News - Graphics card shipments could drop by a third this quarter

[HEXUS]

Impacted by the dropping of demand from Bitcoin miners, say reports.

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[Plasmastorm]

Fingers crossed for a market/price crash

[Ttaskmaster]

Well, as someone who had to pay well over the odds for a GPU, due to BC miners, I can't say I'm sad to hear this.
Who knows - I might even be able to afford to SLI in a second card, or something!

[hysandrew]

Please, please let the prices drop and then that would be an excellent time to upgrade my GPU to a R9 280x or even if prices really drop a huge amount might even be able to stretch to a R9 290!!

[aidanjt]

AMD is going to be hurt by this much more than nVidia.

[shaithis]

Without more data it seems difficult to say the reason.

Perhaps it's the rise of the APU hurting sales? Perhaps it's the timing of the new consoles (still indirectly APU related I guess!).....perhaps it's that cards are lasting people longer. Perhaps the tighter times are making people upgrade slower.

So much going on at the moment that could effect the sale of gfx cards, I doubt they could put it down to one thing alone.

[MustardCutter]

Guess it doesn't help that cards have been minor updates/rebrands of existing cards for a while now, there's no significant leap to tempt those who usually upgrade regularly to bother...

[Nobull]

Lack of innovation is surely the reason. The half the latest AMD chips are rehashed from 2 odd years ago. The high end cards are prohibitively expensive, especially from Nvidia.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Graphics card sales have bene going down year on year,with IGPs eating away more at the low end.

[kalniel]

Guess it doesn't help that cards have been minor updates/rebrands of existing cards for a while now, there's no significant leap to tempt those who usually upgrade regularly to bother...

Well existing cards can already play everything at max, there's no incentive to create faster cards with new features when there's no benefit for the gamer for doing so

[Funkstar]

I can see the bottom dropping out of the discrete graphics card business. There will be a gradual trickle down so even a mid to low end card will be able to play everything out there on max at 1080p.

I guess only cinema wide monitors or 4K will be what pushes things on. But will they really take off?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The problem is that the performance boosts under £200 are slowing down even more than at the highend,especially under £100.

This is what is the limiting factor,not people with GTX780TI or R9 290X dual card setups.

[kalniel]

But most people don't need anything like a 780ti to play stuff on max either. I have a 7870 and I play all my games on max + IQ enhancements at 1080p. My wife's computer has a 560 (non-ti!) and she plays almost all her games on max at 1680x1050. Something like a 560ti is all that most people need for fullHD gaming I reckon.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yes,but the thing is that the rate at which graphics are improving is slowing down massively,as the large generational performance boosts are happening slower and slower especially under £200. That means devs are less and less likely to push graphics since most people don't have powerful enough cards,meaning it is the limiting factor now,and also ultimately meaning there is less need to buy a shiny new card for a lot of games.

A combination of this and improving IGPs has meant graphics card sales are getting lower each year now.

BTW,I game at 1680X1050,and my GTX660 does get pushed in some games like Crysis3 and Metro:Last Light though,so there are some games where a sub £150 card will struggle still. The thing is I doubt we will see another Crysis level improvement for a very long time now,since that was the exact time we saw the launch of powerful budget cards like the HD3850 and 8800GT at under £200.

PS:

Didn't your HD7870 cost over £200 though??

[kalniel]

BTW,I game at 1680X1050,and my GTX660 does get pushed in some games like Crysis3 and Metro:Last Light though,so there are some games where a sub £150 card will struggle still.

Yeah she doesn't play games like that Most intensive game on the horizon is probably The Witcher 3 or Dragon Age: Inquisition. Apart from that there's a bunch of games that don't need anything more.

The thing is I doubt we will see another Crysis level improvement for a very long time now,since that was the exact time we saw the launch of powerful budget cards like the HD3850 and 8800GT at under £200.

Isn't that what the 270X is?

Didn't your HD7870 cost over £200 though??

At the time, certainly. But now? Far cheaper.

You could say it's chicken and egg, and obviously it is with regard to market capabilities, but when consoles are still going to be fixed at low end GCN levels there's not going to be much incentive for devs to spend budget on PC-specific features unless they are very cheap to implement. The market just isn't there for AAA games, PC gamers prefer stuff that runs on any old laptop.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah she doesn't play games like that Most intensive game on the horizon is probably The Witcher 3 or Dragon Age: Inquisition. Apart from that there's a bunch of games that don't need anything more.

Thats the thing Crysis was a massive move forward in terms of basic graphics,destructable environments and scale for an FPS game. Even HL2 pushed boundaries and it was at the time of powerful generational improvements,and so on. If the improvements are not there,then there is really no incentive to push things anymore.

Isn't that what the 270X is?

Not in terms of generational improvements. The HD3850 almost was 2900 Pro level and was twice the speed of the previous fastest card in its price bracket. The 8800GT was almost as fast as the 8800GTX in many games,ie,the equivalent would be a £150 to £180 card being released now,which was GTX780 level performance. If you go back further,look at the 9500 PRO,6600GT,7600GT and so on.

All cards I have owned. I never have spent more than £150 on a card BTW.

At the time, certainly. But now? Far cheaper.

That is the thing though. The HD7870(£250+) was priced much higher than the HD6870(£190+) for its generational improvements. The HD6870 was highly priced compared to the HD5850 for its generational improvements,when you consider that the former was not the true successor anyway - the HD7950 was.

Its also taken years for the price reduction to happen.

You could say it's chicken and egg, and obviously it is with regard to market capabilities, but when consoles are still going to be fixed at low end GCN levels there's not going to be much incentive for devs to spend budget on PC-specific features unless they are very cheap to implement. The market just isn't there for AAA games, PC gamers prefer stuff that runs on any old laptop.

Games like Unreal,HL2,Unreal2,Far Cry,Doom3,F.E.A.R. and Crysis pushed graphics forward but that was during the time of decent generational improvements.

The market would be there if there were cheaper,higher performing cards,but sadly the improvements are so drawn out,in the end it is kind of pointless pushing graphics now,since most people would not be able to run the games,and it would cost too much money in terms of the cards required.

The same goes with 4K gaming,the screens might take off,but not gaming at 4K for a while IMHO,unless you drop settings massively,or drop resolution. It might be why G-Sync and Free-Sync are being developed,so that lower framerates seem more playable.

Edit!!

Lets take the HD6870 as an example.

The R9 280X doubles performance over it:

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Gigabyte/R...rfrel_1920.gif

Its taken 3 and a half years to double performance at the £200 price mark.

It took less than 18 months for the HD3870 to double performance at the sub £150 price-point over the X1900GT/X1950 PRO:

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Sapphire/H...es/perfrel.gif

That was at launch.

The 8800GTS 512MB matched the 8800GTX at nearly half the price just after a year at launch:

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Zotac/GeFo...es/perfrel.gif