Blogs AMD and Nvidia need to step up to the 4K challenge

Of course they will. People buy new GPUs to play the latest games at their best settings. More money spent on GPUs = more incentive to invest in GPU tech

 

Quite right, the point is, most people don't buy quality IPS panels, but cheap don't-care-what's-inside-panels.

Hence the proliferation of cheap 1920x1080 monitors in 16:9 instead of the (PC) preferred 16:10. Made possible by this beeing the TV-makers standart.

If the next TV standart is going to be 4K, the next wave of cheap panels is going to be 4K, in a TV friendly aspect ratio, if we like it or not.

High-end IPS panels in intermediate resolutions and aspect ratio's are great....but expensive and a niche product, really.

 

Of course, but they also buy them to play games at playable frame rates while GPU manufacturers are not in the game of meeting high end wants, they are in the market to make money and they do that by releasing generation after generation of barely justifiable increments of performance. If either AMD or nVidia cam out with a GPU that could run 4K easily with a single GPU, of course people would buy it, but then what? They would have hit a ceiling as the next level would be something even higher that the monitor industry can't aim for yet, nor can the content services either. They are still recovering the costs of upgrading to Blu-Ray, let alone the costs of the next step to 4K. Companies want and need to make money from each generation to fund the development of future generations. So wanting what is the ultimate right now, as a standard right across the board just is not viable, and won't be for quite some time I imagine.

jrs77: Too often people confuse better graphics with realism. While often better graphics are used to achieve better realism they are not one in the same. Skyrim looks better than it's predecessors, Star Citizen looks far better than Wing Commander, but neither of those games are realistic.
Personally I am not so fussed about things looking 'real' but I do want them to look 'good'. So if aspects of a game's graphics are supposed to look real, then I want them to look as real as possible while other aspects can look fantastical because there is nothing real about them.
When it comes to playability I do find that very few games actually suck me in.

 

As in, today they aren't? That was a popular opinion about five years ago. Now it just makes you look uninformed.

Classic troll comment though, well done.

 

No resolution above 1080p was ever widely adopted by gamers, then along comes 4K, its just too big of a jump for gpu manufacturers to keep up with as they both have functioned for over a decade with small but more frequent upgrades.

 

Actually I'd have to agree with jrs77. I'd say 2 out of 10 games these days are actually worth playing, with 1 out of 10 being an indie game. EA and Activision are killing the gaming industry, and Ubisoft, MS, and 2K are very slowly getting plagued with them.

Graphics are clearly a primary focus of modern games but these days its more about the subtle details, such as individual object manipulation or object/terrain deformation. Gameplay and originality seems to lean toward the lower end of game priorities these days.

 

4k is the new 3D, just another way of trying to shift units to consumers who buy into it.
It might take off it might not, depends on how many people buy into it.

 

How are EA and Activision 'killing the game industry'? They are doing what they've always done, which is building huge triple AAA games. These games are enjoyed by absolutely millions of people. I don't see them killing it at all? Sure, originality isn't their primary focus a lot of the time, but continuing to refine popular genres certainly isn't killing the industry.

Meanwhile the indie sector is healthier than ever thanks to early access and Kickstarter.

 

No, it's not a baseless opinion. They're making games that appeal to the masses, strictly to turn a profit. They're in the industry for the money, not for the art. Setting bugs aside (which in itself is a reason many of these games are low-quality) these games are still fun and playable. But, they rarely offer anything new and are coded by the laziest developers on the planet. Any game that RELIES on multiplayer to be fun is, in my opinion, a lazily made game. It takes real skill to make fun and challenging AI or single-player campaigns.

As for indie games, that's where the real originality comes from. But I am getting really tired of 8-bit style games and most indie games are way too short. I understand there's only so much they can do about this, due to limited funding. I'm not faulting them for that. But I used to like AAA titles because they used to offer more than 4 hours of original content.

Just like jrs77 said, the Borderlands games are probably of the best modern AAA games. Those games did everything right, though the first game was a little bland at times. But even the DLC for the games is well worth the price, yet you don't need ANY of it to still find the game enjoyable. That's something a lot of modern games struggle with.

When I say companies like EA and Activision are killing the gaming industry, I mean they're making games incredibly un-interesting. Again, you might find a game like CoD or FIFA or Forza fun but they're not games you'll reminisce about 10 years from now and as soon as the new one replaces it, there's no reason to ever go back. I still find myself playing games like UT2004, SSBM, Prey, or Flatout 2 because they STILL offer something many games today don't.

 

Affordable 4k gaming is not likely to arrive until AMD/Nvidia move to a smaller fab. Not that I'm bothered. Mainstream 4k is still quite a way off really. And tbh I don't see what all the fuss is about when 8k and above is already possible. It's like the next standard has already been superseded.

 

I would also like to throw in a comment about how the PC gaming segment is not as strong as the console segment regardless of the finances. The PC gaming segment is being killed by the fact that very few games are PC exclusive and designed for the PC from the start. Nearly all games are console ports that are no where near as fluid on a PC as they are on a lesser console. Add to that the fact that many franchises are not on the PC at all, either not anymore or they never were... Games like Forza, GT... what does the PC have? Nothing to compete with those two. What about all the sport games that you just can not get on the PC? NBA, NHL, NFL... It's because of games like these that people have moved to consoles rather than having PCs and consoles are decades away from running 4K, they can't even cope currently with 1080...

 

I reckon sub-4k resolutions are just fine and everyone should chill out for a while.

 

PC gets it's attention from RTSs, simulators, and the modding community. PC is also appealing at times like now when we're transitioning between console generations; the game (in most cases) will still be playable even on a new PC made 10 years from now. PC suffers from games that are basically unplayable via keyboard and mouse, such as the sports games you mentioned. 9 out of 10 times, a PC gamer has a gamepad, but game developers can't RELY on you having one. This reduces PC titles. Also, according to the steam surveys, the most common GPUs are intel's, which is really sad. The average person can't get a discrete GPU, either because they can't afford it, they don't know how, or their system is incapable.

 

Decades? Think of the current trend in GPU design - higher efficiency, lower power requirements etc... I'd be willing to bet that the next generation of xbox or playstation will target 4K gaming.

 

Personally I'm happy with my Dell 1920x1200 24", and MSi 970 GTX. When prices fall a bit, I'd like to upgrade and buy a 2560x1440 27". It seems to me that with 4k, one needs a very powerful VGA card (even then it might not be enough!), and also hope that the game designers actually make use of the extra potential in a way that optimizes the hardware.

 

Just wanted to highlight some of my favourite quotes from that diatribe. Anyone else care to dive in?

 

Hey at least I gave a base to my opinion, which you were challenging. Lets see you do the same. Saying millions of people buy the games doesn't help your point, because it doesn't mean they're all satisfied (BF4 and Destiny are good example of disappointment) and these people are just buying into something familiar with a change of scenery. Like I said, the games aren't necessarily bad but they exist for the sake of profits and they are not priced based on quality or quantity.

 

I just came to read all the Negative Nancy "I am running a 4 inch monitor at 800x600 with XP and think its fine, I'll upgrade when there is a reason" comments.

At least someone was clever enough to mention Oculus Rift which is going to make gaming monitors obsolete.

PC Gaming is a hobby, you can get by with 800 euros a year, which by my accounting is one of the least expensive out there. Now most people can afford much more than that. Getting a 4k monitor and GPUs to run it is in no way "splashing out", it is merely putting you in the mid-area of expenditures for this hobby.
Now if you are actually low-income or have spawn that need regular feeding, you can turn some of your spare time into cash by helping other people take care of their computers. Do this for 3 hours a week for 52 weeks and you have enough for a 4k monitor and the GPUs to run them, alternatively you can donate sperm and turn your fapping into gaming happening. [For the Gamer Gurlz out there, donating eggs is even more lucrative]

I can't wait to see the crying when people realize that its 300 euros for a decent HOTAS setup with which to play simulations like Star*Citizen and Eliteangerous

Yours in the clarity of Falcon Sight Plasma,
Star*Dagger

 

Antony, your article seems to (unintentionally) suggest that Nvidia and AMD are somehow holding back on their chip development. The reality is that 4K is still an incredibly intensive resolution to aim for and GPUs are the most complex pieces of silicon that have ever been manufactured. The development cycles for GPUs are therefore much longer than CPUs or mobile SoCs, the yields are a fair bit lower due to the larger die sizes and heat/power consumption and memory bandwidth are the biggest limiting factors to making a faster GPU.

Honestly, Nvidia ought to be congratulated on their efforts with GM204. They've absolutely knocked it out of the park on all counts as compared to GK110 - significantly higher performance, lower absolute power consumption, smaller die size and lower prices. All of this adds up to double the performance/watt, absolutely crushing AMD's Hawaii. The most jaw-droppingly amazing bit is that all of this was achieved on the same 28nm process as the last couple of generations!

Now, imagine what can be achieved with a shift to TSMC's 20nm process (Apple's A8 SoC is already manufactured on this) and with innovations such as stacked HBM memory connected to the GPU with TSVs. All of this is rumoured to be coming with Pascal in 2016...

 

Actually I think the real issue here is HDMI, DVI, and DP - the bandwidth is too high for many of these connectors, and GPUs have to be designed to be compatible with them. I think the average GPU (in terms of core and memory) are perfectly fine for the average 4K display.

Another thing to keep in mind is OS compatibility. Some environments don't scale well at very high resolutions.

AMD and nvidia do still have something to fix, but I don't think they have anywhere near as much to do as people think they do.