Got a GTX 680 2GB. How long will it last???

[thejunglegod]

PS3 for example got 256MB for GPU, 256MB for CPU. The graphics there can best be compared to a Geforce 7800GT. Xbox360 got 512MB shared. But its essentially the same as PS3. Graphics there can be compared to a x1800 card.

still unbelievable. WOW. 256MB GPU + 256MB CPU and running something like GOW3.

so what that means is that there is scope for much improved graphics/performance in consoles which would automatically have a positive effect on PC graphics.
I always used to wonder about a day when in game graphics would look as good as SHREK when it came out. Are we there yet?

 

[x1222]

current gen consoles only have 256MB?? Are you serious??? How can they run graphically intensive games like God of War/Skyrim etc???

It is quite amazing. Consoles still have pretty good graphics on such old hardware. If a console had a modern equivalent video card like a 7850, I can only imagine how awesome the graphics would be. Sometimes I do feel we PC users get shafted rather hard. All that unused power.



How much stronger is a 7850 to 7800GT? 10, 20x?

 

[ShintaiDK]

How much stronger is a 7850 to 7800GT? 10, 20x?

Alot

I think even Intel and AMD IGPs are faster than consoles now.

Problem is developers are too lazy or whatever reason on the PC. Bruteforce approach doesnt cost money for them. But on consoles they need to optimize. Where on the PC you can just say buy bigger CPU, more memory, faster GPU etc.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

When new consoles come out, its going to be hard.

Also, new hardware becomes old in a matter of years because games are becoming more heavy.

Not really. AMD has won the contracts for both the next Xbox and PS3 consoles and the hardware is rumoured to be based off the AMD 7xxx generation of GPUs, going by what we've seen in the past we're looking at the equivalent of a mid range 7xxx card in terms of graphics processing power.

The 680 is already way more powerful than a mid range 7xxx card by a large degree so even when the consoles do their upgrade it's not going to be something that pushes the boundaries, it'll be something that's lagging behind the PC.

 

[thejunglegod]

The 680 is already way more powerful than a mid range 7xxx card by a large degree so even when the consoles do their upgrade it's not going to be something that pushes the boundaries, it'll be something that's lagging behind the PC.

So what bothers me is this:
Consider Skyrim for consoles as well as for PC. Now, as mentioned, the consoles are inferior, hardware wise, and manage to pull off everything at high detail. However, when ported to PC, hardware much advanced isnt able to handle the same smoothly. Granted, there are a lot of graphical additions to the PC versions, but considering the generation gap between the processing power of consoles and PCs, shouldnt the PCs be able to handle console ports easily at the highest detail???

 

[Gryz]

... shouldnt the PCs be able to handle console ports easily at the highest detail???

Have you played Skyrim then ?
Have you seen the differences ?

Skyrim on consoles runs with very low-res textures. It has too, as the xbox and ps3 have only 512MB ram. Just look at screenshot at 1080p resolution. The difference is huge. You might not notice it when you look at 600x400 screenshots, because there is a lot less detail to be seen in small screenshots anyway. Normal textures (high settings) on the PC were already a lot better than xbox textures. But now PC-users even got a high-res DLC texture pack. And that makes the difference even bigger.

Consoles do have Anti-Aliasing, but not for every game. And the AA-methods used might be less effective or more blurry than AA-methods you can select on a PC. Can consoles do transparency AA ?

Games on consoles are rendered in lower resolution. Skyrim on xbox and ps3 render in 720p. It is your TV's responsibility to upscale them. The difference between 1028x720 and 1920x1200 is 2.5x more pixels.

The more render-power you have on a PC, the more eyecandy you can enable. I wasn't able to play any games without 4xAA. I just bought a gtx680 a few weeks ago. I enabled SSAO to check it out. Now I already can not live without SSAO.

What makes you believe draw-distance on consoles and PCs is the same ? You can see a lot further on a PC. And then there is all these hidden eye-candy in the ini files. Self-shadow on trees and rocks. Render more cells in detail, etc. None of these option can be enabled on a console. And if you could, it would bring the consoles to their knees (first reason: lack of ram).

Console users seem to have no problem with a game that runs at 30 fps at all times. Maybe because when they use a joypad they can't move their cameras quickly ? Maybe because the screen is already a lot more blurry, they don't notice ?

So yes, consoles might be able to make more efficient use of their hardware. But even if this doubles their rendering-power, they are still far behind the rendering-power of modern PCs. PCs don't use that extra power to get 200+ framerates. They use it to enable more eyecandy.

Rendering at 1080p, using high-res textures, using better AA and transparency AA, using SSAO, what do you think the resulting fps for consoles will be ? If consoles want the same rendering-power as modern PCs, they need similar hardware. And the costs will be similar. I think the new generation consoles will not match up with my gtx680. And then the gap will only become bigger again.

 

[poohbear]

Why? 4GB will just be 2-3GB unused.

i think a beast of a card like the GTX 680 whouls atleast come with 3gb. My only regret with my 5870 is that it's 1gb cause even after almost 3 years its still kicking ass and taking names, it just needs some more RAM for the ultra textures in BF3, Skyrim, Crysis 2 DX11 and im sure other games with ultra HD texture packs. I imagine the same thing will happen with the 680 after 2 years.

 

[ShintaiDK]

i think a beast of a card like the GTX 680 whouls atleast come with 3gb. My only regret with my 5870 is that it's 1gb cause even after almost 3 years its still kicking ass and taking names, it just needs some more RAM for the ultra textures in BF3, Skyrim, Crysis 2 DX11 and im sure other games with ultra HD texture packs. I imagine the same thing will happen with the 680 after 2 years.

Im using the same HD packs with Skyrim And I dont see a usage over 1GB with a 1920*1200 res on my GTX 680. Neither with the other games I got actually.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

So what bothers me is this:
Consider Skyrim for consoles as well as for PC. Now, as mentioned, the consoles are inferior, hardware wise, and manage to pull off everything at high detail. However, when ported to PC, hardware much advanced isnt able to handle the same smoothly. Granted, there are a lot of graphical additions to the PC versions, but considering the generation gap between the processing power of consoles and PCs, shouldnt the PCs be able to handle console ports easily at the highest detail???

The biggest difference is that console equivalent of games are massively inferior graphics wise. Almost all of the AAA titles are running at 720p or less where as on the PC they're usually running in full HD 1080p.

The consoles have no real decent texture filtering, they do only approxmations of anti-aliasing or none at all, and when you inspect stuff like shadow resolution, render distance, number of objects on screen, number of key frames in animation, update speed of dynamic lights/shadows and all that jazz, you find it's just awful.

There's some good comparison videos on youtube of games like say Crysis that highlight the differences and why the consoles can run this stuff on 6 year old hardware, its because they have to visually gut the game to get it to run smoothly.

Admittedly there is some really low level optimisations that can be performed on the consoles that cannot be performed on the PC due to the nature of fixed hardware specs, if you're interested learning about that I suggest you google for some John Carmark interviews where he goes into that, but the benefits are fairly minor and the developers need to be prepared to put in the time/effort to get them optimisations working, most developers won't be doing the sort of hacks that id did, which is why Rage on the console is actually reasonably impressive (compared to other console games).

 

[hyrule4927]

It's also worth mentioning that while Skyrim runs on the consoles, it doesn't run particularly well even with trimmed down visuals. With the frequency of stuttering I've observed when I played it on 360, it's not even running at a constant 30 FPS, and appears to drop close to 10 at times. A 680 is certainly miles ahead, and I can't see the next generation of consoles changing that.

And VRAM limitations aren't a guaranteed disaster. I seen Skyrim using 1.3+ GB on my laptop on high/ultra settings with the HD pack, but it still runs better at higher settings on my 1 GB 6850. I think a higher end card can, within reason, power through despite VRAM limitations.

 

[thejunglegod]

Hmm thanks for clearing all that up guys. Didn't know that consoles were bottlenecking pc gaming development this much.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

On a single monitor, it should last your a very long time. IF monitor resolutions increase as some people seem to think they will over the next few years. The GTX 680's life time may be shorter than if we continue to be stuck at 1920x1080.

 

[Crisis!]

i think a beast of a card like the GTX 680 whouls atleast come with 3gb. My only regret with my 5870 is that it's 1gb cause even after almost 3 years its still kicking ass and taking names, it just needs some more RAM for the ultra textures in BF3, Skyrim, Crysis 2 DX11 and im sure other games with ultra HD texture packs. I imagine the same thing will happen with the 680 after 2 years.

Yeah I understand where you're coming from with the 5870, I've got a 5970 and although its a 2GB card it still has a 1GB framebuffer limit (kind of false advertising imo, why say its a 2GB card when 1GB is only ever going to be utilised just like SLI and Crossfire), I know the card still has a lot of juice it just runs out in the ram department in certain titles, BF3 for example, can run everything Ultra except textures, turning textures to Ultra just kills the framerate, and its all because its running out of memory. Thankfully Skyrim with the Hi-Res texture pack just pulls through and the 5970 is able to handle it but it does have its moments .

 

[Elfear]

Nope. The only way to even get there is using unoptimized community developed texture packs.

The official Skyrim HD pack runs on much much less

What? That's one of the main selling points of the Bethesda games. There are some very impressive community-developed mods out there for Skyrim. The official HD pack is kinda weaksauce IMO.

 

[Jacky60]

20 minutes

 

[aaksheytalwar]

The day the next gen consoles are out, there is. 50% chance you will fall to 1080p high not max settings with the most intensive games. Either that or by 2014 anyway you will no longer be able to max nearly every game as you can do now, though without the consoles it may be late 2014

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

The big VRAM cards are for multi-monitor gaming. Standard VRAM cards work perfect for normal resolutions.

 

[rana_kirti]

guys,

Does the above discussion mean that...

1. Someone who buys a 7870 will have to upgrade sooner than someone who bought a 680...?

2. Does it always then make more sense to buy the most expensive gpu that one can afford...?

Thanks

 

[3DVagabond]

guys,

Does the above discussion mean that...

1. Someone who buys a 7870 will have to upgrade sooner than someone who bought a 680...?

2. Does it always then make more sense to buy the most expensive gpu that one can afford...?

Thanks

No, it doesn't mean that is always the case. If the reason you need to upgrade is you need more VRAM, then they'd both need to be replaced at the same time. Would also be the same if there was a major change, like Dx12 came out. Just a couple of examples off the top of my head. Typically though the more powerful card will last longer. Assuming there's an appreciable difference between them.

 

[thejunglegod]

1. Someone who buys a 7870 will have to upgrade sooner than someone who bought a 680...?

a 7870 or a 7970?is that a typo?? i think the 680 was comparable to the 7970 and not the 7870, but do correct me if im wrong. As far as the upgrade is concerned, its more of a personal choice really. If you plan to play at the same settings as you'd play with a 680, then you'll definitely have to upgrade. Else, cutting down on a few ultra settings will do the job.
However, who knows what future technology brings. For all you know, both of them might die with the advent of perhaps a DX12 as the person above me stated.

2. Does it always then make more sense to buy the most expensive gpu that one can afford...?

no, not really. cos atm the 680 is more powerful than a 7970 but cheaper, though the difference is gonna get narrowed down.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

2. Does it always then make more sense to buy the most expensive gpu that one can afford...?

That depends how you weight the various factors such as price and performance.

Usually the high end GPU solutions don't scale well in terms of value for money, essentially they're not good for price : performance ratio, the mid range cards tend to be better for that.

Trying to future proof by getting the fastest card available has traditionally been a bad idea, that costs a premium. The reason people went for the very high end cards was primarily to crank all the settings to max, unfortunately PC gaming has gone down the toilet and everything is a console port these days and that justification for high end simply doesn't exist any more unless you're running 2560x1440 or above.

I run 2560x1600 and have loads of disposable income right now and I wont touch the current generation of video cards, I simply have no reason to upgrade, nothing right now needs it and there really isn't anything in the works that we know of that will require it either, most of the previously graphically impressive franchises have been gimped in one way or another.

 

[guskline]

thejunglegod, you have a MAGNIFICENT setup that most would drool over. I am awaiting a Nvidia 680 GTX any day now to replace the 6970 in rig 1 below. I'm running 3 monitors (24 inch each) with the 6970 and after reading all the reviews of the 7970 vs 680 decided it made the most sense. For a single monitor you are set!

 

[rana_kirti]

yes i did mean to compare the 7870 vs. 680....! ;-)

i like to play at 1080p with all the settings at max. i like to see all the eye candy and i'm a very visual person. i like to see the game in it's maximum possible visual glory & beauty just like game designer intended it to be....

1. So then would it make more sense to buy a 7870 or a 680...?

2. Is the 7870 capable of playing all the games today in their maximum visual beauty ? If yes then how long into the future will it still be able to do so...? 1 yr, 2 yrs...?

3. Or do i need a 680 ?

4. Is is wise to buy a mid end card like 7870 and upgrade sooner or buy a top end card like 680 and upgrade in more relaxed time ?

Thanks

 

[Jaydip]

yes i did mean to compare the 7870 vs. 680....! ;-)

i like to play at 1080p with all the settings at max. i like to see all the eye candy and i'm a very visual person. i like to see the game in it's maximum possible visual glory & beauty just like game designer intended it to be....

1. So then would it make more sense to buy a 7870 or a 680...?

2. Is the 7870 capable of playing all the games today in their maximum visual beauty ? If yes then how long into the future will it still be able to do so...? 1 yr, 2 yrs...?

3. Or do i need a 680 ?

4. Is is wise to buy a mid end card like 7870 and upgrade sooner or buy a top end card like 680 and upgrade in more relaxed time ?

Thanks

1.None,buy a 7850 preferrably the ASUS DC II

2.Yes 7850 can play almost all games with maximum visual fidelity.Remember there will always be exceptions,just don't expect to play Metro 2033 @ 60 fps with all eye candy.Even the soon to be released 690 can't do that.It will last until the next gen consoles come out or we have more developers like dice,cdpr who take PC gaming seriously.


3.U don't.

4.The top end cards are never ever meant for value.Buy a 7850 now,later u can add another to make ur system faster than a 680 for less price.Even if u don't like cf by the time it will become obsolete u can buy the next gen for same price.

 

[QuantumPion]

There are no games out right now that a single 680 can't play at max ultra settings at 60 fps at 1080p. There probably won't be either until late this year or next year. By then you can upgrade again