Directx 10 video cards will work if your operating system is Windows XP pro 2nd edition? I know XP does not support directx 10 programs, but will a directx 10 video card operate 9.0c games?

Reason I ask is because I want to upgrade my vid card to play games like Enemy Territory, Lost World, and Bioshock with Bioshock recommending a GeForce 7900GT card or better. The 7950GT is $189 while 8500GT cards are around $80. I wanna save some green, obviously

And yes I guess I should have posted in 'Ask BUCK'.

I think this is a good time to sit out of the video card market for a month or two. the new technologies are starting to roll our right now. It seems like Nvidia likes to kick a$$ for a while then wait for ATI to kick them again. ATI is putting on the boots right now.

If you don't feel like waiting check the following link The Best Gaming Graphics Cards for the Money: November 2007

Figures I missed that article. I'm sure I could wait another month or two, it's not like the money is burning a hole in my pocket. I'm still wondering if a directx10 compatible card is also compatible with windows XP (which only supports 9.0c)

Looks like it's gona be tough call with WinXP, puck. I would play it safe and get Vista. As for videocard - the nVidia just released 8800 GT, which should be around 250 (<200 for 256 version) and it has wooping performance, as it's built on new generation of the chip (65nm), has 112 processing units and supports pciE 2.0. The only problem - it's hard to buy this card, they didn't make them enough yet.

On the other hand today AMD-ATI should release Radeon 3850 and 3870, which accroding to benchmarks will be slower than 8800 GT about 10% but the prices will make it competitive (150-190).

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Thanks for the input, Skif. Unfortunately I'm trying to avoid a Vista upgrade. I've heard it's a memory hog in addition to having new OS quirks. So you think a DX10 card will have issue with XP? I know DX10 games will not play on XP but still curious about DX10 cards working in XP. Thanks for the input it is greatly appreciated!

Skif do you use Vista and if so does it work OK? Do you need 2GB or more to run right?

I'm pretty sure the DX10 cards will work on XP without any problems. Having them support DX10 on hardware level doesn't make them incompatible with XP.

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Yes, as a matter of fact I do use Vista, and to make things interesting, I run x64 version of it and I can run quake3 there I choose x64 version that so I can use all 4GB of RAM i have installed, but I only need that cause I run a bunch of virtual machines in vmWare on that computer.

I would say 2GB will be enough for Vista, though I had to upgrade my XP computer to 2GB cause I was having problems with more modern games.

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crysis?

Thanks for the input, Skif. Doubt I'll be after the 64 bit version but I did think about it for the 4 GB memory option

The new video card bug has bitten hard and I want to get one soon. Now, however, a friend has pointed out Radeon X1950PRO cards hehe.

And yes Encore, I wanna play Crysis too