Are gpu's becoming rapidly weaker over time compared to the past?

[jaslion]

Basically what it comes down to is that I've noticed with a vega 56 I got for cheap I can run any game at 1440p high settings 60fps solid but the gpu is already at 80% usage in any game this feels just wrong. As this would point that in a year or so it would be at 100% with the new consoles having launched and then already having to drop settings. This feels very quick compared to older cards.

 

For example a hd 7970 my friend got int 2012 could be a 1080p high 60fps card till about 2018 without any problem and that was also a card that went through an entire new generation of consoles. But I can't see my vega lasting that long even tho it is basically positioned around the same as the 7970 was back in the day especially with my vega 64 unlock on it.

 

What it really comes down to is the feeling of buying a product that rapidly becomes outdated. I normally use my system for at least 5 years and that has never really been a problem and I always used a gen or 2 older stuff but now it seems that it will just make the 5 year mark.

 

Another thing is that with all those big games I genuinely don't really see a big difference in graphics. Yeah sure read dead redemption looks good but so does gta V and when playing I wouldn't notice a difference if the graphics were that of gta V quality level. I play games like sea of thieves, guild wars 2, dishonored 1&2, monster hunter world, DRG, ... and those games run great but the moment I tried something new and not really better looking like DMC 5, the new AC game, sekiro,.. they all really hit my system hard and I feel like there is no need for it.

 

Am I just seeing a wrong pattern or is it just a lot less gpu for the money both in performance and time it lasts these last 3 years?

[aisle9]

Technology is advancing more quickly, and it sure seems like we're going longer between GPU generations than we were back from Tesla to Maxwell.

[.Apex.]

7 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Basically what it comes down to is that I've noticed with a vega 56 I got for cheap I can run any game at 1440p high settings 60fps solid but the gpu is already at 80% usage in any game this feels just wrong. As this would point that in a year or so it would be at 100% with the new consoles having launched and then already having to drop settings. This feels very quick compared to older cards.

Vega GPUs were outdated when they launched so it's not a realistic outlook on the state of GPU performance improvements over the years, a 2016 GPU like the GTX 1070 performs the same as a Vega 56, so you're talking about a 4 year old GPU at this point, AMD only just started reaching NVIDIA with their RDNA architecture

[BiotechBen]

Most generations of graphics cards before were incremental improvements, but we are now seeing leaps and bounds in technology and capability of manufacture.

[xg32]

1060 3gb and 6gb were and is the most popular gpu on steam, we lost 1 generation with turing and this gen (even though it's a 40% jump) is affected by covid, lisa su already hinted that it'll be another big jump next gen. That should put some space between pc gpus and consoles.

 

I don't think gpus are getting slower. It's actually accelerating toward 4k/144hz imho, just doesn't feel like it cause this year's been a waiting game.

[Mister Woof]

My 3080 is usually at 95%+ usage at 1440p so

 

idk what you really want us to say, LOL

[jaslion]

2 hours ago, Mister Woof said:

My 3080 is usually at 95%+ usage at 1440p so

 

idk what you really want us to say, LOL

More of a feeling off huh that is oddly high usage for a card I hoped to last me a long time.

[Mister Woof]

5 minutes ago, jaslion said:

More of a feeling off huh that is oddly high usage for a card I hoped to last me a long time.

it means you're using the most of your card's capability.

 

I could drop it into the 40s-50s if i capped FPS at 60. Or played games with RTX off. But I won't because I'd rather have more frames/features.

 

High usage is not really a bad thing. I'd be more upset if I spent $750 on a GPU and have it idle most of the time and not get the frames I wanted.

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, Mister Woof said:

it means you're using the most of your card's capability.

 

I could drop it into the 40s-50s if i capped FPS at 60. Or played games with RTX off. But I won't because I'd rather have more frames/features.

 

hth

Oh yeah I am aware of that I just like to use my stuff for a long time so already being at that in just 1440p 60fps is a bit of a oh hey that is quick but as has been pointed out the vega 56 is basically a 4 year old card in terms of performance which is something I forgot to factor in so that makes things a lot less surprising.

[Mister Woof]

1 minute ago, jaslion said:

Oh yeah I am aware of that I just like to use my stuff for a long time so already being at that in just 1440p 60fps is a bit of a oh hey that is quick but as has been pointed out the vega 56 is basically a 4 year old card in terms of performance which is something I forgot to factor in so that makes things a lot less surprising.

The beauty of PC parts is inherent scalability of settings.

 

Here's an example:

 

 

The benchmarks you see in Valhalla are usually ultra quality, which, like Odyssey, really kill performance (volumetric clouds I'm lookin at you). Tune it down just a bit and you're looking at either way more framerate or if you cap FPS, less load.

 

Theorycraft that each detail setting is a year worth of new games, Ultra quality performance values might represent high in a year, and then medium in 2. Either way, you're looking at good performance for a while, as long as you're willing to change some settings.

[MadPistol]

Let me take you back in time to the early-2000's, where each new generation GPU was a monumental leap forward... and we got new architectures almost yearly.

 

This is what a Geforce 4 Ti 4600 looked like (this was a high-end GPU)

 

 

 

A couple of years later, this is what a Geforce 6800 Ultra looked like (2004).

 

 

Then the 8800 GTX (2006)

 

 

 

 

Let's fast forward to 2013 with the GTX Titan.

 

 

 

But wait... what about today? How about a 3-slot behemoth called the RTX 3090!!!





 

 

What does this mean, exactly?

Well, we've gone from a tiny fan and no auxiliary power on a flagship GPU, to a MASSIVE hunk of aluminum and copper that takes up 3 slots and a 300-watt power conector... in roughly 20 years.

The fact is, technology continues to move forward, but with each passing generation, we push the silicon further and further until we need an absolutely insane cooler just to keep the thing running. We've also gone from a new line of chips every year, to a new(ish) architecture every 2 years.



TL;DR GPUs are NOT advancing as fast anymore as we are literally bumping up against what is physically possible with the silicon, and we're having to continually "move the goal post" as to what's acceptable. 20 years ago, the RTX 3090 would have been improbable; nothing could contain a 350-watt GPU. No case, no power supply, no motherboard. Today, it's on the edge of what's possible, but for enthusiasts, it's totally possible. If you look at the big picture, GPUs are advancing very slowly. However, CPUs are advancing even more slowly.

[Mister Woof]

2 minutes ago, MadPistol said:

Let me take you back in time to the early-2000's, where each new generation GPU was a monumental leap forward... and we got new architectures almost yearly.

 

This is what a Geforce 4 Ti 4600 looked like (this was a high-end GPU)

 

 

 

A couple of years later, this is what a Geforce 6800 Ultra looked like (2004).

 

 

Then the 8800 GTX (2006)

 

 

 

 

Let's fast forward to 2013 with the GTX Titan.

 

 

 

But wait... what about today? How about a 3-slot behemoth called the RTX 3090!!!





 

 

What does this mean, exactly?

Well, we've gone from a tiny fan and no auxiliary power on a flagship GPU, to a MASSIVE hunk of aluminum and copper that takes up 3 slots and a 300-watt power conector... in roughly 20 years.

The fact is, technology continues to move forward, but with each passing generation, we push the silicon further and further until we need an absolutely insane cooler just to keep the thing running. We've also gone from a new line of chips every year, to a new(ish) architecture every 2 years.



TL;DR GPUs are NOT advancing as fast anymore as we are literally bumping up against what is physically possible with the silicon, and we're having to continually "move the goal post" as to what's acceptable. 20 years ago, the RTX 3090 would have been improbable; nothing could contain a 350-watt GPU. No case, no power supply, no motherboard. Today, it's on the edge of what's possible, but for enthusiasts, it's totally possible. If you look at the big picture, GPUs are advancing very slowly. However, CPUs are advancing even more slowly.

We have had graphics that were "great" over a decade ago. You could package a game in 2010 graphics engines today, and it would still look amazing if executed properly and still be almost as good as today's graphics.

 

Issue we're facing is continual increases in attempts to reach photo-realism, and that as usual, is a diminishing return on that endeavor.

 

Instead of brute-forcing our way into more frames (which is what's happening right now), it should instead fall upon software and hardware technologies to make better use of the resources we presently have.

 

Stuff like DLSS/FidelityFX, adaptive resolution scaling, etc., really are the way of the future to getting where we want to be.

 

It's already proven that graphics cards with enough power run through them can pump out some amazing graphics, but what IMO needs to be focused on is efficiency.

 

Give us 2010-2015 graphics fidelity, with 2020 technologies, and we can get away with the same (or more) with a whole lot less.

[Quackers101]

there will be a lot of ups and downs, but at some point it might become too costly and too advanced.

or if things will start to be more software dependant.

[MadPistol]

12 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

We have had graphics that were "great" over a decade ago. You could package a game in 2010 graphics engines today, and it would still look amazing if executed properly and still be almost as good as today's graphics.

 

Give us 2010-2015 graphics fidelity, with 2020 technologies, and we can get away with the same (or more) with a whole lot less.

 

I think you might be viewing this through rose-tinted glasses.
 

Lost Planet 2 is the most "modern" looking game out of that bunch, and it still falls extremely short of something like RDR2, or the new reigning champ, Cyberpunk 2077. We've just reached a point where developers need some "help" with realistic lighting... that's where Ray Tracing comes in. Ray Tracing is the (extremely expensive) way forward.

Nvidia and AMD, along with developers, have found cool, innovative ways to make graphics look more realistic without exacting a huge toll on hardware, but every now and then, we get a breakout tech that brings current hardware to its knees. 20 years ago, that was Transform and Lighting. 10 years ago, that was tessellation. Today, it's Ray Tracing.

Path Traced graphics is the holy grail of rendering tech. We will see how long it will be until we get to that point (Quake II RTX and Minecraft don't count lol) 

[Mister Woof]

3 minutes ago, MadPistol said:

 

I think you might be viewing this through rose-tinted glasses.
 

Lost Planet 2 is the most "modern" looking game out of that bunch, and it still falls extremely short of something like RDR2, or the new reigning champ, Cyberpunk 2077. We've just reached a point where developers need some "help" with realistic lighting... that's where Ray Tracing comes in. Ray Tracing is the (extremely expensive) way forward.

 

I mean, obviously newer engines look better. I'm just saying that games from 2010 could still look "good enough", and even as much effort as we put into photo-realism as we do today, we still aren't there.

 

So try to get there and still fail, including the costs, or do what we know works?

 

Kind of how despite the graphics we have available, people are willing to play games on Nintendo Switch's smartphone-level hardware.

[jaslion]

7 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

 

I mean, obviously newer engines look better. I'm just saying that games from 2010 could still look "good enough", and even as much effort as we put into photo-realism as we do today, we still aren't there.

 

So try to get there and still fail, including the costs, or do what we know works?

 

Kind of how despite the graphics we have available, people are willing to play games on Nintendo Switch's smartphone-level hardware.

A good example is titanfall 1 and 2 it uses the by now ancient source engine and still looks really good (and runs amazing too)

[unsorted]

4 hours ago, jaslion said:

Am I just seeing a wrong pattern or is it just a lot less gpu for the money both in performance and time it lasts these last 3 years?

If you include scalper prices...yes.