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Low end isn't improving...
- Thread starter Radiation
- Start date
The real problem is that people are willing to pay for small increases year on year.Just watch, the 8 series shall be slightly faster and slightly less power hungry than the 7 series I'd wager a guess there's an 8850 coming which is the exact same or slightly less fast as the 7850 but with 50 watts less power draw.
So until people stop buying in to small upgrades they are going to continue drip feeding us and keeping the prices artificially high.
So until people stop buying in to small upgrades they are going to continue drip feeding us and keeping the prices artificially high.
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This moment in time seems like a good one to buy a computer. I built my PC a year ago, it would cost more for me to build an equivelant one now, and all thats happened since then is the IB CPU's have been released...
My GPU might be power hungry and out of date, but a year ago it cost me £169 refurbished. A GPU that would match it performance wise (7850 OC) costs about the same, it just consumes half the power.
It entirely depends on the games you look at. First party games actually look pretty good, Heavenly Sword, or Ratchet and Clank, for example are very good looking games, especially given the hardware they're running on.
Third party games, not so much, a lot of them can look pretty bad.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
Losing money on the hardware isn't a reason to not put in a better gpu, last time around bluray + R&D on Cell = mega bucks and even an expensive console lost money.
However a shrink later and its making money, another shrink later and its painfully cheap, to the point where something with twice the power would still make a killing. The money is all in the software though and the guys who really care about the money don't give a crap about losing on the hardware.
If the 360/ps3 gpu's had been twice as big, the psu block would cost $10 more, the gpu would cost $20-30 more, and the added bandwidth, memory/cost would bump it up a bit. They'd make more of a loss but 2 years later, they'd still break even, and for the next 5 years, you'd have something with vastly more power to exploit.
Either way, we'll have to see AMD have said semi custom APU's which suggests, any of a LOT of things, die stacking, sticking a second GPU on the same package as an APU, doubling gpu size for a given APU, giving it essentially crossfire. So a 7670 on die with the APU like a trinity/kaveri, and adding a second 7670 on package, giving it huge bandwidth and far more ability to do fancy intercontrolling of the chips and pushing crossfire more hardware than software.
We've got die stacking, doing really fancy interconnects on package all coming in the next year or two, game changers in terms of on die bandwidth and IGP performance. Do they have them, maybe.
7970, not a literal 7970, if there is a APU + a discrete gpu, there is very little need for the kind of gpgpu power a 7970 has, or a 7670, its all eating power with no benefit. I'd expect, whatever happens, for the cpu/gpu to cut out anything that won't be used and to be significantly power efficient. I'd imagine the APU will be one die and done at 28nm, possible they will do the CPU on 32nm and then stick it on package with a gpu die at 28nm. AMD are certainly moving cpu's to 28nm and aren't too far from it so its definitely possible but maybe not yet(cpu's take way longer to tape out than gpu's).
If I were Sony/MS I'd certainly be going "bigger" on gpu than last time to extend the life, ultimately in 2-3 years the process tech and a respin of everything will bring costs down hugely and the next years of sales will make up for any losses anyway.
However a shrink later and its making money, another shrink later and its painfully cheap, to the point where something with twice the power would still make a killing. The money is all in the software though and the guys who really care about the money don't give a crap about losing on the hardware.
If the 360/ps3 gpu's had been twice as big, the psu block would cost $10 more, the gpu would cost $20-30 more, and the added bandwidth, memory/cost would bump it up a bit. They'd make more of a loss but 2 years later, they'd still break even, and for the next 5 years, you'd have something with vastly more power to exploit.
Either way, we'll have to see AMD have said semi custom APU's which suggests, any of a LOT of things, die stacking, sticking a second GPU on the same package as an APU, doubling gpu size for a given APU, giving it essentially crossfire. So a 7670 on die with the APU like a trinity/kaveri, and adding a second 7670 on package, giving it huge bandwidth and far more ability to do fancy intercontrolling of the chips and pushing crossfire more hardware than software.
We've got die stacking, doing really fancy interconnects on package all coming in the next year or two, game changers in terms of on die bandwidth and IGP performance. Do they have them, maybe.
7970, not a literal 7970, if there is a APU + a discrete gpu, there is very little need for the kind of gpgpu power a 7970 has, or a 7670, its all eating power with no benefit. I'd expect, whatever happens, for the cpu/gpu to cut out anything that won't be used and to be significantly power efficient. I'd imagine the APU will be one die and done at 28nm, possible they will do the CPU on 32nm and then stick it on package with a gpu die at 28nm. AMD are certainly moving cpu's to 28nm and aren't too far from it so its definitely possible but maybe not yet(cpu's take way longer to tape out than gpu's).
If I were Sony/MS I'd certainly be going "bigger" on gpu than last time to extend the life, ultimately in 2-3 years the process tech and a respin of everything will bring costs down hugely and the next years of sales will make up for any losses anyway.
Or even add replaceable parts like a PC so we can switch out GPUs because the xbox has bad FPS on a lot of games and its soo annoying but sound is also a factor the xbox 360s were so loud it was stupid!
I sold mine at game on 2x console trade in with 2 games and got £180 for it so i got a 3ds lol.
I sold mine at game on 2x console trade in with 2 games and got £180 for it so i got a 3ds lol.
SkodaMart
SkodaMart
£100 gets you a great 2nd hand card. That is where I would be looking if that was my budget.