When will games no longer be playable on medium with 9600m GT DDR2

I was just wondering if I'll be able to play games like bioshock 2 and modern war fare 2 and any other titles coming out within the next 6-12 months on medium

 

Just guessing, but yes, I think you should be good for another year or longer if you're cool with medium settings.

 

This time next year, I see the 9600 and lower being done. 32 shaders on 128-bit bus just won't cut it much longer.

That said, if game development goes console -> PC, and the ports are as glorious as Dead Space, you'll be good for an extra six months.

 

On low resolution and medium settings, I think you should be fine for another year.

 

You should be fine with most games, it's a tiny number of games like Crysis that have ridiculous system requirements. Bioshock specs were high but it still looked great on medium systems like yours.

 

Look at it this way: next year, the 9600M will be this year's 8400M.

 

Or like The Last Remnant. UT3's engine always run great. I'm almost maxing TLR with 2xAA (GDDR3 one would) at 720p on my C90S.

 

I bought TLR on Steam, but I haven't had a chance to play it yet.

 

You should be fine for another year at the least.

 

you are just being silly with that statement

 

logically I would say that seen as alot of games are console ports, you will be fine (playing at lower res and quality) untill the next round of consoles come out.
dedicated PC games might be a differnt story.

 

my old x700 radeon was used for three years...and most games played on it, even tho it was forced into gaming after two years it still manages to play things on low....it became obsolete when 3.0 S.M became standard.....today's never generation of cards has longer purpose for least two years. I think in two years 9600m will be able to run and play the game on low-med settings in native resolution or med-high on lower than native

 

How? Right now, the 8400M is the absolute lowest recommended discreet GPU. Next year the 9600M GT will be the absolute lowest recommended discreet GPU. That's how it is and will be sir. We're almost there already, so consider a twelve month estimate generous.

Once a GPU needs low settings, it's done. Obsolete. 2010 will be that year.

 

I don't think 9600m will be that low.... 8400m was never intended for gaming at the first place....whereas 9600m is already a gaming card.....

 

Well the HD2600 which was mid-range 2 generations ago(about what the 9600M GT was when it came out) can still play some newer games at medium settings even today sooooo.

I mean, at the pace games are developing, the newer hungry monsters of 2010 will probably not be playable for the 9600M GT, but there will still be mass media games available which will b playable on a lesser GPU like the 9600M GT(seeing as the mass media games tend to want ot appeal to the most wide consumer range).

 

I'd say it will last another year.

 

in 10 years all notebooks will be so powerful,, that only overclockers will bother whats inside them

 

Whoa, wait a sec, 10 YEARS?!? Why, if I return back in time with a notebook from now they'll think of me as an alien. In 10 years all PC's will be substituted with, like PAPERbooks, which will be thin as paper but powerful as a modern desktop with Core i7. 10 years is A LOT of time for technologies like nano tech to reach the everyday user. Look what we have accomplished in the last 10 years. Back then we couldn't even begin to imagine what could happen, right?

 

As for nano-tech ( like agumentation technology from Deus Ex game ) I think it won't be avaible to common user till 2050's.....and yea I say at least 10 years for notebooks to be extremly powerful, you can have the technology to do it now, but the costs and time needed to introduce the technology needs at least few more years after developing means to start producing such powerful machines.

Take OLED and AMOLED screens today for example....they already know how to make them...they already know they are much more efficient, power saving, have good colors, but production is so expensive that they still make mostly monitors that are 15' max and cost like 5 times more than great quality 23' LCD monitor, but as more and more comapnies that can afford those things buy them, the prices will gradually go lower and lower and once masses of home users start to buy them, they're price will be as low ( or lower) than today's LCD's witch are cheap ( imagine how much they costed 10 years ago - they were almost only for the rich people )

 

When will games no longer be playable on medium with 9600m GT DDR2?

if you need to ask, get a desktop, or 256bit gpu or ATI's 128bit GDDR4....

 

It's cheaper being a bit behind the curve and buying a new machine occassionally

 

Ah, but there is a fixed reference point here: console GPUs aren't getting any newer. The 8400M GT is somewhat weaker than they are while the 9600M GT is of the same order. How many games released in the past 12 months can you think of that are made exclusively for PCs and have high system requirements?

I concur with reidy- in that current mid-range cards will become obsolete shortly after the introduction of new consoles. The bet I made when I bought my JFL92 (with an 8600M GT) 15 months ago is that the games I enjoy (mainly RPGs) will remain playable on it for about 3 years. The reason this works is not because there won't be GPUs that are 10 times more powerful (this is more or less true already of several desktop GPUs), but that it makes absolutely no sense to develop games that only look good with the newest cards. The 9600M GT is fairly close to the 8600M GT (not a rebadge, but no radical improvements either) so it should be OK for another couple of years or so.

 

Let's test your theory on Resident Evil 5. I'm interested to see how the 8600/9600s can handle it.

 

They are exaggerating mate.
Im currently still on a HD2600 till new lappy arrives which is very old in its own right and I am playing most games in medium-high still with no AA and such.
I can even play Crysis on this machine at medium until that final ship level with decent frames unless there are huge explosions.
So I expect the 9600 will be fine for at least 2 more years at the rate requirements are going, they are becoming more and more steady so chill out!

 

they will handle the game nicely...just like RE 4 wasn't much of a threat for GPU's when it came out

 

a while, Bioshock 2 probably won't give you any problems, I think it will be simular if not same to Bioshock 1 requirements. Maybe a bit more because it looks like their shaders are a bit better looking, as well as textures.etc. But the base of it won't change much.

I think mid-end of 2010 you will start seeing the 9600M GT have to turn resolutions a lower to run games at mediumish with a good playable FPS. Probably wont be till 2011 before it becomes a real unplayable issue in *some games..

Probably by mid-end 2011, then the 9600M GT will be useless to run games in any more than low-ish.

So thers alot of time ahead before that happens. And I could be wrong, 9600M GT may last longer, or shorter (doubt it).

 

yea look how long 8800 GTX is around and still it runs every game max today

 

I don't know man, the 8600m GT GDDR3 came out a couple years ago, and I'm STILL gaming with it (on medium-high settings). The 9600m GT came out a year later, but it is only marginally faster (maybe 25%). It's pretty much only a process shrink from 65nm to 55nm and an overclock. No new Nvidia videocard technology has hit notebooks in over 2 years! The newest architecture is the ATI 4000 series, which is far more fresh.

So, if what is essentially a single model (the 8600m/9600m) dominates the mid-range for more than 2 years, your estimate that within the next year a new card will come out to topple it is shaky, unless that card comes from ATI in the form of a 4670/4650 or something like that.

Nvidia won't have new hardware for notebooks for at least another year! That means they'll have used the same old architecture for 3 YEARS!

 

Gunna have to agree with KevinJack, games are becoming more demanding at an alarming rate, next year at this time almost any current 128bit bus GPU without GDDR5 memory is going to be on the lower end of the scale. Following Nvidias previous line of GPU recycling, this is how it will be.

Also Storm, 25% is alot more powerful for low end GPU's, thats the difference between the 8400 and 8600/9600 series. Im expecting to get another year of high setting gaming on my 8800m GTS, then it will start to fall of its pedestal a bit.

 

I've noticed that having to upgrade hardware for future games is really starting to slow down. I've had my 8800 gtx since it first came out and i've really had no issues with graphics quality on most of the game i've been playing. I remember when we use to have to upgrade our video cards practically every 1 - 1.5 years for games but it's really starting to slow down now... If you buy the top of the line video cards you might get 3 -5 years out of it IMO... Unless some maor new advancement comes along.

 

the 8800 series was a revolution in GPUs, the stream processors blew anything previous away.

Unless there is a revolution like that soon, it will just be continuous clock increases, with no real gains in performance. Its getting old real fast, and the software is going to catch up.

 

wow this thread caught fire...thanks for the responses

 

I think people limit their definition of "games".

Games include everything playable on a computer. Excluding minesweeper and the like, there are game companies which will always continue to provide lower requirement games(ex: Diablo, The Sims etc.) to reach the most of customers out there.

In this sense, there will be games playable on a 9600M GT DDR2 within 1-2 years' time unless suddenly a revolution happens and no longer will people buy lesser computer components, which would force all game manufacturers to develop high level gaming software.