Because by all market accounts, you're one of the few who spend hundreds of dollars for little performance increases. That's not an opinion, but rather fact based off percentage of units sold through the decade.
Exactly. The volume/unit sales of discrete GPUs have fallen about 2-3X from their peak years, as has already been documented and discussed
in this thread. Look at the number of active Steam users since 2011:
The
growth of Steam users since 2011 is incredible:
"Steam has over
125 million active users, 8.9M concurrent peak"
Overall sales of PC games are constantly growing.
...but in the same period of time, the sales of discrete GPUs are absolutely bombing. The total volumes/unit sales of discrete GPUs are close to their record lows in decades. That actually tells us most PC gamers are the complete opposite of him -- i.e., they don't upgrade their GPUs annually, not even every 2 years. I bet most GPU gamers now upgrade every 3-4 years.
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My main area of concern for GPU hardware in 2016 and beyond: Too much GPU horsepower for mostly console ported PC games that don't stress Pascal enough, compounded b the fast that most PC gamers will still own 1920x1200 60Hz and below monitors.
Back to Pascal, with the slow lack of progress in PC gaming graphics, it's even more important that Pascal is built as a well-rounded GPU, much like a GTX980Ti is a really well rounded card for games. I think if NV fixes the Asynchronous Compute, continues to improve tessellation performance and focuses on improving voxel lighting techniques started with Maxwell, this could be the architecture to last 3-4 years for the average PC gamer.
Geez, looking for the latest on Pascal. Instead I find a fanboi war - even now with separate forums. Whatever...
Edit: guess this was posted in the wrong forum anyway. Using the 'new posts' features doesn't always produce the best outcomes.
I think the thread should have stayed in the NV sub-section. I will add this, I truly hope that PC games see a leap in AI, physics, graphics, textures, shaders, more advanced global illumination, shadows, etc. because we are slowly getting into the same problem we ran last generation towards the end of PS3/360 console lives -- way too much GPU horsepower for console ports.
This is on topic with Pascal since it's an area of discussion imo:
Assuming Pascal gets as fast as the Nano CF or faster,
copying my previous post looking at TPU's review of Nano CF even at 1440P, for those of us with 60 fps 1440P monitors, look what happens:
1. Alien Isolation = 190 fps
2. AC Unity = no CF scaling at the time of testing
3. Batman AO = almost 200 fps
4. BF3 = 178 fps
5. BF4 = 109 fps
6. Bioshock Infinite = 209 fps
7. CO AW = 141 fps
8. Civ: BE = 130 fps
9. Crysis 3 = 65 fps
10. Dead Rising 3 = no CF scaling at the time of testing
11. DAI = 79 fps (single Fury X got 45)
12. FC4 = no CF scaling at the time of testing
13. GTA V = 89 fps (but take a closer look, Fury X is at 54.7, 980Ti is at 62)
14. Metro LL = 102 fps
15. Project CARS = 65 fps (but a single Fury X is at 61.8)
16. Ryse Son of Rome = 118 fps
17. Shadow of Mordor = 140 fps
18. The Witcher 3 = 74.9 fps (but 980Ti is at 55.7)
19. Tomb Raider = 84 fps (a single Fury X is at 52.7)
20. Watch Dogs = 96 fps
21. Wolfenstein = no CF scaling but a single Fury X is over 60
22. WOW = negative CF scaling but a single Fury X is at 126 fps
Now just replace those scores of the Nano CF with some high-end Pascal card or another 16nm HBM2 GPU to simulate next gen, and you start to see a serious problem for AMD/NV in spurring GPU upgrades for the average PC gamer:
1) Without next generation PC games that push the boundaries of graphics, there will be even less incentive for a lot of GPU gamers to upgrade;
2) Since based on Steam most PC gamers have monitors at 1920x1200 and below, this level of performance will be crazy overkill for most gamers. It makes sense why NV/AMD are pushing DSR/VSR so actively now.
With next generation of Pascal cards, I think 1080P testing needs to start incorporating DSR/VSR benchmarks to reflect how many gamers would be able to actually use and benefit from even more powerful GPU hardware. After all, while 1440P and 4K will a great foundation test for Pascal's capabilities, unfortunately most gamers don't own such monitors. This is a real problem for NV/AMD as if you are on a 60 Hz 1080P monitor and your card is pushing 120-200 fps, why would you buy a $350-500 card if a $250 Pascal might end up nearly as fast as a GTX980?
Just some food for thought even though I am very excited for Pascal as my cards are really old now.
If Pascal helps to raise the bare minimum VRAM from 2GB to 4GB for the $150-200 segments, this could really help on the texture front.
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