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[Sosokrates]

https://youtu.be/cq1tM8DWtko

I changed the title a bit to make it more accurate.

Yes, GTX 1080 Ti was a standout product and Vega 56 was a winner for its price vs performance level - but elsewhere, 2017 was a disappointment: Nvidia went unchallenged at the top-end with Vega 64 falling short. And as good as they were, RX 570 and RX 580 were upclocked versions of existing tech. Here's hoping for a more exciting 2018!

 

[Bolivar687]

I've been a pretty vocal fan of Radeon but I had no choice but to go back to Nvidia for my 2017 upgrade. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and let them take an extra year if it meant they would deliver a much more forward-thinking 4k card with HBM2. I do think Vega 64 gets an unfair shake in gaming communities, there are some things it does really well with but as far as arriving more than a year late, it simply isn't where it needed to come in at. I just searched for RX Vega 64 on Amazon and Newegg and all these months after launch, the only models available are reference cards for over $1,000 from secondhand sellers. I understand the cryptocurrency crisis has an impact but that shouldn't be my problem as a consumer and it doesn't seem to hurt Nvidia prices too much. The reality is the custom cards are coming fully two years after Pascal. I like Raja but I'm not surprised he's gone and I hope AMD corporate can put the RTG house back in order.

Even though it was a lackluster year for new products, you still get better deals on last year's lineup, and I got one of the fastest 1080s for a really great price. I'm hoping there's something with a good value in 2018 for me to trade up to but high end gaming is in a pretty good spot for me right now.

 

[RoboFu]

Really in 2017 there was no need to buy a graphics card. I used a 980 ti through most of 2017 paired with an old i7 3770k and pretty much ran everything but the most unoptimizable Ed games with ease.

I did build a and machine in October with a vega64 and ryzen 1600x and still pretty much can run everything flat out at 1440 except the most unoptimized games.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

I upgraded from a 780 ti to a 1070 ti a couple months ago and have been in heaven

 

[Soltype]

Got a 1080 ftw last year, did the icx upgrade, and then stepped up to the Ti.Card is awesome at 1440p.I should be good for a while.

 

[DemonCleaner]

stupid year for GPU tech. and there will be lot more of those when AMD exits the battle after navi fails. but you kinda deserve that master race.

I understand the cryptocurrency crisis has an impact but that shouldn't be my problem as a consumer and it doesn't seem to hurt Nvidia prices too much.

well most nvidia cards are rubbish at mining. and for not being your problem: that's how markets work.

 

[Leonidas]

Hoping nVidia releases the 11-series soon. GTX 1080 is over 18 months old...

 

[J-Rzez]

Hoping nVidia releases the 11-series soon. GTX 1080 is over 18 months old...

Same. I got a 1080 near launch and it served me well to this day, at both 4k/60, and 1440/144. The next series would have to be a pretty big jump for me to give up my 1080. Im projecting ill be good to wait for a 12xx vs 11xx.

Got to give nvidia credit though, the 10xx cards especially when launched were a great jump.

 

[Krappadizzle]

Got a 1080Ti this year and have been very very happy with it.

But nothing crazy exciting in the GPU department really came.out that did much of anything too new.

 

[michaelius]

Crappy year mostly due to miners keeping prices at insane levels.

Still 1080 ti was great and 1070 ti is also solid.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Crappy year mostly due to miners keeping prices at insane levels.

Still 1080 ti was great and 1070 ti is also solid.

I think this too, the cards are fine. The prices just are inflated.

I wonder if the engineers take miners into account when building the tech? I'm also surprised dedicated mining cards haven't appeared

 

[zackmorris]

I feel like 2016 was such an upgrade in the cost to performance with the 1070/1080 that I wasn't really expecting much from 2017. Still kind of amazed at how good the 1070 was for the money.

 

[belmonkey]

The GT 1030 ended up being an interesting GPU at least. Can fit in SFF and business PCs that have a size and power draw limit, and it can offer near-ish Xbox One level of performance.

 

[ayob]

i have a feeling the next cards are going to be so hyped up to do 4k 144hz they're going to get delayed (along with the 4k 144hz monitors) and come out holiday 2018

 

[TransTrender]

No.

The biggest problem is that these cards cost much more now than they did at launch.

That's the biggest problem.

That's also why I gave up on PC gaming for now.

The behavior mentioned in the article is a direct result of the mining madness.

 

[vanguardian1]

Yup, 2017 has been a mess for mid-range video cards with the mining issues. I'm lucky I got my Radeon 470 4gb just after xmas 2016 for $189. Eons better than the 260x I was putting along with.

 

[shpankey]

Imagine if mining becomes unprofitable the flood of cards on the market.

 

[Brofist]

I upgraded from a 780 ti to a 1070 ti a couple months ago and have been in heaven

Upgrading is always exciting no doubt, but 2017 was a pretty boring year for GPUs all around.

 

[nkarafo]

I'm happy with my 1060. Going from a 960 to this i got 2x the performance and 3x the VRAM amount. It was a huge upgrade while still staying in the middle range. Although it is a bit more pricey than the 960 range but not too much. Can't complain since i got close to the performance of a super expensive (for my pocket) 980.

 

[Koala Driving a Ferrari]

Hm, I guess that it was a good year for console hardware but not so much on the PC GPU front. What's the current road map like? Is new silicon due from AMD or Nvidia in the first half of 2018?

 

[TransTrender]

Hm, I guess that it was a good year for console hardware but not so much on the PC GPU front. What's the current road map like? Is new silicon due from AMD or Nvidia in the first half of 2018?

I'm sure stuff is on the roadmap but at this point their foot is off the gas because whatever they're selling is on allocation for higher prices than they were a year ago. Why innovate when you're making money hand over fist? I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more mining specific silicon, or more likely efused parts they already make with specific drivers like FirePro.

 

[Koala Driving a Ferrari]

I'm sure stuff is on the roadmap but at this point their foot is off the gas because whatever they're selling is on allocation for higher prices than they were a year ago. Why innovate when you're making money hand over fist? I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more mining specific silicon, or more likely efused parts they already make with specific drivers like FirePro.

That's really quite frustrating as someone who loves gaming focused tech (and is a PC gamer at heart). I guess the silver lining on this dark cloud is that the life span of this generation of GPUs has been artificially extended by crypto miners. Which is great for those who have invested in 2016/2017 era GPUs.

 

[120v]

hypothetically i could still be rocking my 970 and still be happy with new games, so i'm content with my 1080 ti. but then again i'm not chasing the 4k60 dragon, perfectly content with 1440 til the decade wraps up. i don't want to mess with 4k until i'm garaunteed plenty of headroom

crypto crisis aside i'm good

 

[Xdrive05]

Y’know, I’m just sitting here with my 980 4GB on a 1080p60 monitor, watching the graphics tech progress. No need to bite on anything until I can justify either a higher resolution and/or refresh rate monitor to go along with it. Kinda sucks because I’m really impressed with the new tech. But these prices, man...

Same problem in the living room. I have a decent 1080p Samsung, so not feeling the XB1X or even the Pro. And my living room isn’t conducive to accepting a larger display right now.

So I think graphics tech has reached a point where I need a bigger house and a bigger wallet both to go up from here.

 

[kraspkibble]

Oh, look, yet another DF video shitting on PC gamers.

they have such a fucking hard on for XB1X it's crazy.

 

[vanguardian1]

Oh, look, yet another DF video shitting on PC gamers.

they have such a fucking hard on for XB1X it's crazy.

To be fair, the PC/Console relationship has shifted dramatically in the last 12 years.

 

[Reallink]

I really really hope Nvidia waits for 48Gbps HDMI 2.1 chipsets before releasing any 11XX's, not at all interested in dropping $600+ on something that will be rendered obsolete (in regards to near future applications) within 3 months of launch.

 

[Silvawuff]

My 780 died and I replaced it with a 1050 Ti on sale. The difference is staggering, and the cost wasn't awful. It suits all of my needs perfectly.

 

[JimboJones]

Oh, look, yet another DF video shitting on PC gamers.

they have such a fucking hard on for XB1X it's crazy.

Not really, they just done another video about how 2017 was a great year for CPU's.

Different expectations for different markets too, exciting pc tech to them is like 144+ fps at max settings, compared with consoles more humble stable 30fps being good enough for most games lol.

 

[icecold1983]

Oh, look, yet another DF video shitting on PC gamers.

they have such a fucking hard on for XB1X it's crazy.

what in the world? thats what you took from this? ease up on the warrioring

 

[LUXURY]

Got a 1070 over the summer and I've been in love with it.

 

[J-Rzez]

Im starting to wonder if they're going to look into price fixing on video cards components like they are now for RAM. If you think about it, fluctuating supply/demand market pricing is only found in fresh food, cars, and PC components. Odd.

 

[TransTrender]

Im starting to wonder if they're going to look into price fixing on video cards components like they are now for RAM. If you think about it, fluctuating supply/demand market pricing is only found in fresh food, cars, and PC components. Odd.

The GPU prices are pretty much fixed from their fabs, unless they're paying a premium for more wafers beyond their original forecast. From there AMD and NVidia can sell those extra lot GPUs to their OEMs for a premium but the original forecast quantities should be the original negotiated price. The ones suffering in the end are the EVGAs and Asus' of the world because they need to buy all those other components to go on their boards like memory and voltage regulators and they're super supply constrained, so it's a double whammy paying a premium for those extra lot GPUs and then all the other components that need to go on to complete the project. Then you bump a bit more and those prices are passed on to the consumer. Basically it's all the channel customers (us) that are getting shafted.

 

[Gitaroo]

Need true next gen gpu from nvidia asap, 970 is showing its age.

 

[Hubble]

Yup. 2017 was hugely disappointing for graphics cards. Absolutely no reason to buy one. 980 ti’s are still holding extremely well and the performance for this year’s cards are really not big enough to warrant a purchase from the everyday PC gamer.

 

[SaberEdge]

I feel like 2016 was such an upgrade in the cost to performance with the 1070/1080 that I wasn't really expecting much from 2017. Still kind of amazed at how good the 1070 was for the money.

Yep, this is my perspective too. I got a GTX 1070 at release and it has done great with everything I've thrown at it. Even demanding open world games with amazing visuals like Assassin's Creed Origins run very well. I'm looking forward to upgrading,though, whenever the next Nvidia cards come out.

 

[laxu]

Really in 2017 there was no need to buy a graphics card. I used a 980 ti through most of 2017 paired with an old i7 3770k and pretty much ran everything but the most unoptimizable Ed games with ease.

I did build a and machine in October with a vega64 and ryzen 1600x and still pretty much can run everything flat out at 1440 except the most unoptimized games.

Same for me. I felt upgrading from a 3570K to a 6600K a few years ago was a good move in games that are CPU limited but this year no updates were on the cards as everything runs nicely in 1440p. I'm waiting for high refresh 4K displays to come to market and the Nvidia GPUs to run them.

It's a shame AMD has not been able to compete on the high end GPU market. I feel they are making better progress in their drivers whereas Nvidia mostly just sticks with bug fixes rather than implementing features people have asked for years such as better quality GPU scaling or the ability to set integer scaling (so e.g. 1080p on a 4K display is sharp) or even overhauling that slow as shit control panel of theirs.