What is on the horizon? What can I look forward to as a single card upgrade to my 670 SLI preferably able to handle at least a 32" monitor and possibly 4K?
Full Fat Maxwell would be out in the next calendar year I'd imagine. So a GTX 980 Ti if the current naming convention is anything to go by. Rumoured to feature 8GB VRAM but even then you'd need two cards in SLI to power a 4K resolution for modern games with high settings.
Radeon 380 and 390 cards should launch sometime in the next 3-5mths, and I'd expect them to be roughly 20-30% or so faster than the 970 and 980 Nvidia equivalents, but hopefully they will be much cooler running and use alot less power than the current 290 cards and a bit cheaper, which should push the ridiculously overpriced (relative to the 970) 980's down in price. Nvidia will also update the 980 card to counter, 20nm Maxwell 980ti most likely...but will, in time honoured Nvidia fashion, cost silly money. 4k with a single card will still be hit and miss, very much dependant on the game, 60fps @max settings on a single card is still quite a way off I'm afraid.
Unfortunately the speed at which 4K monitors are dropping in price is not being matched either by the drop in price of graphics cards or the increase of their ability to play games at 4K... For example, a single 980 is only able to manage an average of 23fps in Crysis 3 at 4K or an average of 41fps in BF4 at 4K. When the 780ti came out it represented about a 20% jump over the 780, so if the 980ti manages the same jump that's still <30fps in Crysis 3 for example...
LOL had thought that myself. They will struggle to match the 970 / 980 is the biggest worry. 970 is very cheap for its speed. Think the 380 will struggle to be sub £300 in the uk and even if its 10% faster which is a touch more realistic it will still be overpriced. 390 is anyones guess at this point. 3-5 months is still May next year and I was hoping the 980ti would show itself before that point in truth. 4k monitor prices are dropping fast but the gpus required to run them are still very expensive.
Probably going by the leaked benchmark which show Cpt Jack as 20% faster than the 980, but you know, leaked rumours et all.
Yeh I saw those leaked benches, but considering how far away those cards are I'd discount them. I've no doubt AMD will counter with cards that slot somewhere around and in between them, but they never compete at the same price point. Manufacturer 1 will have the fastest card priced at 1000, manufacturer 2 then slots their fastest card which isn't quite as fast at 900, manu 1 has their second faster card (3rd overall) priced at 800, manu 2 at 700, manu 1 at 600... With the lines slightly blurred with 3rd party oc'd versions, there's a nice curve of price performance that fades from red to green to red to green etc. I hope AMD really do pull something out the bag to make the market more competitive and hopefully drive down prices, then regardless of which company comes out on top, the consumer wins.
