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Nvidia and AMD might not release new cards until 2012 — who cares?

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

I’ve gotten used to Nvidia and AMD rocking up with new graphics cards on a surprisingly rapid basis: since 2008 and beginning with the GeForce 9000-series, Nvidia has released six generations of GPUs, and AMD has replied with three of its own, starting with the Radeon HD 4000-series.

Both firms put the finishing touches on their current ranges in the Spring, though, and the trail’s gone quiet since. Nvidia’s confirmed that it won’t release any new cards before 2012 and, with a whole heap of extra time to play with, AMD has reportedly pushed back the launch of its new Radeon HD 7000-series – presumably to further tweak and perfect the new chips.

I can understand why Nvidia and AMD aren’t in any hurry to unveil new silicon – after all, evidence suggests that few games, and fewer gamers, will make use of the type of the levels of power available from new cards: 2007’s Crysis is still one of the most demanding games around and, outside of Battlefield 3, few forthcoming games look like they’ll tax even last year’s graphics cards – after all, most are now ported from consoles.

Take a look at the Steam Survey from July 2011. The most popular ten graphics cards are, with no exceptions, old: top of the pile is the Nvidia GeForce 9800, and it’s followed up by venerable old warhorses like the GeForce 8800, Radeon HD 4870 and even the GeForce 8600. Remarkably, the most popular current-generation chip, the GeForce GTX 560, is 25th on the list.

To find something truly high-end, keep on travelling down the list – the GTX 570 is the 31st most popular card and is used by a whopping 0.78% of Steam’s users, and AMD’s Radeon HD 6950 is favoured by just 0.68%.

That’s the biggest PC gaming platform in the world and proof that, while AMD and Nvidia have spent the fast few years trying to beat each other with benchmarks, most users haven’t taken any notice – instead, they’re too busy playing games on cards that are older and perfectly capable.

Perhaps the big guns have realised that this pixellated arms race is virtually pointless. Users either aren’t bothered or can’t afford the latest chips, and the lack of big-name PC exclusives means that even a modest card will run rings around the latest games.

It looks like we won’t see any major graphics card releases until 2012 but, after several years of frenzied, benchmark-driven battling, I’m happy to wait – and it looks like most users are, too.

I’ve become used to Nvidia and AMD rocking up with new graphics cards on a consistently quick schedule: since 2008 and beginning with the GeForce 9000-series, Nvidia has released six generations of GPUs, and AMD has replied with three of its own, starting with the Radeon HD 4000-series.

Both firms put the finishing touches on their current ranges in the spring, and the trail’s gone quiet since. Nvidia has confirmed that it won’t release any new cards before 2012, and AMD hasn’t mentioned any potential release dates for its new Radeon HD 7000-series — presumably taking extra time to further tweak and perfect the new chips. (more…)

Tags: AMD, benchmarks, Games, geforce, graphics, Nvidia, radeon, Steam

Posted in: Hardware

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Technological progress: lost on the masses

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

I loaded up Steam for the first time in a while last night and was promptly asked to participate in Valve’s ongoing hardware survey. I’ve done this before, and the results are always fascinating, so I jumped right in. A few clicks later, and a quick scan of my cobbled-together PC, and I got to see the breakdown of nearly 1.8million gamers’ systems – with some surprises.

Just 41% of polled users have made the much-needed step to a dual or quad-core processor – the norm in pretty much all new PC systems sold today – and 38% have shelled out on 2GB or more of RAM. Assuming a correllation between the two, that leaves a huge proportion of PC players who are still trundling along on 1GB of RAM or less and a single-core CPU.

Posts Tagged ‘ Steam ’

Nvidia and AMD might not release new cards until 2012 — who cares?

Technological progress: lost on the masses

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