I've been posting on my phone a bit more. Swype replaces certain words with other words from time to time. Also, "orthographic?" I used "orthogonal" in an essay once and my english professor marked it off as a spelling error. I'm quite the "ortho-" prefix specialist, but I have not heard of "orthographic." It's neatly all-encompassing.
I don't know in which hipster gaming community you live, but i use my graphic cards for about 3 years before getting a new model. So, lets say in a quite realistic aproximation that the average low-life nerd like Grant plays 6 hours a day / 7 days a week. In the 3 year lifespan of a graphics card, that totals to 6552 hours of gaming fun. Now let's see, if Grant buys a card for $150 that makes 0,02 cent per hour. But if he invests just a cent more per hour, he can spend $200 and can actually get a much better product that improves his enjoyment significantly. Also, i highly doubt that anyone gets 12% year on year profit from investing into a fonds that models the S&P500.
Hey man, I've got a job and I'm gonna be in uni in september, only for summer will I be able to play 6 hours a day. I has a life.
The current ytd return is actually 19%. I was way too conservative with my guess. I think the 70 year nominal return is like 10% or something. I think the real return is like 7%. And I shouldn't've taken the bait with the "currency per small unit of time" gimmick. It's a psychological thing that makes every cost look small. You see it in infomercials. The facts are that there is a very real cost of capital that all of us must abide by. Whether we use the S&P500 as a proxy or the depreciation of GPUs, it is real. The further in time that you're looking, the harder it is to predict. If you want to make big claims that a three year old GPU is still worth a damn, then I can't prove you wrong. But you can't prove yourself right.
Guys - what most people want to know is: 1) What will work? For Empires Mod - just about any cheap video card will work, but many other games require a higher level of performance. So what is the lowest you would go to work well on one of those intensely graphical games ? 2) At what point do you notice an improvement beyond the base card ? And what is that improvement ? 3) At what point is it just bragging rights ? 4) I never buy the base card - since I want it to last for a while. But I also never buy the really expensive high end card - UNLESS it is the only one that works on a specific game. Is there a reason to buy that high end card other than walls looking like a photograph ? PS: the reason those top of the line cards are so expensive is that you are funding the research and development of that technology.
