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Video Card Race Rebirthed
As we all know the video card race recently hasn't been too great. The 8800 series pretty much dominated the last 2 years in the high end as ATI pretty much dominated everything but the high end. The G92, and HD3xxx series really hasn't been that much of a step up from thier previous generation in addition. However, with Intel recently making news on Larabee, and insulting competitors like nVidia. We are starting to see a much more competitive market.
ATI in a couple of weeks will release its HD4xxx series based on Rev.770. This means they are back to thier 6 month cycle of new video cards after the AMD acquisition. If you have a HD3xxx, upgrading to a 4xxx isn't really necessary though. One interesing fact is that the HD4870 isn't competing in the mid-range like in the last generation. Its pricing plan is into the high end and cards come in with 1GB GDDR5 ram. In addition, the power envelopes are significantly smaller. Also they seemed to address issues with the last batch in assigning texture units. Specifically they doubled the amount of textures the card can hold.
One thing I thought was wise on thier part with the HD3870 was to make it geared to processing procedurals and script-based effects better then the competition. Although texture heavy games dominate the market right now, the future is pretty much in script-based effects and procedurals. After all you can only up textures so much until they start to lose all effect. While on the other hand procedurals allow for more dynamicy including in gameplay.
