Quote:
Originally Posted by Flanker35M
8800 or greater from nVidia and from ATI 4xxx and greater will fit the playable section
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For nVidia you're probably right, but Ati make all sorts of things in the HD 4xxx range, things less than the GF 8600 that you (rightly, in my view) exclude.
The system with Ati (for desktop systems only, they seem to be going berzerk with the laptop card numbering system) seems to be yxxx where y is year/generation number, yzxx where z is a range number, such that for any given year/generation more z = more capability, then yzwx where for any y and z, a higher w is stronger, then we have yzws, where 's' is pretty much always '0'.
So, HD 2600 is four generations ago, and it's less than HD 2900, but from there on with the 2x00 series you are stuck with suffixes to find out what else is happening. Then you get the HD 3zw0 series, they drop the suffixes (hooray), the HD 3870 is better than the HD3850 (which is pretty close to the GF 8800), the HD 3850 is better than the HD 3670 is better than the HD 3650 and so on. It doesn't follow that the 3850 is less than the 2900, though it might be, I don't know about that. The HD 4870 is less than the later HD 4890, the HD 3850 is less than the HD 4850, but when it comes to the HD 3850 you can't be sure just from the numbers that it's less than the HD 4830, though I think in fact it probably is.
There are HD 4550 cards, which are definitely less powerful than the GF 8600.