Graphics Upgrade

Questions about Directx 11 and graphics card upgrade?

I have an NVIDIA 8500gt and was planning of buying 9800gt. Then I heard of DX11. Should I wait for DX11 cards? Will they be very costly compared to the present cards? Will DX11 run on the 9800gt? I frankly dont know what directx is though I know it's something that runs games. So please post an answer appropriate for me.

Public Comments

1. I believe DX11 depends on the OS. Vista has DX10 so most probably vista and 7 may be upgraded with it. As for the Graphics card, 9 series and above may support DX11. Also, if you really look at it, there's not much difference between 10 and 9, games can be tweaked to look like they're in DX10 on XP. But anyways, your call.
2. It is still a while to go until we get many games which will fully support DX11 features. You also will need Windows 7 for DX11 support. The 9800 will not run DX11, AFAIK this was a DX 9.0 card Ati *just* released their latest card with DX11 support - and Nvidia's is still expected. I wouldn't worry about it at the moment because very few titles will suppport DX11 at the moment. You could as well get a decent card like a 8800 GTS or GTX 275, they support DX10....and this would already be a HUGE step from your old 9800. But then a card of that caliber would also require a powerful computer. If the rest of the computer is pretty old its doesnt make sense to put the latest card in it because the CPU will be too weak also - such a card would be a big overkill for some old system. By the way...DX11 refers to features which games can utilise, like shaders, effects. But no company will release a game which will ONLY run on DX11, they will always be down-compatible and run on older hardware also.
3. You already can get DirectX 11 cards. They've been out for quite awhile. The least expensive one right now is the ATi Radeon HD 5750. nVidia won't have DirectX 11 till at least the second quarter of next year. They're also busy crapping their pants over the fact that yesterday morning, the ATi Radeon HD 5970 was released and it crushed the GTX 295 by 20% - 37% depending on the game. ATi is officially King of the hill by a large margin. If you want DirectX 11, grab the Radeon HD 5750, 5770, 5850, 5870 or 5970. Those are the cards. Funny thing is, even though ATi is crushing nVidia's cards left and right now, they're still a better deal. The Radeon HD 5870 costs only $50 more than the GTX 285 but the test scores aren't even close. The HD 5870 even beats the GTX 295 in two games in Anandtech's test. As for the HD 5770, it's a little slower than the GTX 260 and the HD 4870 but it's a DirectX 11 card and it is priced at exactly the same price point as the GTX 260 - $165. On the other hand, the Radeon HD 5750 is priced more attractively at $145, and it's faster than the 9800GTX+/GTS 250 and Radeon HD 4850. And George r, ATi did just release their LATEST DX11 card, but their first two were released back in September. nVidia STILL has nothing and will have nothing in DX11 until next summer. That's the prediction from the industry analysts because the chip they designed was garbage and they had to redo it.
4. You have a 8500GT, it will run present games without problems in resolutions of 1336x768. Its a better idea to wait for DX11 cards. By quarter 4 of 2010, NVIDIA would have launched its DX11 range, and many other commercial games would have come out utilizing DX11. Presently DX11 cards are only available by ATi, but the good ones too costly. In budget range ATi 5770 is quite good. And after NVIDIA releases its cards and DX11 gets utilized extensively, that time the price of DX11 cards would surely drop. DX11 is surely good, as I have seen benchmarks on 5770, and it looks pretty much better than DX10, which didn't get that much attention. So I recommend wait till DX11 comes into mass view and prices drop, then get the best DX11 cards. Till that 8500GT will easily survive all games. Or if you are pretty desperate in getting a new card, then get the ATi 5770 DX11 card. ATi 5770 can compete 4870 and NVIDIA GTX 260. SO its a pretty good budget DX11 card. No doubt go for this is you want a new card now.
5. Directx 11 is already out, and it works with Vista and 7. The Nvidia 9800GT is a DX10 card. It does not support DX11's features, but it'll still run DX11 games in DX10 mode. The only DX11 cards on the market right now are ATi's Radeon 5xxx cards. Nvidia's new DX11 cards are expected out until next year. I layman's terms DirectX is a set of instructions/programing that allows developers to make games that will run a wide variety of hardware. Sort or a set of guidelines to make sure that all Windows games are standardized in some respects.