I know every individual who posts, reads, and comments on these forums would love to have the next biggest, best, and most kick A** card on the market. But seriously, if you have any card in the 8800 series, is there really a serious need to upgrade to anything in the 9600/9800 series? If we exempt Crysis from the mix, is there any real need to get a 9800 GX2, GTX, etc??? The benchmarks for Crysis from individual to individual will differ with cpu, video card, power supplies, fans, cases, cooling pastes, motherboards, hard drives, water cooling/air cooling. What is 3-10 FPS in the real world seriously?!?

I hope this isn't turning into a rant, too late, but why are we judging everything by a single game? Fantastic looking as it may be, it is ONE GAME. It could have been coded better, and I'm sure more graphically impressive games will come shortly, though hopefully not as horribly coded as Crysis (still love you CryTek, and UBISoft, please design Far Cry 2 better). It just seems to me that Crysis is becoming 3dmark 08. OOOOOOH, I got a score of 18000, that totally kicks your a** at 15000. Is anyone really enjoying the graphics IN-GAME?!? The game lasts like 5 freaking hours if you don't detour at all!
I know we're all here because we like to talk about the real hardware/software issues at hand, but it seems like Crysis has really tipped the scales and made everything get a little out of hand. I guess it all comes down to some serious new benchmarks by toms for 2008, I think we all miss them.

huh?

This always happens. The latest flavor just happens to be Crysis. It currently is the pinnacle, the not yet conquered Everest. Everyone wants to plant their flag atop the peak. Like I said, this always happens, maybe Oblivion wasnt quite as high, it was still there as a challenge, and far as a game went, Id love to see anyone try and conquer Oblivion in 5 hours. I know it different genre etc, no flaming here, but just to use my example. No one should be upset that their current hardware cant play this game, nor complain about the game, when , to me, its a great sign of the future regarding in game graphics

agreed, i guess some people are just bugged by a game being around that cant be maxed out. "horribly coded" my arse, its an impressive engine, to impressive for the 1+ year old graphics tech on the market right now. And yeah if you just head for the end of each section asap the game will be over quite quickly. Thats not the point of playing though is it. U stalk, kill, and admire the scenery.

Many a time I got shot when I was trying to shoot the seagulls.....

Actually games with the new technology CGA are the real testers of graphics cards.

http://members.chello.at/theodor.l [...] lf-bey.htm

http://members.chello.at/theodor.l [...] es/cga.htm

good luck with your 3dmark scores on these babies.

For the Benchmark point of view. During Crysis the expense on your resources changes drasticly. So which part of the game are we benchmarking? The whole 5 hours? Are we taking the exact same path and rendering the same frames each time? With a 3DMark the testing platform is the same across the board. Its the best comparison because it's static. The only variable that changes is your rig.

Crysis is still a game, not everyone uses it as a benchmark

Some people actually, you know, play the game

I played Farcry on my lowly 9600se, medium settings @ 800x600 and I still enjoyed it.

OMFG, Crysis is a game too?

Not a terribly good, fun, or innovative one, no =P

I love Crysis, but I think there is a bigger problem looming on the horizon. Crysis was one of the most anticipated games on PC last year and barely made a dent in the sales of an average console game. If this trend continues, PC gaming may just be ported console games with the same graphics. I hope I'm wrong but the market is shrinking. I enjoy a nice graphically challenging game, but I would at least like to have card options on the market that will run it. I bought my 8800GTS 640mb over a year ago and thanks to M$ not releasing DX10 for XP, I had to wait a year to play a DX10 game. Talk about a death blow to a dying market. I spent the last year playing consoles, and being pissed at M$ for the DX10 debacle bought a PS3. That's my rant.

I like the fact that with an 8800 card crysis can range from 100fps low detail to 10fps high detail alowing you to "dial it in". But I dont like the how turning up the detail makes the game look alittle be better while cutting your frame rate in half! no optimization. Contrast that to 3DMark where its highly optimized and rather looks good for the frame rate it runs at (compared to crysis) (and debatable).

Analogy: Lets say you are required to draw a circle using only line segments. So you break out a ruler and draw a square. Thats a far fetch from a circle so you draw an 8 sided octagon, going from a square to an octagon took twice as long but its alot closer to a circle. If you keep doubling the number of sides your going to get closer and closer to a perfect circle but at some point your going to reach a point of deminishing returns where it takes twice as long to draw but it only looks a little better.

Thats how I feal when the filters are trying to smooth the edges of a few thousand leaves on a crysis tree.

Haha, good point.

Because all games have large open maps with almost no boundaries, houses to blow up, trees to mow down, thousands of possibilities of how to accomplish a mission, competent AI, etc. etc.

Back to the OP's apparent question about 3DMark08, I think such will be needed to measure the newer video cards and CPUs. When new hardware is getting scores around 20,000 marks or more, the score merely shows how the present cards have eclisped the old measurement and more detailed scenes are needed to mearure the card's real ability. Its kind of like a weight lifter who tries to brag that he can lift a 50 lb weight a hundred times. That's fine, but how many times can he lift a 100 lb weight, or a 500 lb weight? If its high scores that someone wants, than run the old Futuremark01 adn get