John Carmack’s id Software may not be the engine licensing powerhouse it was back in the Quake 3 days, but that hasn’t changed the revolutionary nature of his engine designs. The reason we bring this up is because there’s a great deal of GPU technology that can be directly mapped to concepts Carmack first implemented. For id Tech 4 Carmack implemented shadow volume technology, which was then first implemented in hardware by NVIDIA as their UltraShadow technology, and has since then been implemented in a number of GPUs. For id Tech 5 the trend has continued, now with AMD doing a hardware implementation of a Carmack inspired technology.
Poor Xbox sales have affected AMD’S bottom line
Oh wow. How surprising! Nvidia overpriced their RTX cards by +100% and AMD instead of offering real competition, decided to join Nvidia in their greedy approach, while not having the same mindshare as Nvidia (sadly) does. The 7900 launch was a marketing disaster. All the reviews were made while the card was not worth the money at all, they lowered the price a bit later on, but not only not enough but also too late and out of "free marketing" window coming along with the new card generation release. Then the geniuses at AMD axed the high-end SKUs with increased cache etc, cause "nobody will buy expensive cards to play games" while Nvidia laughed at them selling their 2000€ 4090s.
Intel had all the mindshare among PC enthusiasts with their CPUs. All it took was a competetive product and good price (Ryzen 7000 series and especially 7800x3d) and guess what? AMD regained the market share in DYI PCs in no time! The same could've have happened with Radeon 5000, Radeon 6000 and Radeon 7000.
But meh. Why bother. Let's cancell high-end RDNA 4 and use the TSMC wafers for AI and then let the clueless "analysts" make their articles about "gaming demand dwingling".
I'm sure low-end, very overpriced and barely faster if not slower RDNA4 will turn things around. It will have AI and RT! Two things nobody asked for, especially not gamers who'd like to use the PC for what's most exciting about PC gaming (VR, high framerate gaming, hi-res gaming).
8000 series will be slow, overpriced and marketed based on its much improved RT/AI... and it will flop badly.
And there will be no sane conclusions made at AMD about that. There will be just one, insane: Gaming is not worth catering to. Let's go into AI/RT instead, what could go wrong..."
Well that's gonna happen when you don't really try. I want to support AMD so badly and give Nvidia some actual competition but they don't very much seem interested in challenging, by their own accord. I been waiting for them to attack the GPU segment the same way they took over CPU, but they just seem so content with handing Nvidia the market year after year, and it's happening again this year with their cancelled high end card.
AMD prcied their cards thinking that they will sell out just like in the mining craze. I suspect reality has hit home when they realized most gamers cannot afford to spend over $500 for a gpu.
AMD has long been the best value option if you're looking for a new GPU. Now even their latest Radeon RX 7000 series is getting cheaper.
Last September, we unleashed AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3)1 on the gaming world, delivering massive FPS improvements in supported games.
So to put 2 and 2 together... FSR 3.1 is releasing later this year and the launch game to support it is Rachet and Clank: Rift Apart. In Sony's DevNet documentation it shows Rachet and Clank: Rift Apart as the example for PSSR. PS5 Pro also launches later this year... but there is something else coming too: AMD RDNA 4 Cards (The very same technology thats in the Pro). So, PSSR is either FSR 3.1 or its a direct collaboration with AMD for that builds on FSR 3.1. Somehow they are related. I think PSSR is FSR 3.1 with the bonus of AI... now lets see if RDNA 4 cards also include an AI block.
More details:
FSR 3.1 fixes Frame Generation
If you have a 30 series RTX card you can now use DLSS3 with FSR Frame Generation (No 40 Series required!)
Its Available on all Cards (we assume it will come to console)
Fixes Temporal stability
I wonder how much they fixed the ghosting in dark areas as Nvidia are leaving them in the dust with image quality. Still good that they are improving in big leaps, I'll have to see when the RTX5000 series is released who I go with... at the moment the RTX5000's are sounding like monsters.
The HD7970 is a beast......a beast that is very cool and very very very power efficient.
I'm very impressed that the card can idle down during long sleep periods and only use 3 watts or less when not in use. Even at full load the card is still under 400 watts which is good.
looking forward to fapping to more benchmarks such as 3D performance, Eyefinity performance, Crossfire performance, tessellation, and Ray-Tracing performance. Plus seeing what the sweet spot $200 to $300 cards can do.
HD7970 is $50 higher than a 580GTX but you get a good performance increase and you'll save $50 in electricity (if you game as much as i do) to make up the difference.
*For Enthusiast Gamers* if you got a HD6000 GTX500 series card......just buy another card for SLi or Crossfire to get performance of HD7000 / GTX700 cause HD6000/GTX500 prices will be dropping. Unless money is no problem then by all means upgrade.
GTX460 is a good card to overclock and SLI but GTX470/480 run too hot and suck up too much electricity. I would upgrade those. They are good cards and will give you gaming performance for years to come but i'm only suggesting upgrade for Enthusiast looking to stay on the bleeding edge of tech.
HD5970 is still a beast so keep it unless you got money to burn. HD5870 CF scaling is not that great plus it burns through electricity, i would upgrade if it's in your budget. I have a HD5850 CF set-up and although good.......the HD7000 series will save me money on electricity plus give me better performance. All others i would just upgrade to HD6000/GTX500 or HD7000/GTX700. Just my 2 cents on upgrading or if your looking to buy your first GPu.
and remember folks you can ALWAYS sale your old GPU's to some World of Warcraft gamer to make some cash for a new GPU and with Star Wars The Old Republic out it should be a snap to unload your old GPU's. :D