Real Stagnation: Six Years of GeForce RTX 60 Class GPUs Tested

[Puiu]

Not shocking, we're basically done with the days of increasing performance through die shrinks and adding more gpu cores alone.

Neah, it can be done. It's just that the money is not there.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Neah, it can be done. It's just that the money is not there.

Money is not the only thing that shrinks chips.

TSMC is making bank of their newest nodes and even there the generational improvements have slowed. Just compare 28nm vs 4nm, compared to TSMC 7 vs TSMC 5.

We're running up against physics limitations of silicon here.

 

[GGG777]

Wild how much the VRAM is a limit on Horizon: Zero Dawn, yet the GPU itself can quite comfortably run the game at its highest setting if it had enough VRAM as per the 3060 12GB metrics.

problem solved not need very high
enough high

 

[Puiu]

Money is not the only thing that shrinks chips.

TSMC is making bank of their newest nodes and even there the generational improvements have slowed. Just compare 28nm vs 4nm, compared to TSMC 7 vs TSMC 5.

We're running up against physics limitations of silicon here.

it's not the silicon that's the real limitation, although it does play a role into why new generations are now every 2 years instead of every year, it's the direction of the R&D.

most of the money is not going into traditional raster improvements (RTX 5000 focused on AI clearly) and precious die space and recourses are being allocated to AI and RT hardware.

and it doesn't need crazy raster architecture improvements. just adding 50% more L1 and L2 cache would improve performance by a lot. add on top of that a wider memory bus and more VRAM and the 5000 series could have actually had nice gen on gen improvements.

 

[Burty117]

problem solved not need very high
enough high

You aren't understanding the problem, the GPU, the actual chip, the expensive bit you paid most of your hard earned cash for, can run the game at very high, happily in-fact, as per the chart and the 3060 12GB.

The reason you have to turn it down to high isn't because of a lack of GPU power, but because Nvidia continues to cheap out on the VRAM, the 3060 12GB is a great example of this.

So why are you paying so much for the GPU if it's limited so heavily by VRAM? Why not cut down the chip further so it's smaller and therefore, cheaper for everyone?

 

[noblody]

There are benefits to this stagnation. If the GPU does not fail, I can hold on to it for longer

 

[jpvalverde85]

After watching the results, and the expected win of the 12GB on selected titles, something came to my mind, the 8GB RTX 3060Ti isn't present (kind of because it belonged to another tier), but apples to apples on 8GB it would give a royal spanking to the newer siblings, as it packs at least a 20% up over the vanilla 3060.

 

[Nictron]

The technology industry use to massively outpace inflation with value. I think the accountants got hold of the balance-sheet and now carefully curate advancement with the marketing people still selling the prior narrative via false advertisements and fake frames!

"The RTX 4060, however, sees a much larger value gain when adjusted for inflation – now coming in at 28 to 29% better value than the 3060. This is a substantial increase over the 16% improvement we observed before inflation adjustments.

Finally, the RTX 5060 offers 22% better value than the 4060, a modest improvement over the previously noted 18% gain."

 

[GGG777]

You aren't understanding the problem, the GPU, the actual chip, the expensive bit you paid most of your hard earned cash for, can run the game at very high, happily in-fact, as per the chart and the 3060 12GB.

The reason you have to turn it down to high isn't because of a lack of GPU power, but because Nvidia continues to cheap out on the VRAM, the 3060 12GB is a great example of this.

So why are you paying so much for the GPU if it's limited so heavily by VRAM? Why not cut down the chip further so it's smaller and therefore, cheaper for everyone?

yep sure know all vga cards very expensive because not just gaming cards Ai TOPs billing/tax

and you right 5050 not good prize 5060 better
8GB I say still enough medium
this cards not old fashion when example: GTX1060 can handle full graphics and 3Gb too 2017 when coming 2 games: resident evil 7: biohazard and Cal of duty WWII not enough but Over-locking can handle +2years need it when real not more full graphics 3GB vram

soso now 8GB will enough 2027 1080p high graphics not need very ultra settings and 1440p these cards not that this is entry levels

 

[Megalomaniac]

I see an incremental improvement model over model. These are for base 1080p gaming and will be found in the cheapest prebuilds.

 

[LemmingO]

Nice analysis, but you can take it to another level if you find a way to disable L2 cache on the RTX 5060 and 4060.

Nvidia has raised the L2 substantially in the last two gens. Much like AMD did with their Zen architecture that allowed them to catch up with Intel (apart from other improvements to the execution pipeline, of course, but L2 has a huge impact on perf).

Despite the narrower memory bus, if you gave an RTX 2060 the same VRAM technology (GDDR6 to GDDR7) and L2 cache (3MB to 32MB) that is available to the 5000-series, it would wipe the floor with the 5060.

Real stagnation is when none of the real improvements come from your own company... and this is exactly the case.

You could argue Frame Generation is innovation, but that's software. On the hardware side you can see the Geforce GPUs have very much stagnated.

However, even stagnated, AMD is still struggling to catch up with Nvidia... While Intel is actually progressing by leaps and bounds.

 

[amstech]

This complaining about generation-over-generation improvements misses that silicon is now wildly more valuable for AI uses over gaming ones. If it was up to.AMD and Nvidia shareholders, gaming GPUs wouldn't exist.

You can farm anger clicks by pointing out that GPUs are not linearly improving on price to performance, but that is unlikely to change.

The best comment by far.
A generation of kids playing amazing games with amazing hardware and technology are too programmed as spoiled brats to be grateful for anything. Every new generation doesn't need to be significantly faster then the previous one. The new RTX 5XXX cards are just fine and while Nvidia is guilty of once again bullcrapping their real world performance, atleast they pumped out more product for consumers. The high prices are nothing new, America needs to stop at nothing to bring manufacturing, energy dependency and good paying jobs back to its own soil, and you dont do that by having everyone else make your $hit.