How long till an HD 4870X2 becomes useless?

[TimeDeatH]

im just wondering how long do you think it will be untill games will need more than an HD 4870X2?

[wambulance]

Depends upon what you mean by useless. I have a box with a 6600GT AGP that has run Oblivion and squeaks by with Fallout 3. It's likely that the 4870x2 won't be useless 20 years from now.

If by "useless" you mean will run new releases at minimum settings, probably 6 or 7 years is my guess, but maybe longer.

[KarmaKiller]

^agreed
It will play most any game for quite some time.
By the time it's useless, PCI 7.0, DX 20, and shader 15.0 with be implemented.

[ShyguyXPC]

I'd say more realistically, aside from any new versions of Direct X in a few years down the road... I'd give it about a good 4-5 years maybe (3 at the earliest), by then there should be some single GPU cards capable of the same level of performance easily...

I mean just look at how many people are still doing fine (by their standards) on Radeon X19xx series cards.... and those are Pre-Geforce 8 (G80) era cards (over 2+ years ago)... even a lot of people still gaming on 7950 GTX & GX2 cards.

really depends on the games, graphics settings, personal preferences of whats acceptable frame rates based on the previous two criteria, etc...

but IMO I'd say your still good to go with the card you have now for another 2 years maybe, before you start seeing games that could start knocking it down to a more mid range / lower high end status card/performance level...

if you feel you need a boost, maybe just add a single 1GB 4870 in 3-way crossfire to bump it up down the road if you can find one cheap.

[pullmyfoot]

if you feel you need a boost, maybe just add a single 1GB 4870 in 3-way crossfire to bump it up down the road if you can find one cheap.

You can do that? Wow. Thats something new

[KarmaKiller]

yep. Could do that with the 38xx cards too.

[JLK03F150]

From what I understand, more than 2 GPUs only works with Vista or Windows 7, not WinXP.