The Real Reason Nvidia Has Abandoned PC Gamers

[tancabean]

I think it all turned into a cluster**** once Nvidia pushed out RT. Remove that worthless junk from the GPUs, reclaim the 15-25% die space the RT and Tensor cores take up and push the rasterization side of things.

200% more transistors thrown at rasterization won’t make rasterization look any better. It has fundamental limits that can’t be solved by throwing more at it.

The entire semiconductor industry is struggling with diminishing returns due to slowing advances in transistor tech. Steve is trying to paint this as a problem unique to Nvidia for some reason. Anything for clicks I guess.

 

[Hecate91]

How do I say this politely. You are wrong and cherry picking or not able to see the differences.

If you are not able to see the massive difference pathtracing does and still wanna tell me that games looked better years ago, then you are having a eye vision disability I would assume or are trolling.

I never mentioned path tracing, though unsurprisingly the goal posts get moved.
Path tracing is much more difficult than ray tracing is, there is an improvement with path tracing, but isn't even doable unless you have a $4,000+ flagship GPU, and then the usefulness of the feature is limited to a few games where you can see any difference.
I personally don't care about RT or PT, games don't always need to have a "cinematic" look, IMO having a quality made optimized game with a well written story is more important to me than graphics.

 

[MasterMace]

The issue Nvidia is experiencing now was hinted at in 2010 with the GTX 480, which had High temps and power usage. We switched to ATI Radeons. Nvidia had to redesign their cards and have a same-year generation in the 500 series, and follow it up with the 600s.

 

[RudyBob]

It seems nVidia was spending a fortune to provide gamers with modest increases in whatever it is gamers think they need and some smart guy at nVidia said we can make more $ by doing other stuff so they did.

 

[Steve]

200% more transistors thrown at rasterization won’t make rasterization look any better. It has fundamental limits that can’t be solved by throwing more at it.

The entire semiconductor industry is struggling with diminishing returns due to slowing advances in transistor tech. Steve is trying to paint this as a problem unique to Nvidia for some reason. Anything for clicks I guess.

I am not trying to paint this as a problem unique to Nvidia. The reason I focused on Nvidia is obvious, they dominate the market, AMD is largely irrelevant and Intel even less so when talking about GPUs. The entire point was to explore a key reason for to why Nvidia has made the pivot to "AI". This kind of content covering AMD would be difficult given their patchy track record of competing across the range.

Not only did we realize it, but we said so several times right in your Youtube comments, pointing out the manufactured price hike, the silicon side upgrade to lock in their professional tech and to lock it in the gaming segment. It was the media who didn't realize it, and even said the opposite many times.

We got a serious amount of push back for our negative comments regarding the RTX 20 series, I assume those people were gamers.

I concluded my RTX 2080 Ti review by saying it's not worth touching for most gamers, the value was incredibly poor.

Direct quote from the RTX 2080 review:
"So after a year and a half we're getting GTX 1080 Ti-like performance for GTX 1080 Ti money. But then, that's not even true. We're getting GTX 1080 Ti-like performance for a 20% price hike and the hope that Ray Tracing won't be a complete bust for this generation. So after a year and a half of gaming with the GTX 1080 Ti, color me rather unimpressed."

 

[Stoly]

Why is it always greedy, evil devilish villain nvidia who's to blame?

Is AMD doing anything different? or intel for that matter?

IF AMD was "gaming first" wouldn't they have twice the market share by now? and by twice, I mean still less than 15%. Oh, but they released the RX9700GRE wow zipiti doo daw.

I see your point of "diminishing returns" with every new nvidia gpu generation, but if it's bad for nvidia, it's far worse for AMD. Years have gone by and AMD hasn't been able to match, much less surpass, nvidia features like RayTracing, upscaling, rendering, content creation and streaming/encoding to name a few.

If you are going to criticize nvidia, might as well criticize the whole industry.

 

[Stoly]

I never mentioned path tracing, though unsurprisingly the goal posts get moved.
Path tracing is much more difficult than ray tracing is, there is an improvement with path tracing, but isn't even doable unless you have a $4,000+ flagship GPU, and then the usefulness of the feature is limited to a few games where you can see any difference.
I personally don't care about RT or PT, games don't always need to have a "cinematic" look, IMO having a quality made optimized game with a well written story is more important to me than graphics.

Actually, PT is "simpler" than RT, a full RT implementation just isn't feasible with current hardware, that's why games that use RT are actually hybrid, most of the rendering is done with raster/shaders and effects like light, shadows, reflections and global illumination are done with RT.

This article by techspot explains it better than I could ever do.

https://www.techspot.com/article/2485-path-tracing-vs-ray-tracing/

 

[TechSavy101]

At this point we should call it the GeFarce! There is no more force left in there lol

 

[Megalomaniac]

Nvidia makes way more money from government contractors than it does putting out chips for children with credit cards to buy. If choice A is to make parts so that children with credit cards can flex for the gram and goon - while choice B is to get handed checks by the government itself to build AI data infrastructure...

You'd do the same thing if you had the opportunity.

We can make ugly RGB, epileptic siezure PC cases so some child can brag about how he built his rig or we can take that silicon and build supercomputers that will enslave the world.

EASY choice.

 

[Megalomaniac]

The way I see it: the future of PC GAMING will either be overpriced DIY, reasonably priced PRE BUILTS or Cloud Gaming.

I’m fine with pre-builts.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Oh for ****s sake. Is tech spot really so desperate for revenue that they have taken to doomposting?

Nvidia has not stopped making GeForce cards
Nvidia has not stopped development of future generations
Nvidia has not stopped driver development.
Nvidia has not abandoned anything.

Steve, your article is bad and you should feel bad.

Always the serial apologist for ever scumbag company you take a shine to, always.

 

[HardReset]

Why is it always greedy, evil devilish villain nvidia who's to blame?

Is AMD doing anything different? or intel for that matter?

IF AMD was "gaming first" wouldn't they have twice the market share by now? and by twice, I mean still less than 15%. Oh, but they released the RX9700GRE wow zipiti doo daw.

I see your point of "diminishing returns" with every new nvidia gpu generation, but if it's bad for nvidia, it's far worse for AMD. Years have gone by and AMD hasn't been able to match, much less surpass, nvidia features like RayTracing, upscaling, rendering, content creation and streaming/encoding to name a few.

If you are going to criticize nvidia, might as well criticize the whole industry.

AMD is not interested competing on high end GPU market because market decided that they will buy Nvidia even when AMD was clearly better. On 2012 AMD had to go all in on either CPU or GPU. Because AMD knew that market it will buy Nvidia even if they have better product, AMD decided to go for Zen.

It's pretty funny that market complain about AMD not having high end GPU or certain features when market caused whole situation themself. If you don't buy clearly better product, it's no wonder that creator of that better product loses interest.

 

[forestnation19]

This is a fascinating and well-researched article that offers an insightful perspective on how the rapid growth of AI and data center technologies is reshaping the priorities of major tech companies. The author does an excellent job of presenting the concerns of the gaming community while encouraging readers to think about the broader evolution of the industry. Regardless of one's viewpoint, articles like this spark important discussions about innovation, consumer expectations, and the future of gaming hardware. A thoughtful and engaging read for anyone interested in technology and the changing landscape of the GPU market.

 

[LordVile95]

I actually think this will hurt consoles way more than PCs. PC gamers have a lot of options in both games and parts for upgrade. It's a much more dynamic space.

Consoles on the other hand rely on regular big releases. If the next gen console costs 3x as much to build and only offers 50% better performance, people will not upgrade. Console shoppers are much more price sensitive. I think the days of the old styles consoles are coming to an end. Too much competition from other devices.

The newest and most exciting innovation is in handhelds like the steam deck. That's a different platform that appeals to a lot to people that grew up with smartphones and ipads. The novelty factor might make people look past the sometimes unreasonably high price tag.

Depends with how the next Xbox is being positioned it might be a solid entry to PC gaming too.

I wouldn’t say the steam deck is a massive success tbh, it’s was alright at launch but now it’s just overpriced and old

 

[Quixotic]

I bought a 5060 for PCVR. Anything higher in the 5 series and comparable 3 and 4 series second hand all jumped in price and so unaffordable. The 5060 is far from ideal for PCVR. Even a 5090 can struggle so it's going to be long wait, if ever, there will be something really capable and priced within reach of a typical gamer. Would love to see a comparison of GPUs for PCVR

 

[hahahanoobs]

If GeForce is in trouble, Radeon is done.

 

[OortCloud]

TBH I'm ok with not getting huge gains in graphics cards anymore. The standard is so high now the it's plenty good enough.

 

[LimyG]

nVidia has been vibe coding their drivers for about the last year and it's starting to show. Oddly, their Linux support has gone up in quakity but that's because, well, AI. Most locally hosted models are run in some version of Linux

Fully agree. I used to look forward to new "gaming ready," drivers.
This changed when the 5XXX was introduced.

I am sticking with my Strix OC 3080ti. Despite installing newer drivers, I've given up and use the last driver of 2024 (536.36, with NVClean Install tweaks.) Yes, there have been security updates since then, and of course newer game support. But with tweaking, the very last driver before 5XXX release still works best for me. Rock solid stable, and plenty of tweaks even with the old CP.

 

[bloomsun]

Additionally, I'd say NVIDIA has done anything but abandon gamers. That is such a bullshit article — again on this website. What about DLSS? Game changer for games. Frame generation? Game changer! Ray and path tracing? Game changer. RTX Remix? Lets you remaster old games basically in path tracing. NVIDIA also pushes AI capabilities with their chips, which again will benefit gamers as games become cheaper and faster to build. See UE6. They literally can prompt a change in the engine and it just gets done.

And now, what has AMD done? They only started doing the same thing when NVIDIA had already pioneered it. DLSS — FSR. Frame generation? AMD's own version. Ray tracing? AMD totally slept on it, and their 6000 series was basically unusable. Only now with the 9070 series can they slowly catch up, unless you use path tracing, where NVIDIA still has a clear edge.

You can hate NVIDIA all you want, and I hate their price gouging and VRAM stinginess as well, but those are the facts. Like it or not.

Just because you don't see the benefits of path tracing doesn't mean they aren't there. You may not see them and not like them, but they will be integrated into games from now on. UE6 clearly says hardware ray tracing will be a native part of the engine. That's coming.

 

[bloomsun]

I never mentioned path tracing, though unsurprisingly the goal posts get moved.
Path tracing is much more difficult than ray tracing is, there is an improvement with path tracing, but isn't even doable unless you have a $4,000+ flagship GPU,

Wrong. Why is this repeated all the time like a mantra when it's just wrong? Stop watching YouTube videos from content creators who clickbait their titles with "RTX 5090!!"

Of course, if you are one of those people who can only handle native resolution and reject the benefits of technology, go for it and be happy with that. Meanwhile, the rest will enjoy games in high FPS with frame generation and DLSS.

 

[HardReset]

Additionally, I'd say NVIDIA has done anything but abandon gamers. That is such a bullshit article — again on this website. What about DLSS? Game changer for games. Frame generation? Game changer! Ray and path tracing? Game changer. RTX Remix? Lets you remaster old games basically in path tracing. NVIDIA also pushes AI capabilities with their chips, which again will benefit gamers as games become cheaper and faster to build. See UE6. They literally can prompt a change in the engine and it just gets done.

Game changers? Absolutely no. DLSS is just about Nvidia being too lazy to develop hardware so they created "improvement" that is actually lazy way to avoid developing hardware. Frame generation is exactly same. No hardware improvements needed when you can create frames from nothing. Ray tracing was supposed to be hit on 2018. Now 8 years later we have handful of games but that's it.

So how about sticking with hardware-side improvements? They are nearly non-existent outside computing units those technologies needed.

Just because you don't see the benefits of path tracing doesn't mean they aren't there. You may not see them and not like them, but they will be integrated into games from now on. UE6 clearly says hardware ray tracing will be a native part of the engine. That's coming.

Yeah, coming. RTX 2000 series introduced 2018. Now 8 years later IT IS COMING!!!
Good read https://www.techspot.com/article/3126-ray-tracing-scam/

AMD has done several console chips that have also benefited PC gaming. Nvidia? They supply chips for Nintendo Switch that no PC gamer cares at all.

 

[HardReset]

Wrong. Why is this repeated all the time like a mantra when it's just wrong? Stop watching YouTube videos from content creators who clickbait their titles with "RTX 5090!!"

Of course, if you are one of those people who can only handle native resolution and reject the benefits of technology, go for it and be happy with that. Meanwhile, the rest will enjoy games in high FPS with frame generation and DLSS.

FYI, Cyberpunk 2077 is basically 6 year old game already. I Nvidia just developed hardware, we would have had much better games for years already.

 

[LimyG]

In the end, both NV and AMD do what they think will earn them the best profitability.

Although I do wonder if AMD missed an opportunity to develop a highend model. That would have been very interesting. If they thought they would sell loads at profit, and were able to technically pull it off they would have done it.

Perhaps that's beyond their capability? Or at best a risky proposition - a risk they were not prepared to take.

Both AMD and NV, as businesses, will do what they think most likely to earn big profits.
Those profits are now A.I. centric. The money they can make from gamers is peanuts in comparison.

 

[HardReset]

In the end, both NV and AMD do what they think will earn them the best profitability.

Although I do wonder if AMD missed an opportunity to develop a highend model. That would have been very interesting. If they thought they would sell loads at profit, and were able to technically pull it off they would have done it.

Perhaps that's beyond their capability? Or at best a risky proposition - a risk they were not prepared to take.

Both AMD and NV, as businesses, will do what they think most likely to earn big profits.
Those profits are now A.I. centric. The money they can make from gamers is peanuts in comparison.

Since RDNA3 was chiplet design, AMD could have surpassed Nvidia quite easily. Equally sized CCD + MCD chiplets vs equally sized (vs CCD) Nvidia monolithic die would have been easy win for AMD. However developing huge GPU is expensive and AMD have long time just concentrated on mid end market where major profits are. AMD just decided to stick with strategy where high end niche is abandoned.

It remains to be seen how long this AI bubble will hold on. As usual, certain things are "allowed" to operate on loss but at some time investors want profit too.

 

[magisys]

As the hardware come to a wall of price for performance ratio due to increasing manufacturing costs that consumers are not willing to pay, so software hardware demand had to adapt to those circumstances.

If graphic cards in future will be "frozen" in consumer performance gain due to materials cost, then people will find a "maximum tolerable amount of money" to spend for run software/games that require a graphic card. If there will be hardware manufacturer that will be capable of offering such a products then they will take the empty space of Nvidia, AMD and whatsover brand that is lefting this market segment.

The main concern in my opinion is that there are a bunch of consumers that are truly believing that people need 5000$ cards to play some games, and so they are HAPPY that those ridicolous priced cards still exist and even melts in consumer computers.