🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 07 Apr 2013 05:23:45 +0400, "Andrew Rybenkov"
<aryb...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I want to upgrade my HD5770 to something significantly better. My 500Wt PSU
>has only 1 6-pin connector. Right now I see only one choice - HD7850.
>(It is short - 20-21cm, and uses only 20Wt more at peak)
>
>My major concern is compatibility with old games. With 5770 I am able to run
>85% of old games, another 10-12% with older drivers on Win7-32.
>(Old games are Tomb Raiders, M&M6-9, Fallouts, Thief, etc.)
>
>Would I be able to run 7850 with 10.x drivers?
>How nVidia 6xx cards behave? (I see some nVidia customers experience significant
>difficulties with old games like PoP - Sands of Time, Tomb Raiders.
>I remember I had to downgrade Detonator to 2.x version to play Lands of Lore 3
>when I had FX 5700)
>
>What is your experience (and advice), please?

IMO the real reason to go the Nvidia route has to do with an
increasing awareness on the need for testing frame times / frame
latency and not just frame rate.

Microstutter, or general frame time inconsistency is an issue that can
actually become more of a problem with faster cards rather than slower
cards.

Every article I've seen on the subject shows nVidia cards faring much
better than AMD with regard to frame latency / consistency. 

Here's one article on the subject (others have posted similar articles
to this NG recently):

http://techreport.com/review/21516/inside-the-second-a-new-look-at-game-benchmarking

While this doesn't directly answer your question about compatibility
with older games, I personally have never had a problem retro gaming
on NVidia cards, and that includes running some pretty old stuff (Duke
Nukem 3D, Doom 3, etc).

I'm pretty sure you would not want to buy a card that's inferior with
newer game engines just to get better compatibility with older
engines.

Just my $.02