Is this the best generation of GPUs ever?

[jacktesterson]

Probably one of the worst really.

GTX 680 = GTX 580 + 30%

Radeon 7970 = Radeon 6970 + 40%





GTX 480 = GTX 285 + 70%

Radeon 5870 = Radeon 4890 + 80%

This

 

[Homeles]

Post ATI acquisition, the 5000 series has easily been AMD's best. The 4000 series was great as well.

As far as Nvidia goes, I think their 8800GTX was their magnum opus.

 

[Arkaign]

I got a huge leap going from an XFX 6950 2GB to the 670 FTW, the biggest problem is the price.

 

[AdamK47]

The best generation was the first generation. Nothing blew me away like the 3Dfx VooDoo and the Rendition Verite did. It was certainly a revolution for the home PC.

 

[Arkaign]

The best generation was the first generation. Nothing blew me away like the 3Dfx VooDoo and the Rendition Verite did. It was certainly a revolution for the home PC.

I think I agree with this. The first time I fired up GLQuake was quite amazing, on a puny Voodoo1.

Voodoo1 to Voodoo2, meh.

Voodoo2 to TNT2/etc, meh.

TNT2 to GF, pretty good, but meh.

GF to GF2, meh.

GF2 to GF3, meh.

GF3 to GF4, meh.

GF4 to 9700, pretty good, but meh.

Etc, etc.

It's really all incremental compared to going from terribad 3d to pretty smooth 3d with lighting and such. Firing a rocket down a hallway in Quake 1 and seeing the illumination was freaking awesome.

 

[PricklyPete]

Every new generation is the best GPU ever. But if we are talking about history, the 9700 Pro IMO is the best video card ever made.

The 9800 was the last card I used in a build. Loved that card.

 

[Arkaign]

The 9800 was the last card I used in a build. Loved that card.

Yeah it kinda goes to show how strong the 9700 Pro was, as the 9800 was just a refresh. The 9700 beat the pants off the 4xxx Nvidia cards (admittedly it came out a decent bit later), and then the 9800 held off the Geforce FX easily.

 

[Arzachel]

Seems like everyone is ignoring that neither AMD nor Nvidia can just pump more power into their next gen cards. You're free to follow the trend that stopped with GTX 500 and HD6000 series cards, just turn up that voltage slider and you'll be getting the same 70-80% increase you're used to.

 

[kami]

3dfx Voodoo 1 (1996) was the best generation.

First time playing GLQuake was the most ground breaking PC gaming moment for me.

/nostalgia mode off

 

[Arkaign]

Seems like everyone is ignoring that neither AMD nor Nvidia can just pump more power into their next gen cards. You're free to follow the trend that stopped with GTX 500 and HD6000 series cards, just turn up that voltage slider and you'll be getting the same 70-80% increase you're used to.

Yeah I see that. I had a 6950 XFX 2GB that unlocked to 6970, and even after it was reasonably OC'ed, the 670 FTW is a gigantic improvement even at 1200p. Both are one notch down from the top single-GPU cards of each vendor, but I'm not disappointed in the performance leap. I am disappointed in the pricing though. The 6950 STILL sells for what I bought mine for donkey's years ago. Simply because the new gen didn't offer any god damned thing in the sub $300 range to displace them I guess.

 

[Subyman]

I've really enjoyed this current generation because it's been relatively uneventful. The 680 GTX provides top-of-the-line performance without all the heat or power issues of previous years. There's also something to be said for the stability of the current drivers. Never before that I can remember have drivers been as feature filled and stable as they are now.

As for the performance delta between this generation and the previous generation, it's not as extreme as before however the performance is still high enough to justify the price especially when considering the other factors such as performance per watt and the overclockability of the 7970 in particular.

I purchased my 680 GTX on launch day and have had no regrets it's been a great card. Coming from a first generation Fermi card, I'm just happy that the heat is under control.

 

[Arkaign]

Hah, thinking about it in that respect, it'd be funny and irritating if the trend continued.

HD 8950/8970, 770GTX/780GTX come out at $600 and $800, and all current cards keep their pricing. Ugh. Two-gen old 6950 still sells for $200+ by summer of '13.

That's a mild exaggeration I'm sure, but it sure feels like a trend.

 

[Silverforce11]

3dfx Voodoo 1 (1996) was the best generation.

First time playing GLQuake was the most ground breaking PC gaming moment for me.

/nostalgia mode off

Rendition Verite was the best (similar time-frame to Voodoo), because:

1. It had 2d/3d acceleration combined.
2. Rendered with AF so textures look better.
3. Rendered with AA enabled, the image was crispy.
4. It could be overclocked. I had custom heatsink/fans on the core and vram and made it ran 25% faster.

 

[Arkaign]

I had one of those (I think it was from Sierra?), I liked it but it seemed to lack hugely in game support compared to Voodoo, and of course you could overclock a voodoo as well. The 2d on the Verite wasn't anything special either, I preferred Matrox for 2d back then.

 

[Silverforce11]

I played almost every single 3d game at that time period, so no, it didn't lack support. I also owned a Voodoo during that time and played on both, but i prefered the Verite, the IQ improvement was massive. Edit: One of the reasons i OCd the Verite was because in GLQuake it only got around 25fps whilst the Voodoo 1 had a "smooth" ~33fps, but i really liked the AF and AA on the Verite so i had to make it run faster.

 

[amenx]

This is the first time I havent bought a current gen card in last 9-10 years. Lost interest in the yearly GPU upgrade bug. There is not a single game out today that I cant play to my satisfaction. I dont need anything above 4xAA, can tweak any game to perform the way I like, so cant see any reason to buy a card this year. I remember there being a thrill to the yearly GPU upgrade, its just gone for me it seems. Its sunk lower in my list of priorities than I thought. Would rather spend the money on some classy hooker polishing my knob for the night.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

This is the first time I havent bought a current gen card in last 9-10 years. Lost interest in the yearly GPU upgrade bug. There is not a single game out today that I cant play to my satisfaction. I dont need anything above 4xAA, can tweak any game to perform the way I like, so cant see any reason to buy a card this year. I remember there being a thrill to the yearly GPU upgrade, its just gone for me it seems. Its sunk lower in my list of priorities than I thought. Would rather spend the money on some classy hooker polishing my knob for the night.

Lol!

 

[mikeymikec]

With the way that graphics cards are going (ever increasing power requirements), I would very much like a graphics card that when it isn't doing anything demanding (e.g. web browsing, word processing etc), one gets the sort of power usage one would expect from an onboard graphics chip (passive cooling in low power mode would be great as well).

The AMD HD 79xx (whichever one it was) that exhibited a step in this direction (significantly lower power usage when idling) was appreciated, but if one achieved what I was saying, I would definitely consider trading up asap.

If I didn't play games like StarCraft 2, my HD 5770 would be on ebay like a shot and I'd use the on-board 4290 I've got.

 

[bryanW1995]

8800 gtx is probably tops. 9700 pro was a real world beater as well. This gen is quite meh in my book for both camps.

 

[Arkadrel]

With the way that graphics cards are going (ever increasing power requirements), I would very much like a graphics card that when it isn't doing anything demanding (e.g. web browsing, word processing etc), one gets the sort of power usage one would expect from an onboard graphics chip (passive cooling in low power mode would be great as well).

Techpowerwup:

A new feature of the HD 7000 Series is AMD ZeroCore Power, which will power off the card as soon as the monitor output is blanked, during screen saver for example. For additional power and noise reduction the fan will stop in this state, too. We measured a power consumption of 1.11 Watts for the whole graphics card during ZeroCore Power. As soon as you move the mouse the PC is back immediately, there is no lag or any delay.

When its in "zerocore" mode, it uses 1.11 watts for intire card.
When its in "idle" mode (not ZeroCore mode) it uses 5watts total.

again from techpowerup:

Power consumption of the HD 7750 is tiny, in all power states. In idle it uses a mere 5 Watts, which is the best result we have seen on any VGA card ever. It's also lower than the power consumption of Intel's IGP. Impressive!

Hehe ^^ uses less power in idle mode than Intel's IGP.

 

[mikeymikec]

Techpowerwup:



When its in "zerocore" mode, it uses 1.11 watts for intire card.
When its in "idle" mode (not ZeroCore mode) it uses 5watts total.

again from techpowerup:

Hehe ^^ uses less power in idle mode than Intel's IGP.

Does that mean it should be able to power down the fan then? I would have thought so from those figures and the enormous heat sink that modern graphics cards come with.

I thought when I read the system power consumption readings I was thinking "that's what I would expect from a low-end graphics card", rather than "no graphics card at all".

 

[blackened23]

The best generation was the first generation. Nothing blew me away like the 3Dfx VooDoo and the Rendition Verite did. It was certainly a revolution for the home PC.

This x 1000. There have been incremental steps but nothing has really blown us away in years. Playing vQuake for the first time was game changing

 

[Rvenger]

Does that mean it should be able to power down the fan then? I would have thought so from those figures and the enormous heat sink that modern graphics cards come with.

I thought when I read the system power consumption readings I was thinking "that's what I would expect from a low-end graphics card", rather than "no graphics card at all".

Probably, because I have a Powercolor 7750 with a tiny fan and it idles at 32c on a hot day. The fan is about 50mm and could be very whiney on high. I can't even hear the fan when I am playing BF3 for an hour. Oh and I can also play BF3 on high at 1080p perfectly smooth. (AA deferred and blur off of course) Its an amazing card since I only paid $70 for it.

 

[poohbear]

the question is sometimes more important than the answer. let me rephrase it for you:

Given the state & demands of video games today, are the current gen of video cards the best ever?

i'd say sure. My GTX 670 plays everything with maximum quality settings. it doubled the FPS over my 3 year old 5870. The reality is we simply don't NEED the upgrades as frequently as before because graphical demands of video games have stagnated as they're linked to console development. I'm sure the next gen consoles will change all that, but until then the current video cards are insanely fast. I play Crysis 2 fully maxed out @ 60fps avg. it dips to 55fps sometimes. I mean u really can't ask for more.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

8800gtx was the best ever. Followed by 9700pro. Even 1900xt was really good but not so much as the other two. However this gen has been much better than the last gen imo