The Video Card Thread

[Dr. Zoidberg]

The end of the Super refresh is upon us with the arrival of the RTX 4080 Super. Minor spec bumps and a new paint job - along with minuscule performance differences - are all that separate Super and non-Super. So it's all about value. Is a $200 price-cut good enough? And is there a threshold point for ultra high-end 4K gaming - and if so, do the RTX 4080 and 4080 Super meet it?

[Dr. Zoidberg]

This new Low Profile Single Slot GPU is perfect for Travel Size small form factor mini gaming PC builds. This is the new Sparkle Intel ARC A310 LP ECO graphics card and it faster than i thought it would be but is it Worth $99?

[ian]

My guess it's not worth it if you're someone who wants to use it.

If you want to play around with it, I'm sure it's great.
I certainly hope Intel have fixed all the problems with arc cards since I played around with a couple.

When arc was still fresh it was not worth using at any price. I'm told since then they are now usable, but cheap for a reason.

[pixel]

I thought Plex would be an interesting use case, but Reddit/forums say that even the cheapest new generation Intel CPU blow out any reasonable GPU.

Low-power, low-profile gaming PCs are cool but this hardware isn't keeping up with modern games. You see it with the Steam Deck, GTA V at 1080p high was great a few years ago. But is it going to run GTA VI at 720p low?

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Nvidia's mainstream GPUs might increase in price worldwide, as the demand in China outstrips supply

You might want to wait until Battlemage and RDNA 4 are launched before getting a new graphics card.

Graphics card prices have been a contentious issue these past few years, with PC gamers having to cough up increasingly more money for a new GPU, thanks to inflation, fabrication cost rises, inventory restrictions, and a general lack of competition in the market.

Reports from China claim that Nvidia's add-in board (AIB) partners are set to raise their prices by around 10% on average, especially those in the mainstream segment, as demand for affordable graphics cards outweighs the supply of them.

News of the impending price hike came from IT House, citing unnamed 'industry sources' for the information. Graphics cards such as the RTX 4070 Super from the likes of Asus, Gigabyte, and Zotac have seen an additional 100 yuan or so being added to the price tag, but as such GPUs typically sell for around 4,900 yuan, it's not a major increase.

However, moving further down the range, Nvidia's RTX 4060 models and the recently updated RTX 3050 line up have also gone up in price by up to 50 yuan, and given that those cards have lower overall prices, the increase represents a larger percentage change, although it's still quite small.

It's not entirely clear from the report as to whether the 10% price increase has already taken place or if it's something that's going to happen over the next few months. IT House does claim that Nvidia has been limiting the supply of new chips for the RTX 4060 Ti to keep prices up, as the previous inventory of GPUs has been exhausted.

Now, before you think that this is just China and the rest of the world won't see any price increases, that's almost certainly not going to be the case. It's estimated that China has over 300 million PC gamers and while the figure isn't expected to change significantly over the coming years, it's still a sizable number of customers who will be wanting to upgrade their PCs with one of the latest GPUs.

So with AIB partners struggling to keep that particular market fed with shiny new graphics cards, there's a good chance it will affect prices in other regions. I don't expect Nvidia's mid-range GPUs to suddenly jump by $50, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the overclocked models do go up quite a bit.

There's no word as to whether AMD will do the same, but given that its share of the GPU market is a fraction of the size of Nvidia's, I think it'll be safe to assume that Team Red won't add a few more dollars, pounds, etc to its labels. If anything, we may see some Radeon cards, especially those under the $500, come down in price to tempt more PC gamers to get an RDNA 3 GPU.

The Radeon RX 7800 XT is the best sub-$500 graphics card you buy right now and it's perfect for 1440p gaming. There's not much competition in the GPU market but at least you can get some great pixel pushers without having to remortgage a kidney or three to get one. Let's hope the forthcoming RDNA 4 and Battlemage chips from AMD and Intel give things a good shakeup.

Source: PC Gamer

[ian]

So turns out basically every gamer in the world can thank Sega...

https://www.timeextension.com/features/ ... oing-under

Sega Saved NVIDIA from going under thanks to a $5,000,000 gift... From the article which was from a podcast which quotes some tweets:

Nvidia's contract with Sega put the company in a tight spot. "If we had finished that game console with Sega and fulfilled our contract, we would have spent two years working on the wrong architecture while everybody else is racing ahead in this new world that, quite frankly, we kind of started," says Huang.

"On the other hand, if we didn’t finish the contract, then we run out of money. And so I was confronted with a situation where we would finish the project and die, or not finish the project and die right away."


This is where the kindness of Sega's then-CEO Shoichiro Irimajiri comes into play, as Huang tells Sequoia:
"I went to Sega and to the credit of their CEO, Irimajiri-san, I told him our circumstance is that if we finish this game console for you, our company would be out of business. And, quite frankly, I think that this architecture that we would build for you would be the wrong architecture because the world is moving towards this other approach called inverse rendering, inverse texture mapping.

He asked me what I’m asking him to do. And so I told him that, although there’s no reason for him to do this, I would like him to let us off of our contract, relieve us of our responsibility of fulfilling the contract, but pay us in full. And, they got absolutely nothing out of it. There was no reason for him to do it. And, he thought about it for a couple days. He, you know, came back to me and, and said, I’d like to help you"

"You can’t discount the kindness of people when you’re starting your company, when you benefit from the kindness of all the people that support you. But in this particular case, it was some 5 million dollars, I think it was, that they continued to pay us. It was all the money that we had. And it gave us just enough money to hunker down"

Nvidia's next project, the Riva 128, was a commercial hit. It then released the GeForce 256. Microsoft then selected GeForce to power its Xbox console, and the rest is history.

Without Sega's act of kindness, it's unlikely Nvidia would be here today – and that would have sent shockwaves rippling through the history of the video game industry; for example, the best-selling Nintendo Switch uses an Nvidia chip...


So yeah... As one of 50 people who was buying Sega games at the time (along with all of us here) YOU'RE WELCOME EVERYONE! Without us cash cows giving money to Sega to make great games, and recklessly spend to greater gaming for the entire world for the entire 21st century, your PC would still be running Radeon graphics...

[Dr. Zoidberg]

This New Graphics card could just very well be the next budget 1440P King! In this video we test out the all new Sparkle ROC ARC A770 OC Luna edition GPU! With 16GB of ram and enough power to play AAA games at 1440P this Video card might be perfect for your lower cost budget 1440P Gaming PC build!

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Using the power of Tensor Cores on GeForce RTX GPUs, RTX Video HDR allows gamers and creators to maximize their HDR panel's ability to display vivid, dynamic colors, preserving intricate details that may be inadvertently lost due to video compression.RTX Video HDR and RTX Video Super Resolution can be used together to produce the clearest livestreamed video anywhere, anytime. These features work on Chromium-based browsers such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.

Now you can upscale your 240p 80s/90s porn VHS rips. Ron Jeremy has never looked so good.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Calavera]

I'm at the point where I kind of want to upgrade my video card. The problem is that there is really no reason to do so. I still game at 1080p and I don't even really game that much. When I do play a game the 1660 Super still runs fine playing them at 1080p.

[Hawq]

a look to the past

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[pixel]

Now we're talking I never thought I'd be interested in an Intel GPU but that price is awesome. I'd also be happy to stay in 1080p with 120+hz refresh rates rather than 1440p/4k at 60/30hz

[Dr. Zoidberg]

1080p with ray tracing could be nice.

[pixel]

Oh yeah I forgot about ray tracing, I've fallen way behind the trends. It was a parlor trick when I bought my 2060 Super in 2019. (I can't believe it's been five years)

[melancholy]

$250 for a competitive video card? What year is this?

[ian]

$250 for a competitive video card? What year is this?

2001-2016?
Before then anything half decent was pricey, since then anything half decent has been daylight robbery.

When they get here this new arc will be about $480.
Which is what a decent upper mid range card should cost. It's what the 1070 should have cost... And the 2070, and the 3070... and the 4070.

But once the price creep started with $100-200 tacked on the 1000 series, we all put up with it. Then the 2000 series had a huge price increase, and then they knew they could bend people over a barrel and mining and supply chain issues, and ai popularity all happened so now every single GPU on the market is basically at least double what they should be realistically priced at.

I'm probably not going to get one of these, but I'm sure I'll get the chance to play around with one eventually.

Hell, if my 1070's died tomorrow, I'd consider trying Intel simply because they are pricing their card within the realm of sanity.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Dr. Zoidberg]