where is the graphics market heading!

[warcry]

Hey guys!

I quite often email a mate of mine whilst im at work, we recently had a chat about whats happening to the videocard market.
This is what he had to say earlier today, whilst i admit there are some incorrect calls in there i think i support what hes saying.

Let me know what your opinions are.
Try not to get too flamey if you dont agree, i didnt write it, im just curious to see what everyone else thinks.

"Sorry to flood you with mail dude,
but im annoyed now lol. I have been reading review and **** and im just…..annoyed.
there was a day when 1 videocard ruled them all, for example. My 8800gtx stomped on EVERYTHING. And it was the only card that could do that!
these days there is dual chip cards, cards with awesome low res performance, some with high res performance, and there is no true champion anymore!

You can have 2 GTX280s. but then 3 GTX260s in TRI sli would **** on it, there is FAR too many combinations for the Ultimate 3dmark score. What happened to powerful single GPU rigs.

And then there is drivers! They used to be perfect, drivers were good to go straight out of the box. These days cards are being released before the drivers are even complete. Then you have this big expensive card and you wont even get true performance out of it for like 6 months after you buy it when they finally get the drivers finished.
the jump from the geforce 7 series to the 8 serious was so massive it was not funny, now every card generation is hardly beating the last! You have my 8 series card that flogs every 9 series card (except the 9800gx2), then you have the 9800gx2 that can slap the new GTX260 and 280 in some areas, then you have a more expensive and more powerful ati 4870x2 which can **** on anything in the field but when it comes to crysis it has a massive performance dip!

I don’t like where the technology game is at today, I want one clear victor again. I want all this SLI s*#t gone, dual chip cards gone, I want big powerful single GPU chips for apples to apples comparison."

 

[JonathanDeane]

Heheheh some people stress out too much over performance at games, I am still using a Radion X1950 Pro and find that while I can't jack up all the goodies on every game, I can play any game out just fine

The only reason im looking at a new video card at all is to try out a game in DX10 (Call of Juarez if you must know lol)

I think I hear a 4850 calling my name (although if I had the money to spare when they where on top the 8800 would have had my money for sure)

 

[eklipz330]

your friend should hate you for posting up his rant.

he makes good points there though, but crysis is really the only exception... and a 4870x2 does well in crysis last time i've seen, especially in high resolutions

and i dont think he should really about dual gpu cards unless they don't scale well, but the 9800gx2 and 4870x2 are promising... i see more in the future

drivers are another story, just don't be an early adopter and i guess you won;t have that problem

 

[jaguarskx]

I'd say the GPU market is either going up, down, or sideways.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Your mate's not very experienced IMO.

And then there is drivers! They used to be perfect, drivers were good to go straight out of the box.

When was this mythical era?

the jump from the geforce 7 series to the 8 serious was so massive it was not funny, now every card generation is hardly beating the last!

Performance jump from GF7->GF8 was large cause GF7 was weak, in the same way the jump from HD3870 -> HD4870 was larger because the HD3870 was comparitvely weak.

then you have a more expensive and more powerful ati 4870x2 which can **** on anything in the field but when it comes to crysis it has a massive performance dip!

Only for those that play Crysis in DX9 and not DX10, in DX10 the X2 maintains it's lead. Who's comparing Crysis at DX9, those that play HalfLife2 on DX8?

Overall seems to me like your friend is new to PCs and Graphics cards and gaming. There's always back and forth, and it's rare that there's a single winner. Usually there's alot of options that depend on the games you play. Even the nVidia FX series had it's share of OpenGL titles and rare DX8 game it performed well in compared to the R9700/9800 cards.

Perhaps your friend should stop worrying/whining about the wealth of choice and options, and enjoy the lower prices that would not exist without this level of parity where price has to become the differentiating factor for many.

 

[aevm]

I don’t like where the technology game is at today, I want one clear victor again. I want all this SLI s*#t gone, dual chip cards gone, I want big powerful single GPU chips for apples to apples comparison."[/color]

Could you do me a favor? Please tell your friend he's an idiot.

I love it when there is no clear victor. That means there's competition, and prices are much lower. Oh yeah, and he's silly if he thinks the 8800GTX drivers were in good shape when the 8800GTX was released. My 8800GTX became extremely stable after I installed the Nov 2007 drivers. That's about one full year after the card was released. Before that, blue screens 5 times a day... And that was on XP, without SLI. Add Vista or SLI in the equation and it was even worse. They didn't even support SLI on Vista at all, at first.

He does have a good point though: both nVidia and ATI should do more work on drivers before they release the cards.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

It's all going mainstream man. Think of it, a card that 1 year ago was probably high end is now close to middle of the pack. And it's all getting cheaper. Partly a price war, but with AMD owning ATI and marketing to the price/performance market especially considering the economy, you may start getting a lot of people into the pc game market that would not have considered it before because of price. I mean maybe I'm wrong, but for 500 bucks if you have an lcd monitor, you could put together a fairly mean budget gamer, including windows.

 

[warcry]

I agree with all of you, it may be better or worse, but its definately not the way the graphics market used to be.
Do you guys remember when it was as simple as have the MX 440, or a TI4200+
Also i believe cards are very over hyped these days, they come with huge expectations to repeat what the GF8 did to the GF7, so it only cuts you down to find out its a few frames over the last model. Just personally i think it was all going fairly straightforward until the GF9 confusion and what not.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I agree with all of you, it may be better or worse, but its definately not the way the graphics market used to be.
Do you guys remember when it was as simple as have the MX 440, or a TI4200+

Yeah, but then again the MX440 was to fool people into thinking they got a GF4, when in fact it was a renewed GF2.
And remember soon after the GF4 came the R9700. Prior to the GF4 was the R8500, which while generally slower than the GF3, but had it's areas where it did better (especially for games like Morrowind). There there was the last Matrox Hurrah 16X FAA performance along with surround gaming, hey, those sound attractive to you (at $100 more )? It still wasn't that simple back then.

You can go way back and before then you were talking Matrox versus 3DFX etc.

Also i believe cards are very over hyped these days, they come with huge expectations to repeat what the GF8 did to the GF7, so it only cuts you down to find out its a few frames over the last model. Just personally i think it was all going fairly straightforward until the GF9 confusion and what not.

Well is it really the hype? I think the hype has been greatly reduced after the R600 implosion. The GTX was a little underwhelming for how HUGE the specs were supposed to be and were on paper (like the R600). The HD4K launch couldn't have been F'ed up more if they delayed it. Uh, let's launch kinda sorta the HD4850, but not the HD4870, but give people no information uh maybe some information, and then mess-up the HD4870 launch by giving some to some people but not others, etc. Then the X2 launch similarly messed-up. The return of the paper launch but with little fan-fare IMO. And because AMD bobbled and played around with their launch dates, nV did a 'sorta-launch' where they were going to launch the GTX260 and then the GTX280, and then also the GTX+, etc. And then they dive bombed prices.

For the amount of PR put into the launch of the R9700, FX5800, X800/GF6800, GF7800, GF8800 and HD2900, this was almost like a mid-generation refresh than what amounts to new generations.

I'd say both companies did the worst job of properly hyping these cards I've seen in what otherwise could be seen as succesful chips (if not maybe succesful pricing from one at first).

As for going straightforward until the GF9 confusion, I think the confusion started before that with the GF8800GT and then GF8800GTS-take2 (112spu) followed by take3 (128spu). Then add ATi's 'we're getting rid of the LE/SE/PRO/XT and giving you numbers so that the HD3450>HD2900XT?

nV had an AWESOME launch with the G80, it played it's design success ontop of it's success of getting DX10 redefined, and then created a blip on the otherwise somewhat equal nature of both companies products since the R300/FX series battle. It had nothing to do with hype for the G80, and little since then would've matched the surprise of both it's success (after all the partial DX9/10 rumours and semi-unified shader rumours) and the R600's relative commercial failure after it was Mega-hyped (after a mega delay).

 

[randomizer]

"I want big powerful single GPU chips for apples to apples comparison."

As if GT200 isn't big enough.

 

[warcry]

i see what your saying GrapeApe.

i guess i just find it more confusing these days, there are SO many cards on the market that are just variations of other cards. I see it as a messy as hell limewire downloads folder that needs sorting out and cleaning up ha.

Do you guys think SLI is the future? or dual chip gpus, perhaps quad? who knows. It really is heading in a million directions at the moment.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I don't see Xfire/SLi as the future so much as Dual die single package similar to how intel currently do their Quad Cores.

SLi and Xfire are limitations, making the use of multi chips transparent tot he application is the future for these two companies as it's seen right now, the future beyond 2 years IMO depends alot on the success/failure of Larrabee.

As for the confusion, yeah, it's pretty bad (although only going to get worse when the offspring of the GTX and H4K series come along).

The GF8/9 series was a mess, the HD2/3K only simpler IMO due to it's milder success not because of any concious decision on AMD's part (look to the X1K series to see how they aren't clean).

It's not as bad as the old days when there was an EL,EX,LE,LT,LV,LX,SE,ST,GS,GT,PRO,Ultra,XT,etc for almost every mfr out there. Do a search of all the FX5200 andFX5600 variation out there and you might break Google (not that Ti's R9800SE128/256 and non-pro, pro, pro-128bit, pro 256MB didn't cause enough cojnfusion). Rememebr though even in the GF4Ti era you had the 4200, 4400, 4600, 4800.

 

[warcry]

"EL,EX,LE,LT,LV,LX,SE,ST,GS,GT,PRO,Ultra,XT,etc for almost every mfr out there."

I have got to agree!
It would be much easier to make head or tail of if companys had 3 variations of cards, midrange, performance, and gaming power kind of thing.

It was so funny to see hundreds of speachless people in the forums when the topic was the 9800gt. noone even had to say much, we just knew it didnt have to exist.

 

[randomizer]

Don't forget some brands use their own labeling. ASUS uses EAH, leadtek add on PX and used to use a totally different naming scheme, like the A250 was a GF4 ti4400.