Nvidia Ampere might launch as GeForce GTX 2070 and 2080 on April 12th

[Silent_Scone]

And all of them are with mediocre visuals.
Is there a single modern game that can rival visual-wise the mighty Crysis series?

When were we talking about graphics? This is painful. We were talking about PC gaming apparently being dead, and you've swung that into what game has great graphics? lol


What is happening.

 

[Quartz]

The chatter is about to get big as the first indications are here that Nvidia will be launching a GA104, a GPU called Ampere, on April 12th."

IMHO There's little point buying a new high-end GPU until high-refresh 4K and 5K displays are available with HDMI 2.1 and DP 1.4. The current Pascal cards can already max a 4K display at 60 Hz.

I'm hoping for the release of a Titan card early on even though I know it will be re-released as a xx80 Ti 9 months to a year later.

We'll see in two months.

 

[melmac]

Crysis is not about "fancy" graphics. It is about state-of-the-art graphics, that was the world record for the best at the time of its release.

I am asking you, are there games now which set in stone the visuals for more years to come?

Good graphics doesn't mean that the game will be good. And because PC games are easy to mod, there are mods to improve the graphics on most PC games.

Which are they?

Do I really need to list games with stunning graphics? Are you been that pedantic? Crysis was so good because it was ahead of it's time. These days graphics in games are so good that the gap between high and ultra is practically gone. We are seeing smaller improvements because the graphics are so good now that improvements are only incremental.

Just gone to list 3. Skyrim, GTA V and The Witcher 3 for starters. And if you don't think the default graphics are good enough, you can mod each of these games to look way better. ​

 

[melmac]

When were we talking about graphics? This is painful. We were talking about PC gaming apparently being dead, and you've swung that into what game has great graphics? lol


What is happening.

Yeah, apparently PC gaming is dead because Crysis looked amazing .

 

[AiiR]

I'd love a game like Crysis to come out again. A game that makes 90% of rigs feel obsolete.

I remember at the time being able to play it at 720p medium settings was a huge achievement on my HD3850.

 

[4K8KW10]

Yeah, apparently PC gaming is dead because Crysis looked amazing .

No, PC gaming looks dead because there are no games right now ahead of their time.
Right now, you have many games with relatively mediocre visuals, nothing better than Crysis series, and all of them with tremendous hardware requirements.

I see no reason for a GPU upgrade right now.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

No, PC gaming looks dead because there are no games right now ahead of their time.
Right now, you have many games with relatively mediocre visuals, nothing better than Crysis series, and all of them with tremendous hardware requirements.

I see no reason for a GPU upgrade right now.

Agreed,and the reason why we are not seeing the jumps is the midrange has slowed down massively.

People forget we had powerful cards like the 8800GT and 8800GTS 512MB for under £300 during the release of Crysis,which had the power of a high end card released a year before for less than half the price.

Now,its all drip fed improvements,etc so devs CBA trying to target cutting edge graphics since most of the market is lucky to have GTX1060/GTX970 level graphics and hence a £400 to £500 console is not far off in processing power. They end up saving money by just using the consoles as a base for more and more games.

People are making some weird contradictory argument about not wanting great graphics in PC GAMES and then "needing" the latest hardware,and that includes wanting to game at higher resolution,ie,more on screen pixels. If they are not that worried,you might as well not bother upgrading to a better card since you can drop settings or buy a console then,and stick at 1080p.

It shows how low the expectations of modern high end PC enthusiasts are now.

Plus,most of the very popular games like Overwatch,etc don't really need a GTX1080TI to run on. The only real reason for pushing high end cards is for ramping details up or doing VR with higher framerates and more details. If you don't want that,then its no real point getting a 5GHZ Core i7 8700K and a £1000 graphics card.

 

[melmac]

They are making some weird argument about not wanting great graphics in PC GAMES. If they are not that worried,you might as well not bother upgrading to a better card since you can drop settings or buy a console then.

Plus,most of the very popular games like Overwatch,etc don't really need a GTX1080TI to run on. The only real reason for pushing high end cards is for ramping details up or doing VR with higher framerates and more details.

No, no, He is making some kind of Weird argument that no games look good these days and that's leading to the death of PC gaming.

You do realise that most PC gamers have either integrated GPU's or really low powered GPUs. Check out Steam Hardware survey. And according to Steam, year on year they are growing at about 1.5 million users every month for the last 2 years give or take.

Now please tell me, with growth like that, how PC gaming is dying?

PC gaming is a lot more than what GPU you have.

 

[Silent_Scone]

I think we've discerned what some constitute as being a good game, and not a lot else

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

No, no, He is making some kind of Weird argument that no games look good these days and that's leading to the death of PC gaming.

You do realise that most PC gamers have either integrated GPU's or really low powered GPUs. Check out Steam Hardware survey. And according to Steam, year on year they are growing at about 1.5 million users every month for the last 2 years give or take.

Now please tell me, with growth like that, how PC gaming is dying?

PC gaming is a lot more than what GPU you have.

I think its important to separate PC gaming and CUTTING EDGE PC gaming.

The problem,is he is right though to a degree when it comes to enthusiasts like us who have above average rigs, and the PC being a CUTTING EDGE platform. PC gaming for the masses is still fine,but as a CUTTING EDGE platform,I think sadly it is starting to wane.

The PC is about pushing the boundaries of what can be done in gaming due to generally having more processing power available to it and the quicker rate of improvements in the past over consoles,ie,Crysis was important not only for its graphics but its interactable environment,etc. Its a tech demo game,but PC has always needed them even going back to games like the original Unreal or games like Half Life 2,etc. Unreal was the Crysis of its era,and it really pushed PCs. Half Life 2 did things like awesome facial animations.

Games like Red Faction had environments which could be destroyed.

These pushed what could be done on a TECHNICAL level more than consoles could do. I have been PC gaming for over 20 years or so,and the slowdown has been noticable and I love PC gaming.

People forget that actually consoles used to be MORE cutting edge at times than PCs,before the rise of 3D accelerator cards for PC,ie,the first proper graphics cards. Look at games like Alien vs Predator on the Atari consoles when compared to PC games of the era. However,once PCs had their own dedicated cards they started to push past consoles 9/10.

However,Crysis came with the legendary card which was the 8800GT which was under £200 and close in performance to a £500 one.

The issue is that due to companies like Intel,Nvidia and AMD milking stuff more and more,the PC is not seeing as many of those jumps especially at more common price points,and it means basically there is less and less "need" to be buying top notch hardware since older computers or consoles are good enough as devs in reality might as well not bother.

Sure if you spend £800 on a card you might see nice improvements,but the figures show this is more a niche,a very profitable one,but still hardly mass market.

I give you a prime example of the slowdown.

So in 2014 we had sub £300 R9 290 and GTX970 doubling the performance of the sub £300 HD7870 and sub £300 GTX570 launched 4 years earlier.

Now fast forward to between 3.5 to 4 years later.

Something like an RX480/GTX1060 is barely 20% to 25% faster.

The GTX970 was in the top 3 surveyed Steam cards a year after launch. Last time I checked the GTX970 is still ahead of the GTX1070,and the later is at number 11. The GTX1060 is in the top 10.

The number of 1080p displays has increased massively displacing lower resolution ones. So that means,any performance improvements have been used by the higher resolution displays the average gamer owns.

So,if you a dev,why would you be bothered to push massively taxing graphical effects?? Its not worth it. Sure AMD and Nvidia might give devs some money to put in their effects,but most games won't bother.

I mean its sad when an XBox One X has probably a faster GPU in reality than anyone in the top 10 of Steam now.

The problem is if that happens,the increasingly PC like consoles look more viable,and what happens when the next generation have a Ryzen CPU core or something similar from Intel?? They only need to support keyboard and mouse better,and then a company like Blizzard does not need much to get something like WoW working on a console.

Yes,you might get a poorly optimised game,or one where AMD or Nvidia push some tech to sell more cards,but 9/10 most of those additions rarely are ground breaking.

If anything I have been following some of the bigger tech innovations,and they seem to be less PC orientated and more orientated towards consoles. Have you noticed how modern open world games seem to be able to do large outdoor areas without loading screens and with decentish detail?? Skyrim was one of the first games to be able to be able to do that successful as Bethesda had to get over the RAM limitations of the consoles,so you can see even back then even PC centric franchises were going more console orientated.

Its also increasingly worrying,that when you look at big gaming devs,that more and more revenue is coming from consoles,even in a number of cases,it being more than PC.

Its why you are seeing bloody microtransactions and "games as a service" model infecting more and more PC games,as these things came from mobile gaming and consoles.

 

[Klo]

Slowdown is somewhat inevitable as you start hitting the limits of physics as reasonable costs. 10 years go progress was faster, and 20 years ago progress was even faster.

What's happening, like many technologies, is that it's becoming 'good enough' for the majority, and what is 'good enough' has become affordable enough to be able to fit into lower end PC hardware and consoles.

 

[silvagti]

Given the existence of 4k gaming consoles like the PS4 pro and Xbox one X this feels like a time when Nvidia really need to push the boat out to tempt gamers to upgrade and stick with PC rather than switching to console.

Hopefully this next gen of cards produces some serious improvements as given the cost of GPUs (and computer parts generally thanks to mining) these days it's hard to justify spending that much when consoles offer a similar experience for so much less.

I'm starting to question whether I should give up on upgrading my pc and switch to the dark side.

 

[melmac]

You wasted a lot of time.

Sorry, but what? A big long post that shows absolutely nothing.

The subject:- PC gaming is dying.

The facts: PC gaming isn't dying, it's actually growing.

Nothing in your post disproves that. You can't just move the goal posts to make the discussion fit your argument. Oh it's not about PC gaming it's about cutting edge PC gaming. Why is it important to separate them? Just so that you can talk on and on about how much a slow down has happened in the graphic world?

All the while completely ignoring the fact that you can mod PC games to look amazing and cripple most PC's out there. You can use DSR and VSR to make games look even better.

Nvidia had record sales figures with Pascal, doesn't really support any argument that PC gaming is dying.

There is VR and 4K gaming both needing massive GPU power. HDR monitors are coming, that will mean further improvements in Visual quality.

The reason there are no stand out games like Crysis now, is not because of some vast conspiracy to slow down PC progress, it's because most games look amazing these days, even at lower settings.

Look at games like Rise of the Tomb Raider, Ryse Son of Rome, Witcher 3, GTA V etc. they all look fantastic.

PC gaming is PC gaming, doesn't matter whether it's on a 1080ti or an AMD APU. And it's not dying, it's growing.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Slowdown is somewhat inevitable as you start hitting the limits of physics as reasonable costs. 10 years go progress was faster, and 20 years ago progress was even faster.

What's happening, like many technologies, is that it's becoming 'good enough' for the majority, and what is 'good enough' has become affordable enough to be able to fit into lower end PC hardware and consoles.

The thing is I think where that is a true to a level,Nvidia margins have doubled from the Fermi days,and AMD has also kind of lost sight of the consumer GPU market,so I think the current slowdown is more because both companies would rather only slightly push each other as it works out for both of them. Remember a GTX970 had a 400MM2 GPU and the GTX1060 and RX480 have 200~230MM2 GPUs,so both companies can probably still have a good performance bump if they wanted to.

The problem is I am not sure they really want to,since like with RAM,HDD and SSD pricing its easy to just prod at each other instead of tryng to push too much,since its easier to make money that way.

People say costs are a reason,but RAM,HDD and SSD companies are making good profits so its not a full truth IMHO OFC.

I could be wrong and I hope I am,but I can't see the sub £300 Ampere cards being much more than 20% to 25% faster than a GTX1060,and I honestly have zero expectations with AMD this year to push Nvidia when it comes to gaming either.

If OTH,both suddenly have a 40% bump(which is not as massive as you think) and we have a GTX1070 level GTX2060 or RX680,then I might feel a bit more positive about things.

Missing the point entirely and contradicting themselves about the whole point of even getting a high end PC for gaming.Also thanks for also pointing out why the performance improvements have slowed down.

Yes,I did waste a lot of time.

Given the existence of 4k gaming consoles like the PS4 pro and Xbox one X this feels like a time when Nvidia really need to push the boat out to tempt gamers to upgrade and stick with PC rather than switching to console.

Hopefully this next gen of cards produces some serious improvements as given the cost of GPUs (and computer parts generally thanks to mining) these days it's hard to justify spending that much when consoles offer a similar experience for so much less.

I'm starting to question whether I should give up on upgrading my pc and switch to the dark side.

You need to blame PCMR apologists,who are so in love with their hobby,they would rather defend the slowdowns in performance bumps,shoddy optimised games,lack of progression,etc.

Its like the whales who attack anyone who does not condone excessive microtransactions and makes excuses for it.

When companies have doubled GPU margins from 35% to getting close to 70% you can see the real reason,why they won't push too far. Faster GPUs mean bigger GPUs,and bigger GPUs cost more money. The GTX970 had a GPU bigger than the one in the GTX1070,GTX1070TI and GTX1080. The R9 290/390 had a GPU nearly double the size of the one in a RX480.

Both Nvidia and AMD are selling GPUs at £200 to £300 which are tinier than those in cards like the GTX970 and R9 290/R9 390.

There is no reason why even a 14NM/16NM successor to the GTX1060/RX580 shouldn't be 30% to 40% faster at least,especially as these nodes are getting onto two years old. Yields must be high by now so they can afford to make the GPUs bigger.

I expect the GTX2060 to be at a minimum GTX1070 level,especially since TPU says its 35% faster than a GTX1060 at 1080p and TSMC 12NM is improved over 16NM. So higher clockspeeds,and greater die area should do it and better memory compression. If it isn't then meh. AMD OFC will probably be nowhere to be seen,since they seem obsessed with HBM and have skipped 12NM it seems for GPUs. Thanks AMD a lot.

However,I expect if enough of their customers have such low expectations,then as a company I would just deliver the minimum due to "reasons". Probably they just need the PR company Apple and Samsung uses to use more "revolutionary" and "innovative" words.

 

[Kaapstad]

I think its important to separate PC gaming and CUTTING EDGE PC gaming.

The problem,is he is right though to a degree when it comes to enthusiasts like us who have above average rigs, and the PC being a CUTTING EDGE platform. PC gaming for the masses is still fine,but as a CUTTING EDGE platform,I think sadly it is starting to wane.

The PC is about pushing the boundaries of what can be done in gaming due to generally having more processing power available to it and the quicker rate of improvements in the past over consoles,ie,Crysis was important not only for its graphics but its interactable environment,etc. Its a tech demo game,but PC has always needed them even going back to games like the original Unreal or games like Half Life 2,etc. Unreal was the Crysis of its era,and it really pushed PCs. Half Life 2 did things like awesome facial animations.

Games like Red Faction had environments which could be destroyed.

These pushed what could be done on a TECHNICAL level more than consoles could do. I have been PC gaming for over 20 years or so,and the slowdown has been noticable and I love PC gaming.

People forget that actually consoles used to be MORE cutting edge at times than PCs,before the rise of 3D accelerator cards for PC,ie,the first proper graphics cards. Look at games like Alien vs Predator on the Atari consoles when compared to PC games of the era. However,once PCs had their own dedicated cards they started to push past consoles 9/10.

However,Crysis came with the legendary card which was the 8800GT which was under £200 and close in performance to a £500 one.

The issue is that due to companies like Intel,Nvidia and AMD milking stuff more and more,the PC is not seeing as many of those jumps especially at more common price points,and it means basically there is less and less "need" to be buying top notch hardware since older computers or consoles are good enough as devs in reality might as well not bother.

Sure if you spend £800 on a card you might see nice improvements,but the figures show this is more a niche,a very profitable one,but still hardly mass market.

I give you a prime example of the slowdown.

So in 2014 we had sub £300 R9 290 and GTX970 doubling the performance of the sub £300 HD7870 and sub £300 GTX570 launched 4 years earlier.

Now fast forward to between 3.5 to 4 years later.

Something like an RX480/GTX1060 is barely 20% to 25% faster.

The GTX970 was in the top 3 surveyed Steam cards a year after launch. Last time I checked the GTX970 is still ahead of the GTX1070,and the later is at number 11. The GTX1060 is in the top 10.

The number of 1080p displays has increased massively displacing lower resolution ones. So that means,any performance improvements have been used by the higher resolution displays the average gamer owns.

So,if you a dev,why would you be bothered to push massively taxing graphical effects?? Its not worth it. Sure AMD and Nvidia might give devs some money to put in their effects,but most games won't bother.

I mean its sad when an XBox One X has probably a faster GPU in reality than anyone in the top 10 of Steam now.

The problem is if that happens,the increasingly PC like consoles look more viable,and what happens when the next generation have a Ryzen CPU core or something similar from Intel?? They only need to support keyboard and mouse better,and then a company like Blizzard does not need much to get something like WoW working on a console.

Yes,you might get a poorly optimised game,or one where AMD or Nvidia push some tech to sell more cards,but 9/10 most of those additions rarely are ground breaking.

If anything I have been following some of the bigger tech innovations,and they seem to be less PC orientated and more orientated towards consoles. Have you noticed how modern open world games seem to be able to do large outdoor areas without loading screens and with decentish detail?? Skyrim was one of the first games to be able to be able to do that successful as Bethesda had to get over the RAM limitations of the consoles,so you can see even back then even PC centric franchises were going more console orientated.

Its also increasingly worrying,that when you look at big gaming devs,that more and more revenue is coming from consoles,even in a number of cases,it being more than PC.

Its why you are seeing bloody microtransactions and "games as a service" model infecting more and more PC games,as these things came from mobile gaming and consoles.

You are looking at it from the wrong direction. The problem is the monitor manufacturers who are dragging their feet and causing stagnation in GPU performance.

What would happen if 8k 144htz monitors were available for gaming?

There would be massive demand for much more powerful GPUs from NVidia and AMD (probably with more use of mGPU and dual cards) and the consoles would really struggle to compete.

ATM AMD and NVidia are doing just enough as there is no need for big jumps in performance.

 

[melmac]

Not relevant.

Lets get back to the actual topic that you decided to post on. PC gaming is dying.

You supported 4K8KW10's argument that PC gaming was dying because he didn't have to upgrade his GPU. Your basically saying that PC gaming is dying because you don't have to upgrade your GPU as often. That's it's PC gaming is only PC gaming if it looks better than Crysis. PC gaming is about gaming on PC's, doesn't matter whether it's a integrated GPU or Titan xPs in SLI.

There is no support for your argument that PC gaming is dying. By every measurable metric, PC gaming is growing, according to Steam's numbers and according to record numbers of GPU's sold.

So, where is the proof that PC gaming is dying? Or can you actually answer that question? Or are you going to waffle on about slowdowns and that low end gaming isn't actually PC gaming.

And my arguments are contradictory. The beauty of PC gaming is that you can enter at any level. You don't need the latest greatest hardware to play and get good visuals, but, if you have the hardware you can push your system to the limits. Try playing GTA V with a photo realistic mod.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You are looking at it from the wrong direction. The problem is the monitor manufacturers who are dragging their feet and causing stagnation in GPU performance.

What would happen if 8k 144htz monitors were available for gaming?

There would be massive demand for much more powerful GPUs from NVidia and AMD (probably with more use of mGPU and dual cards) and the consoles would really struggle to compete.

ATM AMD and NVidia are doing just enough as there is no need for big jumps in performance.

4K is 4 times the number of pixels than 1080p and qHD is double the number.

In the end the cheaper higher resolution monitors are already here. My 10 bit 25" qHD one cost £230 to £240 IIRC in 2016.

I mean you can get 1080p FreeSync monitors like for a £100 IIRC,and there are even 120HZ/144HZ 1080p ones which have dropped under £200. 4K monitors have dropped as low as £180,and you can get a 32" qHD monitor for £200.

In the end if Nvidia and AMD can barely push 1080p 120HZ/144HZ performance,with a taxing game on a sub £200 and below monitor on an under £300 card,why should monitor companies care either??

Even on TV,4K is the de-facto standard there,and how is 20% to 25% improvements at £300 and under even going to help with something like a Steam Box for example??

Monitor and TV companies have tested the waters with displays with 4 times the resolution of the 1080p monitors and TVs which were out before.

Having actually used the RX470/RX480 they get even taxed at qHD in a 2015 game like The Witcher 3 if you start using more taxing settings. Looking at my experience of a GTX1070 and a GTX1080,that is the level I would be expecting for qHD now,let alone in the next few years.

So,yeah I would expect at least GTX1070 level performance for a 1080p card,if it is to handle more taxing 1080p games for the next two years or so.

The thing linking all of this is AMD and Nvidia. It makes more sense for them to prod each other as little as they can,then only make an improvement when they have exhausted their own sales of said products,ie,more competing against their own products.

They can use the same PR companies as other tech firms to sell "revolutionary" and "innovative" words like Apple,whilst milking it all. Then they both put more money to AI and mobile,and other areas which is where all the true R and D spend is going. Don't believe me?? Nvidia spent billions on getting Tegra to work in mobile devices,and they lost lots doing that too. Intel did the same - they used PC gamers as a cash cow,and spent billions on concentrating on mobile and spending billions on Atom. AMD cut R and D on dGPUs,and spent most of it on CPUs. Guess what they concentrated the little GPU R and D left on?? AI and companies like Apple. Hence the use of expensive HBM2. No issue with the Vega supply for Apple and Intel. Polaris seems partly subsidised by the consoles and companies like Apple too.

We are just getting the scraps of their R and D efforts TBH.

reading something I said as something it wasn't and then argueing abvout it

First few lines of my reply:

I think its important to separate PC gaming and CUTTING EDGE PC gaming.

The problem,is he is right though to a degree when it comes to enthusiasts like us who have above average rigs, and the PC being a CUTTING EDGE platform. PC gaming for the masses is still fine,but as a CUTTING EDGE platform,I think sadly it is starting to wane.

No wonder you can't read long posts,when you can't even read 4 lines TBH. I was not even fully agreeing with him,but whatever. 2 out of 2 so far. Argue with the other bloke,I am sure he will enable you when he logs back in.

 

[melmac]

I think we've discerned what some constitute as being a good game, and not a lot else

Exactly this. And long, long, long posts with not a lot else.

 

[Silent_Scone]

It's industry driven, there's an argument from a technical perspective that things aren't getting driven, but even that is weak given there isn't even the hardware currently that can drive the VR headsets coming this year.

Fact is, PC Gaming is not dying, and there's no evidence to suggest there is, either. Consoles setting the bar for graphical fidelity is not the same as saying PC gaming is dying. It's a non argument.

 

[daniel2K16]

debating when to sell my 1060 for these....I wonder if I should sell now before prices drop but then I have nothing to use till april. :\