Is this the end of new video cards?

The 980Ti isn't really a 980, though, but a slightly cut down Titan X. Same over all architecture, granted, but still "newer" in a way. Don't worry, Pascal should hit in the next 6-8 months -- this is assuming they stick to the usual pattern of releasing low power efficient parts first, ramping up to enthusiast class stuff.
 
GPU release cycles have slowed in the past few years which is a good thing in my opinion...don't need 2 new releases every year...
 
4 years of the same process size happened. We'll be saying the same thing in 2020.
 
It took us awhile to get FinFET into major foundries outside of Intel.

Until that was available, leakage was just too high to make anything smaller than 28nm usable for high-powered GPUs. I expect that trend to continue, especially since Intel has already scheduled 2.5-3 years wait for 10nm.

Get used to more cases of architectural refreshes on the same node , like what happened when TSMC's 32nm process was canceled, and ATI had to release the 6970 on 40nm :D
 
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I think new process technology will take increasingly longer time to move forward as it gets more difficult to shrink them.
 
We were on DX9 for 10 years, right now the only thing pushing graphics tech seems to be 2-4k monitors needing faster cards. Even if they put out a new gen of cards a year ago I doubt it would have been leaps and bounds better. Consoles and software holding graphics cards back, why pump more millions into Research and development when you don't have to. Intel's been refining its chips since the 2500k's came out. There's barely been a 7% performance increase per year but in their case they have no competition right now so why spend the dough. Techs been fairly borring.
 
I really don't even want to upgrade to Pascal I do but the amount of use I got out of both my 970GTX and 980ti is shameful..
 
These cards are for people with 3D surround, surround and 4K setups. 1080P and 1440P users really don't need anything more than a 970 to get 60fps at ultra in most modern games. VR will up the ante somewhat as well but still won't require anywhere near as much horsepower that 4K or 3D surround users require. My 980ti gets a nice workout in surround in modern games and is always at 99% utilization. At 1080P it barely breaks 40%.
 
No this is not the end of new video cards. They just won't get released as often and will likely not improve much on previous generations similar to how intel has been with processors since sandy bridge.

I hope that i'm wrong and Nvidia and AMD come out with monster cards this year that are capable of gaming at 4k surround without having a multi card setup.
 
I just upgraded from a 2500k to a 6600k (parts arrive this weekend, so excited)

My Xfire 290's will continue to hold me over for probably another year or two since they push 1440p games quite well.

Really looking to go back to camp nvidia though, I've had enough of the squirley drivers from AMD.
 
I think it has a lot to do with moving to a smaller process size. You can't really look to past trends to see what's happening here, because this is a problem not yet encountered. Yes, it has always been a challenge to move from one process to a smaller one, but we're coming up on a wall that is going to be very difficult or impossible to scale given our existing approach.
 
GTX980 Ti is a big improvements over GTX980 so why considere GTX980 as the latest release?
They are both maxwell cards but 980 Ti has much more performance than GTX980.
 
Dont you know, we are moving to GCS.
Graphics Cards as a Service.

The card you have now will last forever, it will receive updates to its secret bios to improve speed and memory size, assisted by its secret hardware pool already built in.
It will also require a permanent high bandwidth internet connection so gfx card manufacturers can monitor what you see on screen.
Its for your own good you know.
 
sblantipodi said:
GTX980 Ti is a big improvements over GTX980 so why considere GTX980 as the latest release?
They are both maxwell cards but 980 Ti has much more performance than GTX980.
Click to expand...

Agreed, around 30% clock for clock.
As mentioned earlier, the 980, 980ti and Titan X use the same silicon, just binned for defects/quality.
 
Nenu said:
Agreed, around 30% clock for clock.
As mentioned earlier, the 980ti and Titan X use the same silicon, just binned for defects/quality.
Click to expand...

Fixed.

The 980 and 970 use the same silicon. The 980 die is NOT the same as the 980 Ti die.

The 950 and 960 use the same silicon.
 
It's only been 16 months since GM20x launched, and you think because of that there will be no new cards? Remember that the GTX 600 to 700 series were the same architecture, so it was really nearly 3 years between the release of Kepler and Maxwell (if you want to get technical, GM107 [Maxwell Gen 1] launched 2 years after Kepler...). And before that it was 2 years between Fermi and Kepler.

As already stated, it's taken awhile to get the new smaller FinFET process into higher yields to support mass production. There really is no more practical room for improvements with 28 nm.

Do you really need an upgrade to your GTX 970 that badly?
defaultluser said:
Fixed.

The 980 and 970 use the same silicon. The 980 die is NOT the same as the 980 Ti die.

The 950 and 960 use the same silicon.
Click to expand...
Indeed. GM204 is used in both the 980 and 970, while GM200 is in the 980 Ti and Titan X.
 
Nenu said:
Agreed, around 30% clock for clock.
As mentioned earlier, the 980, 980ti and Titan X use the same silicon, just binned for defects/quality.
Click to expand...

how could they be the same silicon if they have different numbers of CUDA cores, rops, texture units, bus, memory controller?
they have the same architecture, not the same silicon.
 
sblantipodi said:
how could they be the same silicon if they have different numbers of CUDA cores, rops, texture units, bus, memory controller?
they have the same architecture, not the same silicon.
Click to expand...

Covered that a few posts later for the 980
But for the Titan and 980ti, the silicon meant for Titan that have some parts fail can be used to make 980ti by disabling the faulty parts.
 
I would be really ticked if I actually needed a new card this year. The games are not good enough to justify the investment these days. The next Battlefield would need to be pretty damn good to get me to upgrade to something better than 980GTX SLI. Not just pretty, I mean GOOD.
 
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