Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Assassins Creed Odyssey - 1920x1080 - Very High Quality

Assassins Creed Odyssey - 2560x1440 - Very High Quality

F1 2019 Metro Exodus
Comments Locked

202 Comments

View All Comments

  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link

    Unfortunately Blender doesn't play nicely with new hardware. Or with AMD's currently buggy OpenCL drivers.
  • ozzuneoj86 - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link

    The stagnation in the sub-$300 video card market is getting pretty tiresome. I was unimpressed when the GTX 1060 6GB came out in 2016 and was barely faster than the GTX 970 from 2014 (which I bought new in early 2015 for around $250 on sale). Now, 3 1/2 years later we're getting only marginally faster products in the low $200 price range (1660, 5500xt). If you already have a card that was in the $200-$250 price range any time within the past *5 years*, you have to spend $280-$300 to get any kind of noticeable upgrade

    As a comparison, that'd be like if the GTX 970 I bought on sale for $250 in 2015 (an admittedly great price, but not unheard of) had performed no better than a GTX 460... or even a GTX 470. That sounds absurd now, and yet that's what the mid range market has turned into.
  • philosofool - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link

    This seems like a strange analysis to me. This card is a legit entry level 1440p card, which has never existed in the sub-$300 range before.
  • cmdrmonkey - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link

    nVidia is charging more and giving us less than they ever have in the past because they have no meaningful competition from AMD.
  • Spunjji - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link

    It's true that Nvidia haven't offered anything like the value proposition that the GTX 970 was on its launch since then, and things have definitely slowed down in the GPU arena. I'm not entirely on board with this criticism overall, though.

    First off, it's a bit unfair to compare the price of a card you got on sale with launch pricing. The 970 launched at $330, which was an absolute steal but still more than $250.
    Second, the 1060 provided performance that was better than a GTX 980 (and about 20-40% better than a 970, depending on the game and resolution) for $250. AMD countered with the 580 and, well, to be fair that was pretty much that until now.

    That's why it confuses me that you'd complain now, when the 5600XT (and the price drops it inspired) means we can *finally* get performance that's 50-100% better than the 970 at a lower price. It took about twice as long as it used to, for sure, and that just seems to be how things are now.
  • ozzuneoj86 - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link

    Sorry, I wasn't trying to make an unfair comparison. I was just thinking more in terms of time... 5 years, which used to be an incredibly long time in this industry. If we're comparing launch dates and pricing, then it has taken six years to get a large upgrade for a GTX 970 at a lower price... though arguably the RX 5700 fit that bill last summer when it was often available on sale for $300 or a little less. To me, that makes the 5600XT with less memory a lot less interesting for only $20 less. These cards are fine if people have the money for them, but the slow progress is what is getting to me. Compared to the massive changes we've seen AMD bring about in the CPU market, the GPU market is very stale. There aren't any no-brainer purchases at any tier if you have a mid-range GPU from within the past 5 years. This is probably the closest we've come, as you said, but its by such a small margin. If we had performance like this for closer to $200 it would have shaken things up and made GPUs interesting again. Instead, we have the same back and forth about whether it's worth it to spend another $20 and get last year's 2060, or to buy a 4 year old used 1070 for $190 on eBay, or to simply lower the settings a couple notches and stick to the 6 year old GTX 970.

    This isn't really relevant, but... I guess my 970 actually ended up being more like $220, because I got a $30 check from nvidia due to that memory settlement. And then, well, I did sell the DLC codes that came with the card so it was closer to $200. That ends up being like $40 per year... thanks nvidia! :P
  • peevee - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link

    Ryan, because you mention all the time that 6GB of VRAM might not be enough soon, can you write an article explaining the major uses of VRAM by various applications?

    It seems like neither compressed textures nor 3d models of everything needed at the same time (or within a few seconds) could take as much, and everything else can be preloaded quickly on the fly, especially with PCIe4x16... as it allows to update half of that 6GB VRAM every 1/10th of a second.
  • cmdrmonkey - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link

    Looks okay, but nobody is going to buy it because nobody actually buys AMD video cards. If you doubt this look at the Steam hardware survey.
  • Korguz - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link

    " look at the Steam hardware survey. " and that is 100% reliable ? BS. not every one has and uses steam, so no.. NOT a reliable metric. those that i know.. dont all run nvidia cards, some have radeons, and they dont have steam...
  • cmdrmonkey - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link

    Steam has over 1 billion accounts and 90 million monthly users. The hardware survey has a sample size in the millions. Medical and psychological studies don't even have sample sizes like that. I'd say it's a damn good indicator of what most people are using.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now