Originally posted by: akugami
toyota, use of the caps lock key or bold face is considered yelling. Unless you're emphasizing a point, please refrain from excessive use of these two features since it's considered bad manners. There are many very valid reasons why nVidia and ATI are not going to release DX10 parts any time soon. You can make all the guarantees you want but unless you have inside information you're just speculating and spouting an opinion. Your speculation may be as valid as my speculation (or someone else's speculation) for different reasons and until the cards are released no one knows for sure. Those in the know are usually under NDA this early in the next card's release date. You want people to believe your opinions and speculation and that's fine but provide reasons why I should believe what you say.
Personally I'm of the opinion that we will see refresh cards in the June/July timeframe. This
link at Dailytech seems to support this. I have felt for a long time that DX10 cards won't be out until late November to try to cash in on holiday sales as well as selling it closer to Vista's release date. If you release DX10 cards too early you lose any hype generated by Vista as well as an extra holiday hype for new just released DX10 cards. It just makes sense for both ATI and nVidia to better polish their DX10 parts by having a later release date. Refresh parts are relatively easy to do for both companies and will take minimal resources while the bulk of their efforts will go to improving their new architectures. Both ATI and nVidia would like to make more money off their exhisting GPU cores than having to ramp up to a new core considering the cost of research and development nowadays. The more money you make off each GPU core, the better shape you are in when you have to ramp up to the next core.
For consumers there is little reason to move to DX10 right now except on hype. I have yet to see any comparision of a game in DX10 mode and DX9 mode so it's questionable whether the initial batch of DX10 games will offer any graphical improvement at all. DX9 games will probably run slightly slower on Vista due to DX9 being in some form of emulation in DX10. While I don't doubt that the new cards will be faster, it's questionable how much faster DX9 will be on these new cards since most of the focus will be in getting them DX10 compliant and fine tuning for DX10 games. The question also must be asked about when DX10 games will be out. Now, the only really concrete game we've heard is Crysis but from everything we've seen, the game is running in DX9 mode and it looks stunning. If the next batch of DX9 games are going to look this good, what incentive do I have to move to Windows Vista and DX10 which should be buggy and not quite ready for prime time as evidenced by all new OS releases. Personally I'm waiting until Windows Vista SP1 hits before I even think of moving to Vista. And finally, DX10 games that truly make great use of DX10 won't be out for at least another two to three years. Just look at how long it took for developers to truly take advantage of DX9 and make stunning looking games.
I hope I don't sound too negative. I really do hope I'm floored by the initial DX10 cards but I really doubt I will be. More likely I will not be buying a DX10 part until the 2nd generation of cards.