[KitGuru] Sales of desktop graphics cards hit 10-year low in Q2 2015

[n0x1ous]

When a game like Ryse can be exclusive to the weakest console, but then as a port look like one of the most visually appealing PC games ever, it should all give us hope. Console optimizations are not the answer, developers putting in the work to give us good PC ports is the answer.

Ryse is truly incredible graphically as is Cryengine 3.5 - I played that whole turd of a game just because it was so damn beautiful

Im hoping their former engine dev who is now with id will make Doom 4 something special for us.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Ryse is truly incredible graphically as is Cryengine 3.5 - I played that whole turd of a game just because it was so damn beautiful

Wow I didn't know that. Makes sense.

Geez without Crytek graphics would be like five years behind what they are today. They have set the standard since 2007. The are the Pixar of the gaming industry.

 

[Headfoot]

I heard Cloud Imperium hired on a bunch of former CryEngine engine devs too, so Star Citizen has got to look good

 

[Sabrewings]

I heard Cloud Imperium hired on a bunch of former CryEngine engine devs too, so Star Citizen has got to look good

They indeed did. They're going to be modifying CryEngine to suit their needs, so they hired on the people who made it.

Smart move.

 

[Madpacket]

Sure, but those "bare metal" optimizations should be the same for every console generation. The graph works because EVERY generation of consoles get optimizations (not just the PS4 and Xbone) so their relative position to PCs of that time IS comparable.

What that graph shows more than anything is that this generation of consoles is the weakest one in recent history compared to the PC hardware of that time. When the Xbox 1 came out you couldn't buy a GPU that good. When the Xbox 360 came out we couldn't buy GPUs with universal shaders like that (with that level of power) for almost a year after release. The 360 was a leap beyond ANYTHING PCs could do. Meanwhile the PS4 (the strongest current console) had a GPU you COULD pretty much buy at release (basically a 7850 or 7870) but more importantly it was less powerful than GPUs that were on the market at the time of release (namely the 7970). We have never seen that happen in the recent history of consoles.

It doesn't matter that maybe, just maybe, thanks to optimizations that PS4 GPU can match the 7970. What matters is that when you look at the history of GPUs and consoles the STANDARD is for consoles to be better than anything on PCs at release until this generation. That holds back the entire gaming industry, because instead of the consoles setting a new high water mark for everyone we instead got midrange console parts that you could blow away with a highend PC built the exact day the PS4 was released. Optimizations in the past were a way for consoles to keep any advantage over PCs longer, while with this generation the optimizations are the ONLY HOPE for that advantage day 1. It is a huge difference.

I don't care how well the consoles can be optimized, it doesn't turn a 7870 into a Titan. The xbox 360 and Ps3 generation lasted so long partially because they had such a head start on the PC market (moreso for the 360), while this generation the consoles are an anchor around the neck of the PC market. I get why they are what they are- MS and Sony didn't want to take a massive losses per unit this generation like in the past. The Gillette model for console economics is obviously breaking down, and we are all worse off because of it.

It is what it is, which is we are facing the weakest consoles relatively in the entire history of gaming (since Atari at least). What makes it even worse in my opinion is that the console market has moved away from the exclusives model of the Ps1/2 era to a model where almost every game gets ported to at least one other platform. That means that we can't even rely on the concept that PCs are only held back by the PS4, they are held back by the Xbox One from now until MS calls it quits. MS made a decision to prioritize Kinect over console power which made the Xbox One the weakest relative console of all time.

We haven't even fully seen what the effect of this will be, because as of now many AAA games (like GTA V or MGS V) are ported all the way back to the last gen consoles which REALLY holds back every other platform. I have hope that maybe, just maybe, developers can find a way to put out top shelf PC games without being held back by the consoles. When a game like Ryse can be exclusive to the weakest console, but then as a port look like one of the most visually appealing PC games ever, it should all give us hope. Console optimizations are not the answer, developers putting in the work to give us good PC ports is the answer.

Good points about the comparisons but I should state bare metal comparisons are essentially lost after the Power PC and Cell were abandoned as the new consoles are essentially just X86 PC's with standard Radeon graphics.

I disagree about your assertion: "When the Xbox 360 came out we couldn't buy GPUs with universal shaders like that (with that level of power) for almost a year after release. The 360 was a leap beyond ANYTHING PCs could do."

This is a fallacy I see spread around a lot. The X1800 R520 series was available a month before the Xbox 360 was released and was not a "cut down" version that ended up in the 360. PC's were already faster hardware wise but lacked the low level programming to really take advantage of this.

The weakest link is the Xbox One sure but I disagree these new consoles are the bane of PC gaming and the reason discrete gaming cards are selling less. If anything the last gen consoles are still holding us back, not the current gen. The current gen consoles can have engines designed for them that scale on PC just fine because well the consoles are just weaker gaming PC's.

Saying the current consoles are holding us back is basically saying a mid range gaming PC is holding us back. It makes no sense once you take the OS out of the equation. And now that Microsoft is embracing DX12 for the Xbox One this will be even less of an issue going forward.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Good points about the comparisons but I should state bare metal comparisons are essentially lost after the Power PC and Cell were abandoned as the new consoles are essentially just X86 PC's with standard Radeon graphics.

I disagree about your assertion: "When the Xbox 360 came out we couldn't buy GPUs with universal shaders like that (with that level of power) for almost a year after release. The 360 was a leap beyond ANYTHING PCs could do."

This is a fallacy I see spread around a lot. The X1800 R520 series was available a month before the Xbox 360 was released and was not a "cut down" version that ended up in the 360.

The Xenos (360 GPU) was actually more advanced than the X1800. The X1800 still had vertex and pixel shaders:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1810/2

Meanwhile the Xenos was the world's first consumer GPU with unified shaders. We couldn't buy a GPU with unified shaders until the GeForce 8800 in 2006 (a year later). Even if in 2005 the X1800 was on paper faster than the Xenos by the end of its life the unified shader advantage was huge. We see that when modern engines are run on old GPUs- here is a 8500 GT (a barely mid level GPU but had unified shaders) beating a 7900 GTX (the high end GPU from the generation before the 8500 GT with dedicated shaders):

I am sticking to my guns: The Xbox 360 was the most advanced GPU you could buy when it launched, and PC GPUs couldn't beat it until a year later. The PS3 on the other had actually had a less advanced GPU than the 360 because Sony had to bolt it on last minute.

Saying the current consoles are holding us back is basically saying a mid range gaming PC is holding us back. It makes no sense once you take the OS out of the equation.

It makes a lot of sense when you put the economics of PC gaming back in the equation. The flop of this year's batman game showed us behind the curtain, and we see that the PC port got a FRACTION of the human resources the console version got. It doesn't matter if the PC is way more powerful if the PC port is so unoptimized that it produces the negative of the "to the metal" effect.

Directx 12 can't get here soon enough, even if it turns my GTX 970 into a pumpkin.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Sure, but those "bare metal" optimizations should be the same for every console generation. The graph works because EVERY generation of consoles get optimizations (not just the PS4 and Xbone) so their relative position to PCs of that time IS comparable.

What that graph shows more than anything is that this generation of consoles is the weakest one in recent history compared to the PC hardware of that time. When the Xbox 1 came out you couldn't buy a GPU that good. When the Xbox 360 came out we couldn't buy GPUs with universal shaders like that (with that level of power) for almost a year after release. The 360 was a leap beyond ANYTHING PCs could do. Meanwhile the PS4 (the strongest current console) had a GPU you COULD pretty much buy at release (basically a 7850 or 7870) but more importantly it was less powerful than GPUs that were on the market at the time of release (namely the 7970). We have never seen that happen in the recent history of consoles.

It doesn't matter that maybe, just maybe, thanks to optimizations that PS4 GPU can match the 7970. What matters is that when you look at the history of GPUs and consoles the STANDARD is for consoles to be better than anything on PCs at release until this generation. That holds back the entire gaming industry, because instead of the consoles setting a new high water mark for everyone we instead got midrange console parts that you could blow away with a highend PC built the exact day the PS4 was released. Optimizations in the past were a way for consoles to keep any advantage over PCs longer, while with this generation the optimizations are the ONLY HOPE for that advantage day 1. It is a huge difference.

I don't care how well the consoles can be optimized, it doesn't turn a 7870 into a Titan. The xbox 360 and Ps3 generation lasted so long partially because they had such a head start on the PC market (moreso for the 360), while this generation the consoles are an anchor around the neck of the PC market. I get why they are what they are- MS and Sony didn't want to take a massive losses per unit this generation like in the past. The Gillette model for console economics is obviously breaking down, and we are all worse off because of it.

It is what it is, which is we are facing the weakest consoles relatively in the entire history of gaming (since Atari at least). What makes it even worse in my opinion is that the console market has moved away from the exclusives model of the Ps1/2 era to a model where almost every game gets ported to at least one other platform. That means that we can't even rely on the concept that PCs are only held back by the PS4, they are held back by the Xbox One from now until MS calls it quits. MS made a decision to prioritize Kinect over console power which made the Xbox One the weakest relative console of all time.

We haven't even fully seen what the effect of this will be, because as of now many AAA games (like GTA V or MGS V) are ported all the way back to the last gen consoles which REALLY holds back every other platform. I have hope that maybe, just maybe, developers can find a way to put out top shelf PC games without being held back by the consoles. When a game like Ryse can be exclusive to the weakest console, but then as a port look like one of the most visually appealing PC games ever, it should all give us hope. Console optimizations are not the answer, developers putting in the work to give us good PC ports is the answer.

Exactly. The very weak consoles at release is an epic disaster for PC dGPUs sales. Using a lower midrange GPU at the time only result in the decline much faster. And we are getting very close to something in the order of IGP gaming at 1080p at console settings.

Consoles is around GTX750 performance. And it could easily be 5 years+ before we see the next consoles.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Exactly. The very weak consoles at release is an epic disaster for PC dGPUs sales. Using a lower midrange GPU at the time only result in the decline much faster. And we are getting very close to something in the order of IGP gaming at 1080p at console settings.

Consoles is around GTX750 performance. And it could easily be 5 years+ before we see the next consoles.

This is an excuse for developer laziness or incompetence. Look at crysis 3. It also released on consoles but no console even ps4 can run it at the settings I can on PC. Look at ryse as mentioned previously, gta5, I would even use the Metro series as an example, hell even examples as old as battlefield 4 have settings on PC that consoles cannot replicate and the performance remains high. I am tired of using the console scapegoat to cover up for bad developers or lazy developers. Screaming "consoles are priority" doesn't change the fact that some developers actually put out a game on PC that makes the console game look bad. Blame the developers for making the games how they make them.

 

[ShintaiDK]

This is an excuse for developer laziness or incompetence. Look at crysis 3. It also released on consoles but no console even ps4 can run it at the settings I can on PC. Look at ryse as mentioned previously, gta5, I would even use the Metro series as an example, hell even examples as old as battlefield 4 have settings on PC that consoles cannot replicate and the performance remains high. I am tired of using the console scapegoat to cover up for bad developers or lazy developers. Screaming "consoles are priority" doesn't change the fact that some developers actually put out a game on PC that makes the console game look bad. Blame the developers for making the games how they make them.

I fully agree as such. Lazyness, business decisions call it whatever you want. But its all about the money.

We can praise Crytek and Crysis 3 as much as we like. But where is that company today? Its just not viable financially.

And this is why the console bar is so important. Its the lowest denominator everyone has to follow.

Then we have indie devs showing that gameplay > fancy graphics. That is not helping either in terms of dGPU sales.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I fully agree as such. Lazyness, business decisions call it whatever you want. But its all about the money.

We can praise Crytek and Crysis 3 as much as we like. But where is that company today? Its just not viable financially.

And this is why the console bar is so important. Its the lowest denominator everyone has to follow.

Then we have indie devs showing that gameplay > fancy graphics. That is not helping either in terms of dGPU sales.

That company is working on a couple games (or former employees of it anyway). One of their engine developers is now with Bethesda working on the new Doom game and some are working on star citizen. Both games look incredible from what I have seen.

Also for the record I pretty much hate indie games and rarely even give them more than a passing glance. I also think crytek's main problem was they couldn't build a great game around their engine and nobody licensed it.

All I am saying is that you can make a game for all platforms and make it run and look the best possible on that platform if you are not lazy.

 

[ShintaiDK]

All I am saying is that you can make a game for all platforms and make it run and look the best possible on that platform if you are not lazy.

But is it about being lazy? Or is it simply the financial, manpower and/or time limits?

How much more does a "better looking" game sell contra one that is "normal looking". Assuming same gameplay.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I don't think we can blame Indies or games that aren't as demanding (like my most played game recently- DBZ Xenoverse). Why? Because each GPU maker gives us a way to use that power, either via AA or via downscaling a 4K render.

The problem isn't that we can't use the power. The problem is that we aren't inspired to.

If some of that game tweaking stuff was more automated then maybe there would be more demand for powerful GPUs. It is a pain playing around in the CCC or Nvidia's control panel for each game.

 

[Madpacket]

The Xenos (360 GPU) was actually more advanced than the X1800. The X1800 still had vertex and pixel shaders:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1810/2

Meanwhile the Xenos was the world's first consumer GPU with unified shaders. We couldn't buy a GPU with unified shaders until the GeForce 8800 in 2006 (a year later). Even if in 2005 the X1800 was on paper faster than the Xenos by the end of its life the unified shader advantage was huge. We see that when modern engines are run on old GPUs- here is a 8500 GT (a barely mid level GPU but had unified shaders) beating a 7900 GTX (the high end GPU from the generation before the 8500 GT with dedicated shaders):

I am sticking to my guns: The Xbox 360 was the most advanced GPU you could buy when it launched, and PC GPUs couldn't beat it until a year later. The PS3 on the other had actually had a less advanced GPU than the 360 because Sony had to bolt it on last minute.



It makes a lot of sense when you put the economics of PC gaming back in the equation. The flop of this year's batman game showed us behind the curtain, and we see that the PC port got a FRACTION of the human resources the console version got. It doesn't matter if the PC is way more powerful if the PC port is so unoptimized that it produces the negative of the "to the metal" effect.

Directx 12 can't get here soon enough, even if it turns my GTX 970 into a pumpkin.

My apologies, you're [mostly] right,the Xenos was more advanced but was basically a cut down X1800 hybrid that supported "some" unified shader capabilities but was behind in raw power compared to the X1800 (although it would be cool to understand how much of the Xenos GPU chip space was dedicated to the programmable shaders, but I doubt we'll ever know) and like you said it was almost a year later before the 8800GT showed up, a card that really embraced programmable shaders.

The fully developed, fully programmable R600 (X2900 series) was released in May 2007, a full year and half later which supported DX10 and of course blew away the Xenos performance wise (as it should with an extra year and half of development). Although the X1800XT was more like the Geforce 7800 series it had more brute force power than either the Xenos GPU or PS3 GPU but like you pointed out games benefited tremendously from programmable shaders in the long run (at least PC and Xbox games). I'm sure the eDRAM also helped the Xbox a lot but in hindsight it's funny that the PS3 had some of the best looking games last generation (Uncharted, The Last of Us, Heavy Rain and the God of War series) with a much weaker GPU than the Xenos GPU but this was probably due to the clever leveraging of the cell SPE's more than being saddled with older fixed function Geforce tech.

Yes I agree, Direct X12 can't come soon enough (well technically it's actually here now and with many games in development with actual games set for released this xmas season) which will hopefully put a lot of the discrepancies between the console development and terrible PC ports to rest.

Games like Batman or AC Unity / Watchdogs to lesser extent that were largely broken on release are the fault of the publisher though. They choose the porting team and decide the schedules when to release the PC ports so I hold them accountable. I don't see this being a continuous trend given the very vocal backlash PC gamers show and it's been mostly with one publisher - Ubisoft. That being said even many console game are somewhat broken on release and if lucky [sometimes] patched afterwards.

Hopefully my new Geforce 960 Maxwell 2 based HTPC / Steam Machine card that I got for a good deal ($200 CAD after taxes) benefits from DX12 but Nvidia is being awfully quiet about DX12 support right now which has me a little worried. It would actually be kind of ironic and hilarious if 3 and half year old Radeon cards start out performing the latest Geforce cards due to AMD essentially hand holding Microsoft through the low level DX12 development parts. We shall see.

Payback for Gameworks?

 

[biostud]

There's no doubt that MS is trying to make pc/xbox the preferred developer platform with DX12 on both. Hopefully that will make better ports with better graphics, without too much effort for the developers.

 

[Ramses]

I'll miss dedicated GPU's. I'll not miss paying for them though.

Most people wouldn't dream of paying good-GPU money for one. They would, or already have, bought a console. That's all there is to it. When a GForce256 was $250 or whatever that was one thing, consoles sucked, every gamer wanted to play q3 in ogl fast so we coughed up the money(which interestingly was about half what a bitchin P3 cost back then, unlike today), but that world has been eroded a grain at a time and it's going to be gone before too long. The revenue has been eroded with it. I firmly believe the pricing has a lot to do with it, and the rest is that the average person can get more elsewhere for the same or less money. Bunch of folks have been saying this for a couple years now, most people didn't believe.

 

[StrangerGuy]

I'll miss dedicated GPU's. I'll not miss paying for them though.

Most people wouldn't dream of paying good-GPU money for one. They would, or already have, bought a console. That's all there is to it. When a GForce256 was $250 or whatever that was one thing, consoles sucked, every gamer wanted to play q3 in ogl fast so we coughed up the money(which interestingly was about half what a bitchin P3 cost back then, unlike today), but that world has been eroded a grain at a time and it's going to be gone before too long. The revenue has been eroded with it. I firmly believe the pricing has a lot to do with it, and the rest is that the average person can get more elsewhere for the same or less money. Bunch of folks have been saying this for a couple years now, most people didn't believe.

If one said 10 years ago that the Source engine would still be mainstream in 2015, people would have laughed to death back then, but look where we are now. Turns out graphical fidelity can indeed be at a good enough level, especially when you wanna capture as much audience as possible with a F2P business model.

 

[Val_]

I am in the lack of time + backlog of games case. In fact I have been losing interest in video games for the past months. Usually I play games long after their release, which is also an advantage because I don't need to upgrade often, and games can be bought cheaper or even DRM-free. My new laptop doesn't have a discrete card anymore, just the intel HD Graphics 5500. But I will probably continue to buy upper mid-range graphics cards for my desktop PC in the future. I am interested in buying a 4K monitor just for having finer text, now that I am used to the much higher resolution screens of my laptops and phone. Compared to them, the text on my U2311H monitor is ugly, especially on Windows.

 

[OatisCampbell]

Today, it's impossible to buy a $200-250 GPU and get 85-90% of the performance of the flagship part.

True since Titan X launched, but just a few months ago we were getting 290Xs within 8% of the 980 top card for $250..

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_980_Ti/31.html

My last card, the 7970 was purchased for $200 with games thrown in.

AMD and their partners were likely going broke doing this, but we had this very recently.

 

[Head1985]

They're pricing themselves out. Prices doubled after the 580/6970.

this and only this

 

[Blitzvogel]

I too, like anyone here, fear the inability to upgrade my graphics processor not by the lack of cards, but the fact that it would require buying a whole new main processor or SoC which would cost us so much more than we need it to. While Intel's IGPs are taking up a massive amount of room on their dies, for the most part, there is a massive lack of balance in terms of gaming graphics horsepower and CPU performance and that is why graphics cards are important to us gamers.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

With the massive backlog of games that I have, and getting two unlockable 290s for ~$180 piece, I'll be sitting pretty got quite awhile.

Tech in general has become pretty boring
(not counting mobile, which I have no interest in)

 

[2is]

I'd like to know specifically how the mid-high end segments are doing. It's no surprise that dGPU would be hurting, everyone "predicted" this since intel started integrating their GPU's on their CPU's and doing a good job of it.

 

[fleshconsumed]

The prices are just too damn high. That, coupled with lack of truly exciting games we've had in the past (HL2, Far Cry, or Crysis) makes buying new GPUs a very unattractive proposition. It was one thing to upgrade when you could get upper midrange card like 4870/5870/460/560ti for $200, $300 tops and get 90% of the absolute top card performance. After selling your old card for half that much you'd end up spending only $100-150 for a brand new shiny and pretty much top of the line card. Now, prices like these are typically an exception. Yes, you could get 7970 or 290 for about that much ($200-$300), but only at the end of the life cycle of the card. Personally, I'm just not that interested in shelling out $350+ minimum on a card when I don't even have an upcoming game that a) excites me and b) can actually push the limits of the current video card. My previous card was 7970, my current one is 290, the only reason I got 290 is because it was cheap. With current video card prices I can think of a lot more things I can spend my $350 on that are going to get me a better enjoyment for my money.

 

[rgallant]

Total Combined PlayStation 4 and Xbox One Sales: 37,342,738 (+54%)***
just asking
where do these 37.mil chips get added to amd's market share ?

 

[svenge]

Total Combined PlayStation 4 and Xbox One Sales: 37,342,738 (+54%)***
just asking
where do these 37.mil chips get added to amd's market share ?

As the APUs for said consoles are not discrete graphics cards for PCs, they certainly wouldn't count in the context that this thread discusses.