"Nextgen" GPUs

Just a few words and links.

AMD launched duoGPU card:
http://www.pcgamesn.com/amd-launch-the-1500-radeon-pro-duo-a-vr-card-with-one-gpu-per-eye

It's major idea is to serve upcoming VR stuff, and of course someone compared it with nVidia's "flagship" (one, though):
http://www.pcgamesn.com/chinese-tec...eon-pro-duo-its-59-faster-than-a-980-ti-at-4k

The question is why would someone pay $1500 for this new AMD card if pairing two 980ti is cheaper (two most expensive are cca $1400 on newegg).

Meanwhile Eurogamer speculates on known info about new nVidia Pascal that it's possible new cards will offer more than double of power for the same money compared to current cards:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...pascal-offer-titan-x-performance-at-970-money

IMO all this means just one thing.
Till we see live Pascal card, till we know it's price, do not buy any new GPU!
If your current card farted and you have to buy something, go with a cheap one you can upgrade later (gtx950 for example). Because it might happen you spend too much of cash just because you didn't wait for a few months.

The AMD card is just one last hurrah for AMD before the new tech cycle goes live - it isn't really meant to garner much market share. It's the analogue to Nvidia's Titan, albeit a little late.

I hope Pascal is a real revolution in processing power and not simply another minuscule, iterative side-upgrade. I'm still using an nvidia 670 and feel little need to upgrade (though the anxiety is building).

I don't care about VR at all. But pascal sounds interesting...wonder if it would work with the Nvidia "broadwell" video card generation. I have a top end card from that one in my laptop, and it works awesome, but it would be nice to be able to upgrade to the next generation tech eventually.

I was on the fence on buying a GTX 970 so I could use Oculus Rift, but now I think I'll just wait. I doubt the new cards will be the same price as the current cards though, they'll probably be like $600 in the beginning.

joxer said:

J
IMO all this means just one thing.
Till we see live Pascal card, till we know it's price, do not buy any new GPU!
If your current card farted and you have to buy something, go with a cheap one you can upgrade later (gtx950 for example). Because it might happen you spend too much of cash just because you didn't wait for a few months.

Click to expand...

Ha, I did exactly this yesterday. My ancient, but still chugging along fine for what I do, Asus GTX570 died yesterday and I replaced it with a GTX950.

I'm waiting on how various new things pan out later in the year before I start planning for my system refresh so seemed pointless to get bleeding edge now.


-kwm

I got a GTX950 to replace my old HD6850 and the 950 is a great card for the price - real value for money. I sold the 6850 for about half what I paid for it so it makes keeping up in the hardware race quite cheap, although I only play at 1680x1050.

I would be astounded if the new cards offer anything like double the performance at the same price. I suspect the rate of increase won't be too far beyond what we're used to, with the next gen midrange cards becoming competitive with the last gen high end.

It wouldn't make much business sense to do so - every frame of performance has a current dollar value, and to voluntarily slash that value would be a strange thing to do. The only thing that would make sense of such a move would be pressure of competition, and I don't see AMD threatening Nvidia to the degree that would drive them to such a drastic overnight increase.

IMO it makes every possible business sense.

1. push VR to masses who can't afford current requirements or just don't want to risk
2. a huge tech leap that creates buzz and serves as free advertising
3. persuading console users to ditch already inferior crap and move to overpowered stuff
4. 60FPS guaranteed on anything (that isn't locked or broken by publishers' idiocy)

I may be wrong of course, but even if new cards from both nVidia and AMD get some superexpensive release price, most probably current top tier cards will drop to "dirt cheap" range.
Can't think of a scenario where we, the audience, won't win just by waiting for a few months before purchasing anything.

bjon045 said:

I got a GTX950 to replace my old HD6850 and the 950 is a great card for the price - real value for money. I sold the 6850 for about half what I paid for it so it makes keeping up in the hardware race quite cheap, although I only play at 1680x1050.

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Did you run any benchmarks or can you describe how much faster the GTX950 is at 1080p?

More rumors:
http://www.pcgamesn.com/nvidia-to-show-off-pascal-at-editors-day-next-week-claims-report

NVIDIA might be demonstrating two models of Pascal-powered graphics cards at an Editor's Day next week, if Videocardz' sources are to be believed.

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Rumors, rumors, but seems something is definetly cooking, according to VG247 Microsoft plans to reveal new XBOX hardware and not just controller at E3 (in about two months):
http://www.vg247.com/2016/04/29/mic...ne-hardware-and-controller-at-e3-2016-report/

I agree that it makes sense to wait for the new gen - all indications suggest that a significant performance boost is expected. It's just the idea of doubling performance at the same price point I find doubtful.

The new silicon may well be capable of such performance, but I don't think they'll hand it to us so cheaply. I could see them releasing a monstrous Titan with matching pricetag that delivers near double performance, but at mainstream price points, I suspect the improvements will be more incremental.

Then we'll go loco and organize worldwide protests.
With pitchforks and torches!

Ripper said:

I agree that it makes sense to wait for the new gen - all indications suggest that a significant performance boost is expected. It's just the idea of doubling performance at the same price point I find doubtful.

The new silicon may well be capable of such performance, but I don't think they'll hand it to us so cheaply. I could see them releasing a monstrous Titan with matching pricetag that delivers near double performance, but at mainstream price points, I suspect the improvements will be more incremental.

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It's still good to wait, if only because once the new cards are available, the previous generation's prices go significantly down, so if you want a GTX 970 or 980, it'll probably be a lot cheaper in a few months.

I'm not so sure the next cards that will show up for consumers will *really* be Pascal. That may end up being next year. Still, hopefully some of the technology will show up on this year's cards.

http://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-drops-the-pascal-bomb-as-a-tesla-p100/

P.S. If your current card farts, don't you just need a new fan?

Zloth said:

I'm not so sure the next cards that will show up for consumers will *really* be Pascal. That may end up being next year. Still, hopefully some of the technology will show up on this year's cards.

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Pascal will definitely show up this year but mid-range first. The next gen after that is called Volta and is scheduled for 2018 (probably on 10nm FinFET).

The current standings of the Pascal rumor mill in a nutshell:

- GP-104 mid-range chip in various configurations will be introduced at Computex in late May/early June. These will replace the GTX 970, 980 and 980Ti this summer.

- GP-100 high end chip (which is already in production for the professional graphics segment) will be released early next year as soon as HBM2 memory will be available in sufficient quantities. This chip might also be called GP-102.

As for AMD vs. nVidia we will see Polaris competing vs. Pascal GP-104 this summer and then Vega competing vs. "Big" Pascal GP-100 or GP-102 early 2017.

Here is the latest from the rumor mill and if you scroll down there is a nice chart showing the probable specs of the upcoming cards.
At this point in time, if anyone can wait at all, it definitely makes sense to wait for Pascal and Polaris. Just a few more weeks…

I think a general misconception is that "old stuff gets cheaper" like wolfing mentions.
I mean, yes, they get cheaper. But the margin is very, very small. Why? Because when the new stuff is there, the old stuff doesn't become cheaper. It's getting phased out instead.
Actually they are getting phased out right now already. NVIDIA already stopped producing chips for the gtx 900 cards.
So for example here is a graph of the price development of the 970…the most popular card of that generation:

Not much of a change. Of course you shouldn't necessarily buy at day one. But if you buy it after 1 month or after 1 year hardly makes a difference. Just that you waited 11 months for nothing.

The GP-100 isn't just for the "professional" segment, it's also only used for some completely different purposes.

I think you can very well call the 1070 and 1080 (or whatever they are named) the new high end cards. The cards more expensive than that like the Titan or 980ti are so out of performance per dollar ratio, that except for the very rich it makes no sense to buy them. And the same of course goes for the duo card mentioned in joxers post. This card makes absolutely no sense for any consumer and only hardly any sense for professional devs.
Of course there will be even faster cards following including the fastest card of that generation, but the "affordable" cards should be released soon.

They will most probably be paper launched on the 6 of may and then there will be a market launch in June as WCCFtech reports here (as Moriendor mentioned):
http://wccftech.com/geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-launching-6th-may-market-june/

Now another interesting note is that the new Polaris 10 GPUs might be a very valid option either. They are focusing on exactly the same market.
News also coming from WCCFtech:
http://wccftech.com/amd-polaris-10-desktop-polaris-11-notebook-gpu/

According to the news the Polaris 10 card should perform similar to the GTX 980Ti from nvidia but may cost much much less (more like a GTX 970)

So depending on the performance/value ratio of the new Pascal cards this could get very interesting.

Kordanor said:

I think a general misconception is that "old stuff gets cheaper" like wolfing mentions.
I mean, yes, they get cheaper. But the margin is very, very small. Why? Because when the new stuff is there, the old stuff doesn't become cheaper. It's getting phased out instead.

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Oh but they do, the graphic you showed is for the 970 series, but the equivalent upgrade hasn't arrived yet. If you see the same graphic for the previous generation equivalent card (770?) it'll probably show a big dip around October 2014 which is when the 970 came out.

Not by a lot, and not for long.
I haven't been able to find an identical graph, but you can take a look at this page:
https://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-n770tf4gd5oc?history_days=730

September 2014 was the release date of 970.
So in some places price dropped by 10% in others it increased by 10% before the rest of what they had in stock sold out in october or november.

Of course if buying cards second hand is an option for you, you might be able to get much better deals.

The NVIDIA stream where the new cards will probably be announced will begin in about an hour: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-livestream-today-at-6pm-pst

Update: Live now