Hostility in the GPU Space?

[poofyhairguy]

Is it just me or does it seem like the GPU space has more hostility than it did in years past?

First of all there is of course green team vs red team, but where before that was a battle of benchmarks today it is a battle of economic "morality" and futility.

But even outside of that we have more battles: miner vs gamer, Directx 12 vs Directx 11 vs Vulkan fans, VR vs 4K, and each battle has its share of hostility either in your face or under the surface.

Was this GPU space always this hostile and I just missed it? If not how did we get here? Aren't games and technology supposed to be fun?

Thank you for your consideration of the situation.

 

[Nhirlathothep]

blame it on the gamers

 

[boozzer]

if everyone use logic there would be no conflicts. but some regulars here are actual/borderline shills depending on who you ask. omfg 4gb is not enough. switch to another brand, omfg 3gb is more than enough. then you have sponsored games use in benchmarks fudging up the numbers. paid for reviews for both sides. to get reliable reviews and benchmarks, I had to read foreign review sites for the last 2 years now damn sad.

I wish we have a 3rd or 4th or more companies making gpus. needs more competition.

 

[DidelisDiskas]

Maybe because the community of pc enthusiasts has grown and so did the vocal minority with it.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Maybe because the community of pc enthusiasts has grown and so did the vocal minority with it.

That could certainly be the case. People who are enthusiastic about mining and VR didn't even exist in say 2007.

 

[Piroko]

I tend towards disagreeing. About ten years ago discussions were just as heated, with battles over who had the more forward looking DX10 architecture, who had the less terrible drivers and who cheated by how much in texture filtering.

If I had to name differences between then and now I'd say that the number of posters has grown and we now have officially supported fan groups on both sides (as with most marketing: terrible concept).

 

[DaveSimmons]

VC&G seems more like P&N now than it was 5+ years ago, but some of that might be from the more moderate posters drifting away as changes slowed down and the need for cutting edge hardware faded.

There wasn't much need to care about the latest cards during the X360 - PS3 era. The X1 and PS4 helped a bit, and 4K, high refresh rates and VR have helped more.

 

[nerp]

I don't understand the hostility or aggression, either. Battling it out over brand affections seems like an unnecessary diversion and source of friction for no reason. Might as well go to war with Pepsi fans if you like Coke on the soda forums, etc. Rivalry is understandable but people forget to force themselves to think from a bird's eye perspective to realize how silly and a waste of time all this expression of passion is.

 

[Nhirlathothep]

I don't understand the hostility or aggression, either. Battling it out over brand affections seems like an unnecessary diversion and source of friction for no reason. Might as well go to war with Pepsi fans if you like Coke on the soda forums, etc. Rivalry is understandable but people forget to force themselves to think from a bird's eye perspective to realize how silly and a waste of time all this expression of passion is.

i understand why there is hostility

 

[eddman]

I haven't been much of a forums poster, or even reader, as you can tell by my joining date and number of posts (although I've been a regular tech site reader since geforce 4 days), but I think there were always a number of people who blindly follow their favorite brand and attack the other brand any chance they get.

I've also noticed that most of such people are the kind that would immediately believe whatever new rumor or accusation they read if it badmouths the opposing brand, and immediately refute them if they are about their supported brand.

"480 will kill your MB and/or PSU, no matter what": Not unless you have the cheapest, crappiest MB or PSU in the market.
"NVidia is making games run worse on AMD cards with gameworks": How can CPU only effects affect the GPU?! As for GPU effects, they can be disabled.
etc.

All of this comes down to excessive, unnecessary pride and lack of logical reasoning.

Is there more of them nowadays? Maybe, but right now we are in a launch season, so obviously you'd see more fanboys coming out of the woodworks.

 

[railven]

I tend towards disagreeing. About ten years ago discussions were just as heated, with battles over who had the more forward looking DX10 architecture, who had the less terrible drivers and who cheated by how much in texture filtering.

If I had to name differences between then and now I'd say that the number of posters has grown and we now have officially supported fan groups on both sides (as with most marketing: terrible concept).

I dunno. Been here a long time (lurker before started posting) and the name calling has gone up a lot, if you ask me.

I stopped coming here for insightful technical discussions and stay basically for the drama. Haha.

This forum has definitely slid, in my opinion, in regards to discussions versus just us vs them nonsense.

Can't even make a statement without it turning into a fanboy call out anymore. Even if the statement is probably agreeable by many.

Welps, I put my two cents in. Off to eat some very late lunch.

 

[poofyhairguy]

i understand why there is hostility

Explain it to us then please if you can.

 

[Yakk]

Seems like many hardware forums have undergone a sortof brain drain where more technical minded individuals have moved on to other places to be replaced by more general people arguing based on oftentimes questionable results from questionable sources. Giving a kind of tribal feel to the discussions, no doubt bolstered by viral type marketing.

/oki'mdonenow

 

[IllogicalGlory]

blame it on the gamers

And the first response is an attack on another 'group'.

 

[Sonikku]

It's because competition was once healthy at all ends of the spectrum and there were options with great perf/$ all over the spectrum to fit every budget. Now we're entering an era where AMD is finished in the high end and might be on their last hurrah in the low end depending on how Zen turns out. The high end has been surrendered to Nvidia and as with any for profit business they have used and abused it. Price hikes from previous tiers, "founders" edition hijinx etc. Console ports are fewer and when there is a port they are poorly optimized requiring ever greater hardware for less performance. It just isn't the hobby it once was.

 

[CP5670]

VC&G was always like this. If anything it's tamer than how it was 10 years ago, because (as said above) there is less at stake today. Back then, Nvidia and AMD/ATI would compete for the top spot every year, and game graphics were advancing rapidly, so there was actually something to fight over. Of course, we also had shills like Rollo on here back then.

I don't see the point of upgrading video cards frequently anymore and no longer get excited by new releases. Game graphics have plateaued for many years now and most games either run fine on older cards, or are badly optimized and just run poorly without looking good. I still game a lot but spend most of my time with older stuff from GoG and Humble Bundle, and at 1080p (or even VR) there is little reason to upgrade for that.

 

[Elfear]

It's because competition was once healthy at all ends of the spectrum and there were options with great perf/$ all over the spectrum to fit every budget. Now we're entering an era where AMD is finished in the high end and might be on their last hurrah in the low end depending on how Zen turns out. The high end has been surrendered to Nvidia and as with any for profit business they have used and abused it. Price hikes from previous tiers, "founders" edition hijinx etc. Console ports are fewer and when there is a port they are poorly optimized requiring ever greater hardware for less performance. It just isn't the hobby it once was.

But we've had these same circumstances before. 8800GTX dominated the high-end for quite a while. 5870 was the fastest out for ~6 months. Original Titan was king of the hill for 6+ months, etc, etc.

I also think the more technically-minded people have shifted to other sites. There are still some very good threads full of excellent information and level-headed discussion, but they seem fewer from years past.

VC&G was always like this. If anything it's tamer than how it was 10 years ago, because as the previous poster said there is less at stake today. Back then, Nvidia and AMD/ATI would compete for the top spot every year, and game graphics were advancing rapidly, so there was actually something to fight over. Of course, we also had shills like Rollo on here back then.

I don't see the point of upgrading video cards frequently anymore and no longer get excited by new releases. Game graphics have plateaued for many years now...

I also think this is a big reason as well. The GPU landscape has been rather boring for the last 4-5yrs with longer release schedules and lackluster performance increases. When people get bored they argue.

 

[railven]

It's because competition was once healthy at all ends of the spectrum and there were options with great perf/$ all over the spectrum to fit every budget. Now we're entering an era where AMD is finished in the high end and might be on their last hurrah in the low end depending on how Zen turns out. The high end has been surrendered to Nvidia and as with any for profit business they have used and abused it. Price hikes from previous tiers, "founders" edition hijinx etc. Console ports are fewer and when there is a port they are poorly optimized requiring ever greater hardware for less performance. It just isn't the hobby it once was.

Well said. Got more guts than me to be so frank.

 

[darkswordsman17]

VC&G was always like this. If anything it's tamer than how it was 10 years ago, because (as said above) there is less at stake today. Back then, Nvidia and AMD/ATI would compete for the top spot every year, and game graphics were advancing rapidly, so there was actually something to fight over. Of course, we also had shills like Rollo on here back then.

I don't see the point of upgrading video cards frequently anymore and no longer get excited by new releases. Game graphics have plateaued for many years now and most games either run fine on older cards, or are badly optimized and just run poorly without looking good. I still game a lot but spend most of my time with older stuff from GoG and Humble Bundle, and at 1080p (or even VR) there is little reason to upgrade for that.

This. I just have to shrug at anyone who thinks this is anything new. It has been especially bad the past month or two because we have new products from both companies and that always sets things off.

But overall this subforum has been this way for as long as I've been here. At one point we had a mod making a ridiculously terrible analogy of them letting the Nvidia Focus Group back to how people "forgave" the US military for interning Japanese citizens during WWII.

That's not really a mod callout. There's nothing the mods can really do without turning this place into a ghost town. Most of the rational people have left as there's just no benefit to trying to deal with the constant barage of vitriol.

 

[4K_shmoorK]

To be honest, I can't stand when posters really go at it arguing semantics/tech specs. Lot of epeen statistics and brand pride. Sometimes its necessary to just take a couple breaths and come back to the forums in the morning.

One thing that would be cool (to me) is if we had more community oriented discussions within VC&G. Case setups, graphics mods, suggestions on how to improve graphics performance, anecdotal explanations of setups and hardware, etc. Forums are cool because they are real people coming to together to share real opinions and experiences.

Brand pride and performance arguments are so tired and played out. Quite literally, played out to the T. Any OP with the words 'async compute' in their first post...the thread always ends up the same. Posters from both camps chiming in with their comments until zingers get thrown around and posters start to take it personally. It gets to be one big face palm. Every post doesn't need to include a litany of sources, facts and figures to support some overblown claim.

I guess, in my opinion, if more posters kept their posts more light hearted and less 'out to prove you wrong' the forums would be better for it is all.

 

[Sheep221]

It's somewhat a subculture thing, it's not about GPUs per se but the activity you do.
It's something like mix hip hop fans with death metal fans in one room, they both love music, so it should be indifferent but it's not.
My view on this is neutral, what hardware you have is not important and does not define you as a person.

 

[boozzer]

This. I just have to shrug at anyone who thinks this is anything new. It has been especially bad the past month or two because we have new products from both companies and that always sets things off.

But overall this subforum has been this way for as long as I've been here. At one point we had a mod making a ridiculously terrible analogy of them letting the Nvidia Focus Group back to how people "forgave" the US military for interning Japanese citizens during WWII.

That's not really a mod callout. There's nothing the mods can really do without turning this place into a ghost town. Most of the rational people have left as there's just no benefit to trying to deal with the constant barage of vitriol.

there is a very easy way to clean this subforum up, but requires alot of work for the mods which makes it impossible.

 

[Magee_MC]

I suspect that a part of the reason is that as prices have gone up, the literal investment in a person's choice of cards increases as well. Since people are more financially invested in the cards, there is also an increased need to rationalize that they made the right choice. A more intense emotional investment occurs as well since the stakes for having made a right or wrong choice are greater.

All of this leads to more passion, and a more fervent defense of the choice that the person made. Since there are many possible "right" choices, depending on the person's individual preferences and circumstances, getting people who may have made the right choice for them to agree that their choice could be "wrong" for someone else is becoming harder.

Start with that, then mix in some corporate marketing, add in some internet anonymity and stir with a dash or two of trolls and you've got a pretty combustible environment.

 

[hawtdawg]

I blame it on AMD fanboys. They all so desperately want AMD GPU's to be good, so they argue about how power efficiency doesnt matter and how AMD GPU's are "gonna be good" eventually when DX12 finally takes off a year from now. It's irritating.

 

[nerp]

To be honest, I can't stand when posters really go at it arguing semantics/tech specs. Lot of epeen statistics and brand pride. Sometimes its necessary to just take a couple breaths and come back to the forums in the morning.

One thing that would be cool (to me) is if we had more community oriented discussions within VC&G. Case setups, graphics mods, suggestions on how to improve graphics performance, anecdotal explanations of setups and hardware, etc. Forums are cool because they are real people coming to together to share real opinions and experiences.

Brand pride and performance arguments are so tired and played out. Quite literally, played out to the T. Any OP with the words 'async compute' in their first post...the thread always ends up the same. Posters from both camps chiming in with their comments until zingers get thrown around and posters start to take it personally. It gets to be one big face palm. Every post doesn't need to include a litany of sources, facts and figures to support some overblown claim.

I guess, in my opinion, if more posters kept their posts more light hearted and less 'out to prove you wrong' the forums would be better for it is all.

I would love to see more pics of builds, case mods, fun stuff like that. Horror stories/success stories. Pics of cards in people's systems, etc.