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GFX Card Progression

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Is it just me or does it seem that graphics cards have really slowed down in advancement over the past few years. I am using a overclocked GTX 970 and looking at the new cards coming out there doesn't seem to be enough of a reason to upgrade. Now a days I seem to be upgrading because I have fallen too far behind in DX versions or a shader model incompatibility issues. Everything seems to be progressing so slowly when compared to when I was running a 9800 Pro, or a 6800 GT.
 

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Well, go get a 1070 and see how it compares.
 
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From what I have seen in benchmarks my oced 970 = 1070 reference.
 
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They havent slowed down at all. They've just become more power efficient. I side graded from SLi 970s to a single 1070 and i barely notice any difference in performance apart from the game running a little smoother due to non-sli.

This isnt Intel where every new generation in the past decade has more or less been roughly the same minus a few tweeks here and there. Tech has moved forward but its down to you and your own requirements to judge if something is a worthy upgrade. I am happy with my 1070
 
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Maybe I just having been paying well enough attention, it feels like I have had this 970 for so long now.
 
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I think it completely depends on resolution that you are playing at vs something in the way of game engine limits. That said at 1080p, I have seen almost zero difference between my 980 and my 1080ti, but at 4k i see a huge difference between the two because of raw gpu performance. As for GPU advancement, Nvidia has been "stagnating" (relative to how they were before) as each generation about doubles the performance of the last instead of the massive die of the 780 compared to the 680.
 
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From what I have seen in benchmarks my oced 970 = 1070 reference.
ohhh your OC'ed 970 come close to a 980Ti stock? (the 1070 is 980Ti level more or less) and does it have 6gb or 8b (like the aforementioned 980Ti and 1070) or you have 2 of them?

benchmark aren't a good measurement (depending on the benchmark ofc ...) and i wonder in which bench you did see that, because no matter where i look i've never seen a 970 even heavily OC'ed getting more than just slightly above a stock 980

maybe for performances they didn't improve much but for vRAM they did a little ... just play a game that need more than 4gb and you will see (well ... rather more than 3.499gb in the case of the 970 )

I have seen almost zero difference between my 980 and my 1080ti, but at 4k i see a huge difference between the two because of raw gpu performance.
rather because of the vRAM difference ... naahhh i'm joking, true for 4K there is only 1 card for that .... oh wait ... actually there is no card for that ... the 1080Ti is a "barely" 4K .... next gen please (yeah yeah i know i can go in hiding with my 1440p card ... :cry: or not .... 4k is not even remotely tempting ... for now :p)
 
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Well, the 970 is just 2 years old and a great 1080p at that. Nvidia could drop Volta anytime they wanted because they have the dies, they're just being sneaky and will outsell VEGA easy like they always have, most tech veterans know why, it's been discussed a lot already.

It's always the high-end halo xx80/Ti models that push the envelope by 15-20% or more depending on how the architechture works. Then they just trickle them down to lower-end models as time passes by.

Hell a GTX 950 beats 1050 slightly depending on the game, but the power consumption is better on 1050 though. You have the same fare for some previous Radeons that are more powerful but consume more power and produce more heat.

I personally prefer less heat/noise from a GPU, a 970 might seem attractive. but they run in the 70 degrees depending on the case and it's cooling (70 degrees is the norm though, for a card like that). A 1060 goes nowhere near because it is more efficient, but I would be lucky to get one at a decent price in my country right now.

Power efficiency is getting a lot of focus right now, but it seems with smaller dies you are getting more instability with higher voltages when overclocking even though you're not even running the silicon die anywhere near it's advertised thermal limit, the drivers start crashing before you know it. Balancing voltage and clock speeds on a particular architecture seems like a long process to validate how well the architecture runs while producing least heat as possible. I mean look at how dual GPUs on a single board have disappeared. Also no SLI/Xfire. It's all about dat efficiency now.

I'm very curious what Navi and Volta are truly bringing to the table and if games actually take advantage of the extra features and efficiency.

A lot of people are blaming the publishers for trying to cater to the masses and rushing developement (console games/ports) when the PC port comes out it's playable at 1080p with the mid-range cards, but that's it. Current mid-range cards are capable of so much more and it's evident in games like the new DOOM. Even the previous mid-range cards are having no problem.

I remember playing DOOM at 70 fps with an overclocked GTX 760 @ 1080p 60-70fps medium settings and the game didn't look that better on High or Ultra. The higher settings on some games can be demanding and don't bring much in terms of visual fidelity.

All in all, it's a balancing act for everything when it comes to hardware that tries to simply push as much frames as possible, without frying itself.
 
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ah thanks @EntropyZ to remind me a stock 970 get in the 70°C temp range ... my 1070 with +150/+250 vRAM/Core rarely goes above 65°C (stock factory OC it's more 58°C in most games, which is fun with my model ... since the fans only spin above 60°C )

yep GPU stagnate, you can squeeze some mhz from the previous gen and reach a stock from the actual gen (tho the actual gen will also OC above factory ... )

woops i guess the OP did see wrong ... it's a 970 SLI that goes close to a 1070 stock ;) not a single (that would be fun if a 970 would reach the Titan XM domain just by OC'ing ) i only took the 1080p result to be "fair" :laugh:
perfrel_1920_1080.png
 
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Dual 970's should be pretty hot, someone @ TPU I saw benching a pair of MSI Twin Frozr cards which do admirably. But the heat...

I'm just sitting here waiting for TNBT (The next big thing). Shame I didn't pick up an RX 580 8GB when they weren't a hot item. Now a year has passed, and with not much left to wait for the next gen cards. I think I can wait a bit longer... Maybe.

I was tempted to get a used 970 (since it's performance when OC'ed is good for another year or two), but now they're selling for much more than they used to here.

Because of the mining craze, I went back to the card which took me though 4 years of gaming without many hitches, the GTX 460. Why? Because I can still count on it to play a lot of games today, it overclocks well and costs as much as decent gaming mouse or less.

All I want is to play heavilly modded Skyrim/Fallout and be ready for the next in the series. But that requires at LEAST a 1070 to play @ 1080p with near constant 75 FPS with third-party post processing on (I love you Boris).

Why do most of my loved games have to have really badly optimized engines. And when you start attaching tumors to it, it just keeps getting worse.

But I digress.

If you have previous gen xx70 or xx80 card, and most games run fine on your prefered resolution. Then yes, there is little reason to upgrade. Though some people have less limited budgets so they sell their high-end cards while they can to upgrade, to keep on top of new more demanding games that might come out later.

Most people still play @ 1080p resolutions so that's what a lot of product makers are targetting. As soon as a demanding title is available, your previous card will still be able to play it, but with reduced performance at particular settings, but always can remove some effects to get more performance without much loss in fidelity.

There's cases where resolution plays a large role if you need to upgrade. With higher-end cards you see diminishing returns on performance when you compare prices. There are multiple factors at play on how well a graphics card ages.

Graphics cards are more than pixel pushers nowadays. So I am wondering what if Nvidia/AMD got rid of CUDA and GCN cores altogether on their gaming cards. They aren't even used in games at all. They do help however if you are streaming/capturing footage on a game. But what if a pure gaming card existed and not the general purpose cards we get today. They do more sure, but at what cost?

I'm repeating myself but, it all depends on your needs really. If you need a card that pushes frames well on a game you like, it exists. Most of the time. :laugh: And if the card runs well anything you want to throw at it, why waste double the money on a card that gets 20 FPS more? Unless you need those extra frames.

The progression is efficiency-wise while still being capable. It was impossible to get anywhere when the final Kepler cards were released, the 28nm node and the architecture has hit it's limit. The only option was to push that ceiling ever so slightly, enough to be able to push clock speeds up and cram more transistors. And games, love higher clock speeds.

You really need those "revolutionary" architectural changes to get more out of limited sized piece of silicon. We were staying on the 28nm node for 3 GPU generations. Now it seems like there aren't as many refreshes as there were before. Though i'm not holding my breath, there are rumors of Nvidia doing a Pascal refresh instead of releasing Volta. Whether the rumors will prove true will be revealed only with time. They might not have to release Volta, simply because Pascal sold very well, and the RX Vega isn't going to make a dent in the sales, most people already have upgraded when they needed the extra performance, and VEGA is just too late.

More competition and better optimized triple-a title games are what us consumers need. But the GPU waters are so muddied right now. I don't even know.
 
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I'm not seeing how there's any lack of progress or stagnation.

A 1060 will outmuscle your 970. It will compare closer to a 980 than a 970 in fact. 1070's not even close to a 970 in performance.

That said, I see little reason to get anything higher end than a 1060 for 1080P gaming. If you're playing games at that resolution then other cards just aren't worth the money. Sure, they're substantially more powerful, but needlessly so.

I'd say the real benefit of the 10 series though is for laptops. A Laptop 1060 is now nearly identical to a desktop 1060, and delivers roughly 4x the framerate a a 960M did. The 10 series made gaming laptops a real thing. They technically had been for a while, but they were outrageously expensive.

A laptop with a 980M was still far weaker than a 1060. To compete with a 1060 you had to go SLI.

As an example, 980m gets 38 fps on Mass Effect Andromeda on ultra. 1060 gets 55 fps.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIACA15CR7137 refurbished laptop with a 980m and a i7-6700HQ = $1,189.64
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA25V4SA3366 cheapest new laptop with a 980m alongside a i7-6700HQon newegg, $1,365.81

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=1TS-001A-00487 $899.00 for a laptop with a 1060. It does have a i5-6300HQ instead of a i7-6700HQ, but for gaming the difference is negligible. You're paying $300-$500 less for a gpu that's ~50% more powerful.
 

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To be honest I still consider the 770 to be 1080p minimum. I mean a 660 can do quite a bit but it's all in the user to tweak settings.
 
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