World's First 2GB Graphics Card Is Here 400
An anonymous reader writes "TUL Corporation's PCS HD4850 is the world's first graphics card to offer on-board 2gig video memory. The card is based on RV770 core chip, with 800 stream processors and 2GB of GDDR3 high-speed memory." That's more memory than I've had in any computer prior to this year — for a video card.
Bottlenecks? (Score:5, Insightful)
you have no idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:you have no idea (Score:4, Insightful)
And that right there sums up the problem with the gaming industry. Game producers don't even need to worry about whether their game is any good simply because some people will play it just because it's shiny (unity100, I'm looking right at you).
Re:Bottlenecks? (Score:5, Insightful)
But wouldn't squeezing 2 gigs of memory on a graphics card simply move the limiting bottlenecks elsewhere?
Well, sure. No matter how good your gaming rig is there's always going to be a bottleneck. And if it's an older game that runs 200 fps at full detail, then the bottleneck is the game itself capping maximum poly/texture counts (ie. the detail itself).
But the whole point of having and maintaining l33t gamer systems is to continually shift that bottleneck somewhere else which is also farther up the scale of performance so you keep getting a better gaming experience with each iteration.
Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still rockin 512 megs and doing fine - main system I mean. Integrated graphics.
The only reason this kind of thing bothers me a bit is that I imagine it's pushing videogames further and further into the world of being 1,000 employee, NASA sized engineering projects. Rather than charming little projects that say, that husband and wife that were Sierra could do on their own and be competitive.
This kind of reliance on jet-powered hardware kind of insures that the game is going to be all megacorporations working from market research.
Re:Bottlenecks? (Score:3, Insightful)
Market need? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there any market "Need" for this, to be able to play your games better, or is this simply filling the "uber-leet-most-money-I-can-spend" market?
Re:Wow.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet that this thing would have enough power to run all the AERO stuff in vista.
Jesus, my ex's laptop runs Vista with Aero effects turned up to maximum with no problems and a crappy NVidia mobile GPU. This stupid "Aero eats your resources" meme needs to die.
By all means whale on MS, but at least do it for the right reasons.
Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bottlenecks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it could, unless you're running a 64-bit OS and processor. Most computers, which are 32-bit, have a total or 4 GB of addressable memory space, which includes video memory, sound card memory (if you actually still use one) and system RAM. Therefore, if you put in a 2GB video card, you can't make use more than 2 GB of system RAM.
The 4GB address limit is probably the best argument for why we should see more progression to 64 bit computing, but there isn't yet enough demand in the market to force the issue for at least a few more years.
First Wii reference. (Score:0, Insightful)
It's funny how little hardware is required to make playable games. The Wii [wikipedia.org], for example, gets buy with an 800 MHz PowerPC and 88MB of RAM and 24 MB for the GPU. More is always better, but sooner or later it's going to be overkill.
Pointless (Score:2, Insightful)
It's nicely marketed, of course, much like selling Doc Legit's Miracle Snake Oil, which'll put hair on your head again, cure your hemorroids, caffeine addiction and make your keg into a six pack again.
Moving the bar (Score:3, Insightful)
and I for one am glad to see products like this all the time. While I may not buy them they do move the bar further which usually brings the the lower range items down from the stratosphere in pricing.
I remember people clearly harping about cards with 32mb, or 64, or oh god no one will ever need 256.
Look at how much more resolution today's and tomorrows displays are bringing to us, then turn and realize how much memory it takes to address all of that.
And also.... (Score:4, Insightful)
where the memory requirements are much higher (3D modelers and the like).
Also medical imagery (specially volumes, like MRI and CT).
And GPGPU (using Brook+) to perform complex calculation on huge datasets.
Re:First Wii reference. (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether a game is playable or not is irrelevant to this particular debate - if you want games to look better, or better-looking games to run faster, then you need more power.
I can't believe I have to actually explain that.
Re:Wow.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of us actually miss Clippy.
To add to your list: Internet Explorer (for lack of security and disregard for following standards), OOXML (design, corruption of standarisation process, non-implementation), abuse of office furniture (notably chairs), abuse of monopoly (at least according to the EU), overpricing (settled for a billion dollar), ... Pretty sure this list of right reasons can go on for a while.
Re:you have no idea (Score:5, Insightful)
How about games with good gameplay and bad graphics? Those exist too, and they are better than games with good graphics and bad gameplay.
Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an e-penis thing. Surely you walked by a 256MB Radeon 9200 in a Best Buy at some point. The chip on that card could hardly make use of 32MB, but I'll be damned if they won't add useless memory if it helps part a fool with his money.
Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The maps tend to be stored in main system memory. The graphics tend to be stored in graphics memory. You indeed need extra memory capacity, processor speed, and memory bandwidth for some of the post processing. However, resolution is not post-processing. Higher resolution means more pixels. More pixels means more RGB values in memory. More pixels also means more things to post-process. A higher polygon count and more textures can use more video memory, too.
Somehow, I'm not that sure (Score:5, Insightful)
While _some_ people do buy based on screenshots, the blanket generalization is little more than wishful thinking on the part of the publisher. You know, right next to, "people don't mind it if it's released buggy and patched later" and "people don't talk to each other, they only take their information from our marketing department."
The most visible fly in the ointment is WoW. It has the least detailed graphics of any MMO since, I dunno, 2003 or so. Yes, it actually has less polygons and lower detail textures than some games _older_ than it. Shader effects, bump-mapping, and any kind of shiny stuff are almost non-existent. (Ok, ok, they added weather later.) It also sold like hot cakes.
EQ2 was launched roughly at the same time as WoW, and tried to have _much_ higher resolution graphics and a metric buttload of shader effects. You can't even have a freaking armour modelled as just a texture, it just has to have a shader that makes it look 3D. It required a 512 MB card just to play with all those details... at a time where such a card didn't even exist. I think it never managed to get more than 1/50 the number of players WoW had, and it went slowly downhill from there.
Interestingly enough, more people complained about EQ2's "sterile graphics" than about WoW's cartoonish ones. (See what Penny Arcade had to say about EQ2's graphics back then, for example.) Turns out that just using insane texture resolutions and polygon counts isn't a substitute for talent, you know?
City Of Heroes had a _major_ graphics upgrade in Issue 6 (which coincides with launching the City Of Villains standalone expansion-pack), and the new Villain zones _quadruple_ even that number of polygons on screen. But let's concentrate on the COH side alone, because that was almost the same old game as before, only with a ton of graphical upgrades. Funnily, it didn't produce much of a jump in the number of players, and certainly no lasting effect. Anyway, the game peaked at 175,000 players in the USA alone soon after launch, and went gradually downhill from there. Last I heard a number it was last year at 145,000 in all territories combined and including both COV and COH players.
Basically high-res, shiny graphics don't seem to do all that much. Sure, it helps if you're not butt ugly. But if you look at the number of subscribers, the effect of insane graphics just isn't there. EQ2 vs WoW, the better game won, not the one requiring a new graphics card. Or COH pre-I6 and post-I6, just doesn't show the players rushing in because of the graphics.
Or in the offline game arena, The Sims was launched as a mostly 2D game with 2D sprites (ok, it used primitive low-polycount 3D graphics for the characters), in an age of shiny 3D games. It outsold not only any of those shiny 3D FPS games from the same year, it outsold them all combined.
And I'll further guess that Crysis and all those other games presented as "proof" that graphics sell... they probably had some other merits too. A lot fewer people would have bough them, if their _only_ merit were the graphics. Games with good, shiny graphics have flopped before.
Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
First, throw your assumptions out of the window.
You (and "you" being just about all of you here) seem to think that the RAM and raw power of the 3D card is only used in an FPS. That shows that you are terribly uninformed.
The RAM on the card allows more objects and/or higher quality textures, amongst other things. Simply put, the more video memory that is available the more elaborate and beautiful your surroundings can be.
In addition to this, higher display resolutions require more video memory. With higher resolutions comes the requirement to store more objects and process more data. These higher resolutions are becoming quite common these days thanks to the popularity of wide screen monitors.
When you add these two situations together, you suddenly have a case where you NEED a very good 3D card with a whole lot of memory in order to play ANY game in its intended beauty.
This will be true for an RPG just as much as it is for an FPS.
Good graphics are not limited to the FPS genre. RPG titles make use of some beautiful visuals as well. Oblivion was one example, though I personally never really liked the game.
An MMORPG will also gobble up the massive horse power and large amount of RAM available on new cards. More players on screen means more objects, more textures, more particle effects, more animations; more everything. A great deal of video lag (and deaths) can be prevented by having a decent 3D card.
Honestly, this 2 GB of RAM is much needed these days.
If you're still sitting on a 17" 4:3 monitor and you only run games that are 3 or 4 years old then you probably don't need this. Some of you are happy with that, and that's fine.
The majority of people are not. Whatever the reasons why you're comfortable in that situation, they won't matter to everyone else. That includes folks who play RPGs, both online and offline.
That some (*cough*many*cough*) of you automatically insult people who would buy this wreaks of ignorance, jealousy, pomposity, and an attempt to justify your own languid situation.
Re:you have no idea (Score:5, Insightful)
To game company CEOs, this translates as: "Customer Culture20 occasionally buys games with bad gameplay, but good graphics. We need more of these games for him to buy because we make more profit when he buys multiple crap games and plays them as little as possible."
They don't want me to play the games for years and years. They want me to get bored and buy the next shiny thing.
Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Me, I can't see the value of getting a card with more than 1GB, even for future games."
Neither can I! Just like I can't see computers ever needing more than 640K of memory.
Re:you have no idea (Score:3, Insightful)
WoW had fantastically good gameplay in areas that you overlook - it's very easy to learn if you've never played an MMO before, and it's very easy for a casual player to get addicted to (until the single-player content runs out).
This is wht WoW has 10 million subscribers: Blizzard took the same repetitive gameplay as every other MMO, and made it accessible to the casual gamer. The game much simpler in gameplay, and vastly better un usability, than its competitors.
Re:you have no idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree.
Paintings and photos are a visual medium. Even movies have sound too. Games have sound AND interaction.
I play games to interact, not to see pretty things. If I want pretty, I can watch Revenge Of The Sith, or Lord Of The Rings, Or Naked Women.
Games don't compete even vaguely with Hollywood in terms of graphics. They will always be many years behind due to being real time.
But hey, feel free to prioritize graphics, it means that reasonable video cards for the rest of us become dirt cheap :D. Late-adopter FTW.
Re:you have no idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Strangely this isn't the case with music, everyone declares the current medium to be shite almost straight away, cds? shite, vinyl? shite, tape? definatly shite.
Re:you have no idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead of imagining that PC gaming is in a sordid state, try this:
1. Go to some online electronics boutique and pay the $150 for a midrange video card that'll handle any modern game well. Make sure to check whether your motherboard has an AGP or PCI-Express slot, and buy accordingly.
2. Hang around some gaming websites like Destructoid and see what games interest other people. Find one that interests you. Buy it.
3. Install and play it. Discover that this isn't the 90's and that playing on "medium settings" doesn't mean everything looks like a muddy blob.
4. 2 years down the road, exercise self control and DON'T buy the latest video card. That's right. Just because a new generation of video cards comes out, doesn't mean you NEED to upgrade. You might be surprised to find out that new games will still run great on your old card!
5. Feel great knowing you're not just some whining tool who bashes a hobby that he doesn't know anything about.
P.S. Who the HELL do you talk to that bashes Half Life 2 because of the graphics? That game, like its ANCIENT predecessor, is still highly revered because of its storytelling techniques and finely tuned gameplay, not because of how many gigabytes of textures it had.
Re:you have no idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with that philosophy is that it drives the costs of making games *way* up, eventually creating a market where only big companies like EA are able to compete, and anything that's not a sequel is considered 'a risky investment', utterly crushing the chances of independant developers of going mainstream.
Re:you have no idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd agree that games are supposed to look good but the problem is, how do you define "good graphics"? personally I define it as "it preserves a distinct artistic style throughout the entire presentation", but many people seem to define it as "how many polygons does it use for the main character".
For example, just to pick two old games, which one do you think has the best graphics, Castlevania 3 for the NES or Syphon Filter for the PSX? me, I'd take the former, since as much as I enjoyed the latter, it's graphics always gave me the feeling that they had been created by three different teams and then shoved together in the final product. Yet, the technology it uses is much superior to that of the NES, being 3D vs basic 2D.
So, it all depends on how you define it, and for those who define it the same way I do, criticizing developers for focusing solely on pushing more polygons instead of worrying about the gameplay is a perfectly valid complain, since for us all we're getting is higher system requirements, not better graphics, and certainly not better games.
Re:you have no idea (Score:1, Insightful)