Are single card solutions improving?

[VERTIGGO]

This curiosity of mine has nothing to do with the practicality of an SLI/Crossfire system, but I was curious to see if in general we are able to play at higher resolutions with single cards. This is in no way a conclusive study or argument, just something I noticed.

Release: Delay:
Far Cry Mar 2004
X850 XT Dec 1 2004 9 months

FPS 43.7 (1600x1200 4x8x)

Chaos Theory Dec 2004
X1800 XT Oct 5 2005 10 months

FPS 45.7 (1600x1200 4x8x)

FEAR 11 Oct 2005
X1900 XT Jan 24 2006 3 months

FPS 51 (1600x1200 4x8x)

Hopefully this isn't too confusing, but does anyone else think that although games and hardware both advance at a similar pace, it seems that we are progressively seeing higher performance at high resolutions as new generations are released, or do you think this is just a misleading observation?

I'm quite happy with the shift to high-res widescreen in pc gaming, as it gives our rigs much more room to show off!

 

[Munky]

Yes, I see this trend also, but it is happening very slowly. Back in the mid 90's, you'd be lucky if you could run the newest game on your latest and greatest voodoo card at a whopping 800x600 resolution without AA or AF. Now, you can run FEAR comfortably at much higher settings on a x1900, but the games are never far behind, which means that unless you upgrade the hardware often it becomes obsolete real fast.

 

[TSS]

at the moment, GPU's are improving much faster then CPU's and even much faster then the software.

on my TNT2 pro (600 mhz p3+ 512 ram) i dared to run Q3 1024x768 with high settings, fps where around 25-40, dips into 20 sometimes. no AA (did that even exist back then?)
on my G4 Ti4600 (P4 2.53ghz+ 1gb ram) i dared to run BF1942 1280x1024 with high settings, ps where around 25-40 dips into 20. no AA.
now, on my 1900xt, ill run BF2/Q4 on 1600x1200, 4aa, 16af, and run 60 average with dips to 40 max.

so in the past few years GPU's have developed at a alarming rate, and their still not done. memory development can hardly catch up, CPU development is at a turning point right now (going multicore takes time, because of legacy software) so its going slow, and no other chip is beeing developped as the GPU's. IMO, the only chip ever beeing able to come close would be the Ageia PPU, and thats only if that takes off by storm. so basicly, GPU's are beeing pumped out of factories faster then games are beeing developped for those cards. even if somebody decided to start developping for the G80/R600 now, so unified architecture, by the time it would come out the G100/R800 will already be around and the game's still run at 1600x1200 at 4aa and 16af.

with quadcores and octocores fast approaching, If software can keep up, the GPU's will be overtaken by CPU development again. but that wil ltake atleast another 3 years...