Hopefully these new cards are 2x faster in Direct X10 than any of the current cards while being able to handle 4xAA and 16xAF

Gaming in Direct X10 is a pain at the moment, especially at higher resolution.

Lotsa competition = Lotsa development = Better for consumers.

As a rule of thumb for me, I would only upgrade my gpu if and only if the new cpu have almost 2x the performance of my current gpu.

And also if I can't game at my LCD monitor's native resolution ie. 1280x1024. Might change to 22-24 inch when I do build a new system which is probably in 1-2 years time.

Almost RM2k for a graphic card is ridiculous. How the heck an average person is gonna effort it is well beyond most people.

Given that most ppl get RM2k average salary for a start.

9600GT better be faster 8800GT or 8800GTS, if not might as well stick with the old cards.

Hopefully these new cards will be able to performed a lot better than the current crop of Direct X10 cards.

Maybe DDR3 is still cheaper than DDR4 and able to run at higher clockspeeds?

I just came back from Jakarta and I can say that their market for PC is probably a lot bigger than ours plus most of their upper class people can afford the new cards easily. Especially when their land cost USD1 million to build on.

It's almost middle of February and there aren't any news about the new Geforce 9 series, save for the 9600gt and the expensive 9800x2 or something.

These cards coupled with a powerful processor (ie. Q6600) should be able to handle Crysis at 60 fps hopefully.

Sorry just wanna clarify this.

Are people buying the Graphic cards to play games or just benchmark as much as possible?

I am the former and I think Geforce 8800GT is serving me well whilst I am using only a 19inch non wide screen LCD.

So far games I ran on 1280x1024 with both 4xAA and 16xAF are very smooth. I doubt the new games would make slow it down at the moment. Hence, selling my card would render me unable to enjoy my games which would translate to loss of gaming time as my leisure time is very limited these days.

Given that, buying a whole new computer make sense in the year after next. (ie. 2010) Just my thoughts.