I was watching a youtube video and the discussion of how long should a graphics last for because the growth of PC parts like ram, CPU and etc. etc. Are slowing down quite abit (according to what they have said) I am sure it was linus and slick that were talking about it but unsure.
As for the GPU how long would a 7870 last for it you put it against the 7970?
The 7970 would obviously out live the 7870 but by how much to justify the money you spend on an 7970 just had me thinking. i don't mind if you tell me this is complete shit i just spewed onto here.
People invested in the Titan, because it "was all they were gonna need for the next few years". Then the GTX 780 emerged (within a few months of the Titan launch), and gave people most of the gaming performance of the Titan, for a lot less money.
Point is: you should match your GPU to your needs, and the display(s) on your system. With every new series of card, high-end cards will diminish in value just as quickly, if not quicker than their cheaper siblings.
Better to buy a suitable card, a well-rounded choice. It is better for cashflow, and you get everything you need. Being able to save money on a new build is a great thing, and you can use the money for other components.
On the other hand, if the price increase is small, and the performance gain is high, that would be another matter.
Depending on the needs/pretentiousness of the user. I've played games until 2008 on a geforce 2 and later Ti 4200 (my dad had a 9800SE, which was significantly better) just fine, and it can be the same with other newer cards, for users like me who mostly play older games but still want to try that new one once in a while even if it's lower fps and settings. If you're not that fastidious with your graphics settings then you can hold onto a card for 6-7 generations, since they change so quickly and barely add any performance gain notable enough to upgrade each 1-2 generations. I've had a HD 3850 and last year I bought a HD 4870 1gb second hand, while it is quite a notable difference and I like the extra boost, it's an old card from 2008 that serves me exactly as I need it to. I will upgrade when I find too many faults and programs that start to struggle and when the future generation's low-end cards surpass my back-then high-end card.
i had a Radeon x1900 am sure it was an ATI l in my old pc it could play games i wanted to play but then afters some updates on first wow and then DC universe it became unplayable annoyed me :(
I would just stop playing that game if it happened to me. Luckily I am more into singleplayer games and mods so I don't really care for updates or averege framerates since they don't matter as much as in a fast-paced multiplayer fps. I did play q2, q3, qlive, hldm and cs (and am playing cs:go), but those are great games in the sense that they don't require a supercomputer to run and work even better if you lower the settings.