Video Card hype/enthusiasm has gone down tremendously

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Spyhawk

Limp Gawd
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Ive noticed a huge decrease in GPU interest over the last 2years. WebSites/forums/posters arent talking about them as much as usual and when they do, I dont sense the same enthusiasm as I did in previous gens. Maybe this has someting to do with the console phenomenon where games on the pc just dont warrent these huge video cards anymore...I dunno

Look at the latest AMD launch in regards to the 7970. It doesnt feel like a major launch at all . I mean AMD are coming out with a whole new archetecture and its faster than anything out there atm and Hardocp does a review, gives it a gold award but you get the feeling reading through the review,(yes I read everything) that its no biggy, nothing special....I dunno maybe its just me but I didnt sense any major positive feelings about AMD's latest launch liek I did when they launched the 5000 series.

The thing is faster cooler smaller and it overclocks like crazy and its a completely new arch and unike Fermi, they were able to bring this new arch to market on schedual without any major bugs....I dont think AMD are being given all the kudos they deserve here.
 
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I think the 5000 series was bigger because it was the first dx11 card. I waited a long time for a dx11 card to come out.
 
I get a similar impression. But maybe its because there arent too many games that are exciting. I dont know the reason but I feel the same way as you. I still think im going to get a 7970 if I can. I have had money set aside for it for a long time.
 
Or maybe people are just getting smarter. For that $700 video card you get a 10-15% increase in performance!
WOOOOHOOOO!

The sad part is, I used to get the "latest, greatest" hardware once a year. Its sad when I see how much money I've wasted over the last 10 years on gaming shit. Now, I could care less about that extra 10-15%. I play along with people all day who have the best and fastest hardware and they are no better at the games then I am and most are much worse. One of the best players I've ever played with in WOW was a med student who got 10-15fps in games on a shitty 3 year old laptop and owned everyone. You can easily wait 2 or 3 generations of cards nowdays and still be just fine gaming.
 
There are practically no games that will max out any of this hardware unless you do surround monitors or 3D vision, etc.
 
Its because you can still play pretty much any game at pretty high settings with a 4870, which is like 3 and a bit years old.

These days it seems like the only reason to buy a high end card is to push high levels of AA and resolutions beyond what most people use. You almost need to look at zoomed in pictures or flick back and forth between pictures several times before you can even see the difference between a low end card and a high end card these days.

Its hard to get excited over a new video card when there's very little reason to buy one. Even my 8800GTS 320mb, cost me $420AUD when I got it and pretty much immediately I was thinking there'd be a tangible difference if I'd paid more or waited for the next batch of cards and paid the same amount. Now I'm playing on a GTX460 that cost me $220AUD a year and a half ago and really I'm looking at Skyrim and BF3 thinking there's very little tangible gain from upgrading.

Used to be that AA and AF were a bonus when playing an older game on a high end card, because the games themselves were graphically intensive relative to the hardware, now AA and AF are the only way to set different cards apart coz almost anything can play almost any game on any settings.
 
nothing really new right now, DX11 is out... now it is just power increases, but actually if you read into the 7*** series specs, it is adding a TON of crap...
 
For gamers as was pointed out, games have no longer been as innovative as before, needing the latest hardware to get an acceptable frame rate.
 
Still some decent games coming out though. I like star wars.. But the game looks five years old already..... Most games are console ports and are buggy as hell at first too. But still though... Witcher 2, Star Wars, Skyrim, STALKER series, Metro 2033, etc... I don't have enough time to play all these games. Maybe we're just spoiled and can never be satisfied with what we have? I for one will be picking up the next gen cards. Only because I traded out my GTX480's for my other computer and am trying to game on a 30" with one 4870 from like four years ago and it's just don't doing it. Would love to get some more monitors too to see what I'm missing in eyefinity.
 
My older brother used to build gaming rigs for fun about 10 years ago but stopped when console gaming started to make good improvements. My older brother thinks gaming rigs are ridiculously over priced compared to modern gaming consoles in terms of gaming performance and value.


I like gaming on my RIG but it's not cheap. It's a luxury hobby.
 
I blame Crysis. Since Crysis there hasn't been a game which stirred such a huge interested in new graphics cards. Remember the constant "but can it run Crysis" posts that plagued every forum for about a year or two after Crysis came out?

PC gaming needs another Crysis...but this time with a better story and better gameplay.
 
I think it's because new cards are worthless for even most hardcore PC gamers.

Had to use my backup ATI 4850 512MB video card while my GTX480 was in for RMA, and for the games I was playing on my GTX480 before it fried (Alice: Madness Returns and Oblivion) played perfectly well on my 4850...think I had to lower the resolution a bit in Alice but other than that it ran fine! Hell, even Oblivion all graphics modded ran at max settings...did I mention that I was using stock Windows drivers for the 4850 too? I did not install a single ATI driver and had zero issues.

Now sure Oblivion was running at 40fps instead of 150fps...but did I notice? Not really, actually got me thinking as to why I upgraded from the 4850 in the first place!

Other than that games are the big issue I think. I read reviews for all these new cards and it seems that even the low-end cards included in reviews for comparison can run most games maxed out as long as you aren't using 16x AA and super high resolutions/multiple monitors. I mean, think about it, when Crysis came out you needed a damn 8800GTX SLI, quad-core, 4GB RAM, etc rig to run that game maxed out...anything lower than that and you were stuck on low resolution and low-medium settings...now a days even AAA titles need hardly anything faster than a $100 GTS450...my cousin has one and can run 99% of games at max settings!

Game quality seriously needs to change until we get excited again...and only next-gen console ports will do that, but even then I don't see any overclocked quad core PC with dual decent video cards (GTX570 or above) NOT being able to play next generation games at blazing speeds...no way that even a bad port of a Xbox 720 game can't run maxed out on my dual GTX580's at 1080p...just not going to happen.

TLDR: PC hardware got to fast to soon and game quality got to bad to quick. I really think that's the problem over all.

Wow...after typing that sentence makes me wonder why I typed all that other stuff...4AM geek rant FTW?
 
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I blame the XBox 360. Because of it every major title has a DX9 rendering pipeline so there's no reason to even get a DX11 card if you turn down the settings low enough. And of course why add exclusive special effects/rendering for the PC if the majority of your revenue comes from console?

Also people have been stuck at 1080p monitors for a while. Back then resolutions increased every couple of years.
 
Pitbully said:
Or maybe people are just getting smarter. For that $700 video card you get a 10-15% increase in performance!
WOOOOHOOOO!

The sad part is, I used to get the "latest, greatest" hardware once a year. Its sad when I see how much money I've wasted over the last 10 years on gaming shit. Now, I could care less about that extra 10-15%. I play along with people all day who have the best and fastest hardware and they are no better at the games then I am and most are much worse. One of the best players I've ever played with in WOW was a med student who got 10-15fps in games on a shitty 3 year old laptop and owned everyone. You can easily wait 2 or 3 generations of cards nowdays and still be just fine gaming.
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or people are getting dumber and fail to read what card its being compared to.. but then again its AMD so people just read what they want to read instead.


DeadSkull said:
I blame Crysis. Since Crysis there hasn't been a game which stirred such a huge interested in new graphics cards. Remember the constant "but can it run Crysis" posts that plagued every forum for about a year or two after Crysis came out?

PC gaming needs another Crysis...but this time with a better story and better gameplay.
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the most annoying part about the whole "will it play crysis" crap is that the actual crytek engine is horrible. i could never understand why people cared to so much about a card being able to play a broken game engine so badly.


Spyhawk said:
Ive noticed a huge decrease in GPU interest over the last 2years. WebSites/forums/posters arent talking about them as much as usual and when they do, I dont sense the same enthusiasm as I did in previous gens. Maybe this has someting to do with the console phenomenon where games on the pc just dont warrent these huge video cards anymore...I dunno

Look at the latest AMD launch in regards to the 7970. It doesnt feel like a major launch at all . I mean AMD are coming out with a whole new archetecture and its faster than anything out there atm and Hardocp does a review, gives it a gold award but you get the feeling reading through the review,(yes I read everything) that its no biggy, nothing special....I dunno maybe its just me but I didnt sense any major positive feelings about AMD's latest launch liek I did when they launched the 5000 series.

The thing is faster cooler smaller and it overclocks like crazy and its a completely new arch and unike Fermi, they were able to bring this new arch to market on schedual without any major bugs....I dont think AMD are being given all the kudos they deserve here.
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i don't think theres a lack of enthusiasm, i think [H] made a mistake(even though what they did should of made the 7970 look even better) in expecting their readers to have some common sense and actually read the entire article when they used a high overclocked GTX 580 3GB card to compare against the stock HD7970. hopefully once afterburner is updated and [H] decides to do an overclock vs overclock review and shows the difference i think the enthusiasm will show up again.. until then we just have to deal with the idiots that look at the graphs and ignore all the text.
 
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I have been at 1920x1200 since the 2407WFP hit the market (before that 1600x1200 crt) nowdays 2560x1600 3007wfp. My 6970 is chugging along but i feel the need for sli :/
Wish i did not need to spend as much to get get console performance for these shitty ass dx9 games.

Xeth said:
I blame the XBox 360. Because of it every major title has a DX9 rendering pipeline so there's no reason to even get a DX11 card if you turn down the settings low enough. And of course why add exclusive special effects/rendering for the PC if the majority of your revenue comes from console?

Also people have been stuck at 1080p monitors for a while. Back then resolutions increased every couple of years.
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I'm actively in the market for a new GPU. I use both AMD and Nvidia, so I'm waiting to see what Kepler will look like. However, there are two issues which are important to me right now: the games bore me, and the prices of GPU's are ridiculously high.

The games all seem to be very formulaic. I'd prefer more emphasis on AI and unscripted responses. The "on a rail" aspect of most games means replay value is limited. Sure, after the first run through, maybe I could try it again and die fewer times, use less ammo, whatever. But the lack of AI and trigger-points occurring at the same place and resulting in the same behaviors would cripple a game. MP games are limited to me due to time/schedule and the mass of illiterate mouth breathers out there.

The prices of the cards are ridiculous. Nearly $600 for a GPU is too much. Hey, if you've got the money to throw that down, good for you. When I spent $350 about 10-12 years ago some kick-ass card, that seemed like a lot. That card was good for about 2 years. I game at 1920x1200 and 1920x1080. (I prefer 1920x1200 by far.)

The prices are too high for a product to be used on games which aren't "must haves".

Shrug. I'll wait for the mid-level cards and see what they cost.
 
There aren't enough games pushing the hardware. I can still max out a lot of games, almost every game with 4890s quadfire and get smooth fps. The games are just not pushing the hardware like they use to. When the games use to come out years ago i would be upgrading almost every generation because the games were really pushing boundaries. I would blame the consoles mostly. ;)
 
These games are barely running at 720P on consoles. I watched a kiosk of NBA 2K12 on PS3....graphics are watered down tremendously from 2K10 on PC at the highest settings.
 
Conker said:
There aren't enough games pushing the hardware. I can still max out a lot of games, almost every game with 4890s quadfire and get smooth fps. The games are just not pushing the hardware like they use to. When the games use to come out years ago i would be upgrading almost every generation because the games were really pushing boundaries. I would blame the consoles mostly. ;)
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This. With current gen we can max out any game out there, with SLI/Xfire for multimonitor setups. Price/value for the next gen cards just is so poor, several hundreds of dollars for a card that is just little bit better (as far as AMD is concerned, Nvidia is still a questiomark) than the top model of last gen which is still more than fast enough.


So yes, as someone mentioned we need another Crysis and fast, something that makes even the next gen cards huff and sweat.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
i don't think theres a lack of enthusiasm, i think [H] made a mistake(even though what they did should of made the 7970 look even better) in expecting their readers to have some common sense and actually read the entire article when they used a high overclocked GTX 580 3GB card to compare against the stock HD7970. hopefully once afterburner is updated and [H] decides to do an overclock vs overclock review and shows the difference i think the enthusiasm will show up again.. until then we just have to deal with the idiots that look at the graphs and ignore all the text.
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It was a 1.5GB 580 was it not?

Anyway, in regards to the op, why exactly do AMD need 'kudos'? so they've done what they usually do, produced a decent card, at a price they think the market will bear. They no longer have the need to claw back market share (the original reason they dropped prices in the first place, it wasn't a 'favour' or to be the 'good guys'), and I think for what you get the price is fair. The kids tend to forget these things take time AND money to research/develop.

If you like the card, buy it. That's what AMD wants, not 'high-five guys!'.

The games excuse is poor really, there's plenty that will struggle on a lower spec card if you want full details and full AA/AF. Expand that to Eyefinity or Surround, and yes the need is definitely there.
 
MaZa said:
This. With current gen we can max out any game out there, with SLI/Xfire for multimonitor setups. Price/value for the next gen cards just is so poor, several hundreds of dollars for a card that is just little bit better (as far as AMD is concerned, Nvidia is still a questiomark) than the top model of last gen which is still more than fast enough.
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Your facts are wrong. It is priced at 30% higher than the 6970 but in many cases offers 60% improvement over the 6970. IT is priced at 10% higher than 580 and in all cases offers more than 10% improvement.

Contrast this with 6970 vs 6950 where the cost was 22% higher but you could unlock and get the same performance for $100 less.
 
Personally, for me it goes in waves. I need something MASSIVELY better than what I have to really get my interest up, and that hasn't happened lately.
Unless something will truly change my gaming experience in a major way (ie. maxing out the Witcher 2 with ubersampling at 60fps/vsync) why should I bother?
 
I love all the "We don't need new cards because games already work perfectly on my 1650x900 setup," almost as much as I love the "THE PRICE IS OUTRAGEOUS, I WONT SPEND THAT to run my 1080p setup 30% quicker!!!"

I mean isn't this the [H]ard forum? Fucks sakes id swear I logged into the {P}uss forum sometimes lol.

{P}eople the 7970 is the FLAGSHIP CARD, its not made FOR YOU. FOR YOU they have the entire 7800 & 7700 series. My God, its like your in the market to buy a Chevy Cobalt, yet you can't stop bitching about the Corvette.

If your not running multi monitors, a big 30" monitor, or a nice 120hz setup than please get in your horse drawn carriage, leave the thread and comeback when the econo models hit the market.
 
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l88bastard said:
I love all the "We don't need new cards because games already work perfectly on my 1650x900 setup," almost as much as I love the "THE PRICE IS OUTRAGEOUS, I WONT SPEND THAT to run my 1080p setup 30% quicker!!!"

I mean isn't this the [H]ard forum? Fucks sakes id swear I logged into the {P}uss forum sometimes lol.

{P}eople the 7970 is the FLAGSHIP CARD, its not made FOR YOU. FOR YOU they have the entire 7800 & 7700 series. My God, its like your in the market to buy a Chevy Cobalt, yet you can't stop bitching about the Corvette.

If your not running multi monitors, a big 30" monitor, or a nice 120hz setup than please get in your horse drawn carriage, leave the thread and comeback when the econo models hit the market.
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<standing ovation> :D
 
I think to be honest 2012 will be a poor year in terms of getting a video card. the end of 2010 and most of 2011 was a good time in terms of competition. As we see in HD prices despite the factories that were devastated in the floods coming back online the prices will not go down and with ATI/Nvidia I think both will not budge to much from the prices they are offering..
 
l88bastard said:
I love all the "We don't need new cards because games already work perfectly on my 1650x900 setup," almost as much as I love the "THE PRICE IS OUTRAGEOUS, I WONT SPEND THAT to run my 1080p setup 30% quicker!!!"

I mean isn't this the [H]ard forum? Fucks sakes id swear I logged into the {P}uss forum sometimes lol.

{P}eople the 7970 is the FLAGSHIP CARD, its not made FOR YOU. FOR YOU they have the entire 7800 & 7700 series. My God, its like your in the market to buy a Chevy Cobalt, yet you can't stop bitching about the Corvette.

If your not running multi monitors, a big 30" monitor, or a nice 120hz setup than please get in your horse drawn carriage, leave the thread and comeback when the econo models hit the market.
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Post of the year. Well said!
 
There's a few reasons why I'm not enthusiastic about current GPU's:-
  • The 500 series was largely a bug fix (thermal issue) to the higherend 400's rather than a new gen. AMD responded by adding a couple of tweaks and callings it the 5000 series.
  • Only now are they starting to move from 40mn, so again stagnant technology.
  • The prices of GPU's arn't going down, they're just creating new market segments (I guess they have finally figured out that there's only two players in the market and they could either slit each others throats or live like kings).
  • There's a large gap right now between getting a card that will run a single monitor ok (using a gtx 460 @ 1200x1920 and it runs most games fine, some maxed). If I want to run three monitors well, it's going to cost about £1000.

So I'd rather go skiing in the new year, much better FPS and resolution. Hopefully the 9800's or Kepler will tick enough boxes, I can wait..
 
I think the biggest issue is that the tech is far outpacing the games. A Q6600 and GTX285 is still a capable system after 4+ years and a $160 6870 will play any game at 1920x1080 and almost all of them at max settings. Unless you're one of the .1% out there using 2560x1600 or higher, there's not much reason to get excited about the 7000 series of cards when your 4 year old 4890 is still getting the job done.

Bottom line is I think the blame lies more on game developers. Good news is that Crysis 2, Batman AC and BF3 are all fairly demanding graphics wise so maybe the trend is that games are gonna start catching up.
 
Depend on Largely on what you want to achieve. IMHO it's impossible to push 60FPS constent in DX11 games (crysis 2 for example) with a 580 at 1080p. Yes games are playable, but personnally i search for the 60FPS mark so that's why i would buy a top end cards.. but that's just me..
 
Ryoohki360 said:
Depend on Largely on what you want to achieve. IMHO it's impossible to push 60FPS constent in DX11 games (crysis 2 for example) with a 580 at 1080p. Yes games are playable, but personnally i search for the 60FPS mark so that's why i would buy a top end cards.. but that's just me..
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Point in case.. My sons' 1155 setup / GTX 580 will NOT run the game Rift with ALL of the eye candy turned on with 'playable" framerates, on his 1080p monitor. I've seen him stuttering along at 17 fps in some areas at full eye candy. A second card would be justified if we want to hit the 60 fps mark consistently (even though it would probably be more like 35 - 40 fps consistently). But hey, that's totally acceptable if we can keep from dipping below 30 fps!
 
The discrepancy in performance is part of the problem. I can play about 95% of the games out there with the details turned all the way up at 1080p with vsync on and getting 60fps.
The issue is that the other 5% can't be run that way on my hardware or anybody else's machine either.
For me to get excited again, I'm going to need to blow away that other 5%.
I want to max out the outliers (especially the DX11 culprits) with a new card. I don't want this "30FPS is good enough" nonsense. I want 60fps more than 90% of the time.
Remember when the 8800GTX came out? That's the closest we've seen to that lately, although the 5870's are/were quite the performers, too. I need that kind of jump.
 
Not sure why people are so upset about the prices...I think I paid something like $600 when the GTX280 first came out. Prices for the top of the line cards have ALWAYS been $500-$600, again not sure where the surprise is coming from here. If anything due to inflation they are cheaper now at the same price point.
 
MacLeod said:
I think the biggest issue is that the tech is far outpacing the games. A Q6600 and GTX285 is still a capable system after 4+ years and a $160 6870 will play any game at 1920x1080 and almost all of them at max settings. Unless you're one of the .1% out there using 2560x1600 or higher, there's not much reason to get excited about the 7000 series of cards when your 4 year old 4890 is still getting the job done.

Bottom line is I think the blame lies more on game developers. Good news is that Crysis 2, Batman AC and BF3 are all fairly demanding graphics wise so maybe the trend is that games are gonna start catching up.
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This

New video cards these days give you more perf but dont really give you a new gaming exp like it used to. I still remember the impact from changing over to an Ati 9800xt from my old guillmot 3d prophet. I think those kinds of massive visual changes are over and this is where the heart of the issue lies me thinks.
 
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The 7000 series is boring because it brings nothing new to the table besides better performance, not bad by any means, but it's still NOTHING new. The 5000 series brought us something ground breaking. It brought us Eyefinity, triple+ monitors for the masses at a somewhat affordable rate. Granted it had a shit load of bugs unless you had an upper tiered DP monitor but it was still NEW STUFF!! So then we get the 6000 series which was merely a bug fix with slightly better performance (due to 40nm) and 3D support. Not exactly on the same scale as adding eyefinity. We just need the next big thing.

So basically, BRING ON THE HOLODECK!!
 
Eyefinity is Carrell K's brainchild and is the precursor to the Holodeck.
 
l88bastard said:
I love all the "We don't need new cards because games already work perfectly on my 1650x900 setup," almost as much as I love the "THE PRICE IS OUTRAGEOUS, I WONT SPEND THAT to run my 1080p setup 30% quicker!!!"

I mean isn't this the [H]ard forum? Fucks sakes id swear I logged into the {P}uss forum sometimes lol.

{P}eople the 7970 is the FLAGSHIP CARD, its not made FOR YOU. FOR YOU they have the entire 7800 & 7700 series. My God, its like your in the market to buy a Chevy Cobalt, yet you can't stop bitching about the Corvette.

If your not running multi monitors, a big 30" monitor, or a nice 120hz setup than please get in your horse drawn carriage, leave the thread and comeback when the econo models hit the market.
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Yeah, we kinda know that. But even among the [H] things like multimonitor and 3D are "niche". I really don't care about either, regardless of their price. There was a time when high end cards were a viable option for anyone willing to spend the money, now, as you say, they only fit into the niche markets you described of people with excessive display set ups.

When I bought my 8800GTS, I only had a 1680x1050 screen, which was pretty standard for new but cheap monitors back then and I could have easily, if I wanted to spend the money, gone for the "high end" 8800GTX and still seen an improvement in many games. These days, anyone gaming on a standard sort of screen can get away with a mid to low range card and really not be worrying about the high end at all. And FYI, I spent more on my 8800GTS than you currently pay for a 6970.

The "high end" has moved from "high end" to "niche".
 
l88bastard said:
I love all the "We don't need new cards because games already work perfectly on my 1650x900 setup," almost as much as I love the "THE PRICE IS OUTRAGEOUS, I WONT SPEND THAT to run my 1080p setup 30% quicker!!!"

I mean isn't this the [H]ard forum? Fucks sakes id swear I logged into the {P}uss forum sometimes lol.

{P}eople the 7970 is the FLAGSHIP CARD, its not made FOR YOU. FOR YOU they have the entire 7800 & 7700 series. My God, its like your in the market to buy a Chevy Cobalt, yet you can't stop bitching about the Corvette.

If your not running multi monitors, a big 30" monitor, or a nice 120hz setup than please get in your horse drawn carriage, leave the thread and comeback when the econo models hit the market.
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amen, [H]omie

PS: let's go halfers on the domain registration for pussforum.com
 
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