Is parallel computing detracting from gaming performance?

[TheMorningStar]

I have just been wondering if APP is hurting the performance of graphics cards? We are now seeing graphics cards becoming more and more optimized towards computational tasks as opposed to rendering and I am wondering if these modifications are totally conductive to gaming performance.

I am wondering If it may not be better (for the consumer) to branch these technologies into their own products. Would we see a gain in gaming if the APP side of things was ignored?

 

[TheMorningStar]

hmmm. Do you think that with a dual market base this could have driven up prices somewhat? Especially with AMD cards which currently seem to excel with the likes of bitcoin and the *@home projects.

I have actually wondered why AMD have not released stripped down versions of the x2 cards for professional use manly with much less VRAM etc because from what I can see most (maybe all?) of APP tasks don't seem to benefit from large amounts of VRAM or full PCI-E bandwidth as I have seen people running these cards in modified PCI-E x1 slots.

 

[TheMorningStar]

Gpu's have been used for this kind of work for YEARS, well before either were branded GPGPU's and while some transistors are used for those functions, its not quite as many as you think and a lot of bits have multiple uses.

hmm well I know my humble 3870 doesn't support most, perhaps all compute applications like bitcoin, *@home etc. The 4xxx was I believe the first from AMD. As for Nvidea, I do recall them knocking out dedicated boxes for parallel computing, I think with the 8 series. Was there anything before this?