - check what you can afford and the best product in that price range, common sense.

Originally Posted by Kalean

You have one major flaw in your calculations, if you are comparing GPU clock speeds of a 3850 and 2600 series...that proves my point. Clock speed for gpu's are only compared in apples to apples comparisons...You can't compare two gpu's of different architectures in terms of performance via clock speed. PLUS...GPU speed means NOTHING if their isn't enough video memory for it to calculate all those textures...It will bottle neck and be held back by the lack of memory..Which is what happens when you take 256 mb cards into a 1650x1050 or 1920x1200 resolution...The ABSOLUTE maximum res I recommend for 256 mb cards is 1280x1024...no higher, at that point, the performance loss becomes huge...

It seems you didnt understood my post at all, by gpu speed I meant exactly that - gpu speed, not just its clock. Also you seem to overestimate memory size, as much as its important, its not all in all, as I just showed this lowly card blazing 77fps in FarCry at 1680x1050 with AA and AF on. It seems you think from Crysis perspective, just imagine MMO with such demands

Nice review of majority of cards to see their relative performance in FarCry:
techPowerUp :: HIS HD 3870 IceQ3 Turbo 512 MB Review :: Page 9 / 25

Originally Posted by Kalean

Also keep in mind, this is going to be a UPDATED Farcry engine, you can't just run farcry and take off 15 frames and get an average...Farcry will not have NEARLY as much textures in terms of terrain/characters/mobs/npc's. You need to understand that MMO's have a VAST amount of textures unlike farcry, which used the same tree textures repeatedly..We are talking about TONS of armor textures, each with different colors on dyes, weapon textures, character textures for each character customization (which is MUCH more intricated now). I could go on and on...The fact is, Aion is NOT Farcry with repetitive textures...This is an MMO...Which are far more graphically demanding.

Yes Aion will have more detailed textures, but its not as overhelming as you imply, also you can tune up/down texture quality as you see fit. And yes - we can take same engine based game to see their relative performance, if games are equaly tuned, which is more important than textures. Lets take for example Serious Sam or UT based engines - they fly with amazing graphics and textures, while some other worse looking engines are actualy slower.

Originally Posted by Kalean

It's not for no reason that MMO's always tend to use older graphical engines compared to going a Crysis like approach going over the edge....MMO's are VERY demanding on resources when they are released, they take textures to a whole new level..and in order to compensate...They must use older engines in order to make sure the game play is smooth. Even those who spent a lot of money on a rig for Lineage 2 know what I'm talking about...it would come to a crawl during castle sieges and in town loading....256mb at those resolutions you stated is NOT enough....Now don't take what I'm saying as a insult or anything. I'm just trying to point this out for you.

Thats not true, or actualy it is for very minor part. Why? Because MMOs have to use older engines (or new but extremely scalable) if they want broad audience, like WoW - playable even on 5 years old Intel integrated graphics Massive audience is what counts and the reason why older/better scalable engines are picked, it has little to do with just better textures.