The PC GPU market.....Has it EVER been this bad?...

[Cooper]

I mean, product ranges that are Ridiculously overpriced , availability at an all time low, even months after launch.

Nvidia's latest debacle means there is no real competition anymore......

The actual NEED for high end GPU's at an all time low....crappy DX9 console ports which even 2 or 3yr old GPU's can max out.

DX10 or DX11 in games are just bits bolted on to the DX9 core and tend to be poorly executed and mean even the latest DX11 cards slow to a crawl...


Over reaction or is the PC GPU market really in the crapper?......

 

[Adrianr]

Nah we're doomed. This sub-board won't even exist in 12 months time.

 

[mdixson]

I think this is a bit unfathomed tbh. The market is good, for instance the current (6 month old!!) Ati series of cards are amazingly powerful!

The actual NEED for high end GPU's at an all time low....crappy DX9 console ports which even 2 or 3yr old GPU's can max out.

This is just not true, my 4890 struggles with "maxing out" the current crop of games @1080p...

DX10 or DX11 in games are just bits bolted on to the DX9 core and tend to be poorly executed and mean even the latest DX11 cards slow to a crawl...

Have you compared the latest battlefield on PC to the consoles, DICE have said that to get a rough idea the consoles run the PC's lowest settings... I mean the game looks stunning with all the particle effects, lighting and high res textures...

I do agree that prices are however bloated and that more distinction is needed between the price points aka 5850/5870 are too similar with a large price gap!

 

[Kanifee]

Graphics cards have allways been heavily priced, i remember the 9800xt being around the £300 mark and that was the market leader at the time, that equates around the same as todays single card solutions making todays cards better value for money in regards to cost of living and inflation over the years that have passed.
as for games i think there have been massive leaps forword, fair enough the steps to get there have been small but get there we have, certainly today we have far superior grfx and effects in games, remembering that not only have the modern graphics cards been made to drive much nicer mor egraphicly intense games but also drive them at much much higher resolutions, 1280x1024 used to be the 'norm' with 1680x1020 being todays 'standerd'with 1080x1200 being the happy medium of mid range and highest resolution desired.

So looking at things id say the graphics card market is progressing at the same pace it has for the last 7 years, around the 9700 mark was the largets leap forwors in my mind though i may be wrong, anything after was just progressive steps to our current market.

 

[Chris Beard]

Software bloat just makes it seem slower. You might also want to have a look at your chip for the haddock console ports. They're so cod that they just left them with a heavy scew to processor power rather than GPU.

 

[p0rks0da]

The midrange will hopefully get a bit more exciting when Nvidia release the GF104. Nobody knows how they will perform, but it will be interesting to see what they're like. High end will stay pretty much as it is until ATI or Nvidia refresh their cards i reckon, then prices might come down a bit.

I consider myself lucky because my 4850 has held up surprisingly well for the games i actually want to play (most recently ME2 and BioShock 2) and there is literally nothing i am interested in now until the end of the year. Maybe in 8-9 months we will have the next ATI architecture (not a Cypress refresh) and possibly a second round of GF100 cards with the heat issues sorted out.

 

[silversurfer]

Nah we're doomed. This sub-board won't even exist in 12 months time.

good, the pc was always inferior to the amiga anyway. The whole pc design is bolt on

The bigger picture is the whole industry is generic, they cannot afford to specialise because numbers are not great enough to justify the development time.

The best system to me is a section making engines and then a modding community creating the actual games over a period of years.
It'll still be years before the building block engine is a good dx10 one I guess, wait for the consoles to switch up. Anyone really tight could just buy stick with dx9 till then