I’m speccing out a system that needs to last me 3 years without upgrade. I code OGL and perhaps a little d3d in the near future. I’m not yet using a HLSL but I plan on doing it within a year or so.
From a programming or performance POV is it worth me waiting on the FX?
Opinions?
My view on this issue is that feature set is key when you want to use the card for development. I assume you have at least some level of patience, and so if a card is slow you can deal with it; but if a card doesn’t have the features you want to exploit, you either upgrade or you don’t do what you want to do.
With that in mind, the GeforceFX is spec’d to support more advanced shaders, and so I’m personally awaiting its release. It’s supposably faster than the Radeon 9700, and even if it manages to be slower it will still win my money.
the bottom line is, either one you choose will be a fine card. For programming purposes my $400 goes to the gforce fx because of advanced shading and CG. I have a radeon 8500 card right now and it just doesnt like the cg compiler. If you are going to use cg you should think about the gforce fx. I also have had better luck with nvidia drivers in the past.