What specs would be good for the next 3-4 years of gaming?

[JimboUK]

 

 

Def get a card with 4 gig Vram, I'm regretting settling for 2 gig when I could have spent a few extra bucks on the extra memory

Would it give you higher fps somewhere (where exactly?) or just a fuller sense of satisfaction?

 

An i5 should see off the next generation of ports, a minimum of 8GB of RAM and a GPU with 3-4GB of RAM would be ideal. The next generation of games will be GPU heavy unlike the current gen which tends to lean on the CPU very heavily.

Don't forget that they've all got narrow memory buses.

 

One of the reasons large amounts of RAM remain poorly used is bus width. GTX680 had a bandwidth of 192 GB/s and responded well to overclocking. Per frame, 192 GB/s is 3.2 GB. At the same time, 680 responds poorly to extra RAM.

PS4's bandwidth is even lower, which means the chip will have an even more limited response in this regard. The purpose of this much unified ram is computing.

 

What's more important is that any card you buy today will be somewhat outdated when PS4 comes out. It won't support the OpenCL code required for the compute operations PS4's and Xbone's chips are meant to do. So don't bother chasing PS4; you'll be able to catch up in full when it comes out and then new cards that support the new code come out.

 

More VRAM would allow you to use higher resolution textures, use higher level of anti-aliasing, and generally load more content. It has more to do with stuttering and less with general fps (that's what the processors are dealing with).

 

And yes, the narrow bus-width is a problem too. That's why I decided not to get a GTX 650Ti: it sounds like a good deal until I realized it has 128bit bus. That's a downgrade from my 9800GT (256 bit), and that thing is just old tech rebranded.

 

I don't think catching up with console technology is possible. XBOX One, for example, already uses a custom CPU and PS4 utilizes a semi-custom GPU. Any feature developers use would be cross-platform, methinks. It's perhaps why nobody has utilized nVIDIA PhsyX on console yet lol

 

 

Nvidia have said PhsyX will be available for these new consoles, I assume it would have to run on the CPU and given the comedy CPUs in these new consoles I wouldn't imagine the take up is going to be very high.

[FMod]

PhysX is, at this point, quite outdated. It also suffers from being intentionally proprietary.

Like it or not, but Nvidia has lost the dominant GPU war. Not to Radeons, though; it lost the war to Intel's and AMD's integrated GPU and APU.

 

When the new 5200e graphics are as fast as a low-end Geforce, and low-end is the only kind you're going to see in truly portable laptops (except for $3k carbon fiber Vaios), there's no point to the latter. In desktops, when an APU with barely any price premium over CPU suffices for casual gaming, there's no need for a discrete card that brings power draw, noise and necessitates for a large case.

 

With the number of titles that use PhysX, don't forget how many of them use so little of it that it runs perfectly well on CPU, or that it makes no visible difference without a screenshot comparison. Arkham City that outright deleted large objects if it didn't see a Nvidia card, instead of rendering them as statics, is a blatant advertisement show.

 

 

Anyway, back to PC vs consoles, it's still not clear cut.

Here's a comparison of GTX 680 to PS4:

Switch it to 1080p fullscreen or you won't see a thing except text.

 

 

 

 

As the video shows and the comments say, in parts involving complex physics, PS4 wins. In parts involving particles, rendering a lot of stuff, GPU-intensive tasks, the more powerful 680 wins. Overall 680 wins.

 

That said, for a system that you intend to keep for several years, you want a post-PS4/xbone GPU, which will integrate the new features presented by their processors. Both AMD and NV explicitly said they will do that in their respective next generations.

Edited July 30, 2013 by FMod

[Aegrus]

 

More VRAM would allow you to use higher resolution textures, use higher level of anti-aliasing, and generally load more content. It has more to do with stuttering and less with general fps (that's what the processors are dealing with).

 

 

 

And yes, the narrow bus-width is a problem too. That's why I decided not to get a GTX 650Ti: it sounds like a good deal until I realized it has 128bit bus. That's a downgrade from my 9800GT (256 bit), and that thing is just old tech rebranded.

 

I don't think catching up with console technology is possible. XBOX One, for example, already uses a custom CPU and PS4 utilizes a semi-custom GPU. Any feature developers use would be cross-platform, methinks. It's perhaps why nobody has utilized nVIDIA PhsyX on console yet lol

 

 

To the contrary, catching next-gen consoles isn't so difficult. Actually, anyone with a 680 (or AMD equivalent) and a 3.4 ghz quad core i5 (or AMD equivalent) and 8 GB of ddr3 RAM has already caught and passed the next-gen consoles. Sure, it costs more at that point than next-gen consoles, but there's a reason for that. It *is* higher performance, and I'm even allowing for console optimization. If I wasn't, I'd be recommending a 660 TI and a quad core AMD Phenom II at 3.2 ghz.

 

Most of the power difference between current and next gen consoles will be eaten by anti-aliasing (which few current gen console games have beyond a blur filter) , 1080p support (and the better lod and textures which it requires), aiming for 60 fps (instead of sub-30), and running Nvidia PhysX effects through an AMD cpu (to replace outdated Havok physics) before they ever really translate into epic graphics. In other words, most of their gains in hardware are simply being used to cover the jump from 720p to 1080p, and to remove all the imperfections that 720p hid.

 

Probably the best-looking of the next-gen title seen so far, Killzone 4; Shadowfall, doesn't even come near Crysis 3 or Metro last LIght if you look at the newer gameplay video instead of simply it's cherry-picked launch trailer.

 

I'm sure graphics will improve over time as per current gen. However, given that next-gen consoles run on a x86 architecture, which PC's have been using forever, people already know how to optimize for them. That means that the graphical quality won't improve as much over time, as we're seeing higher quality straight out of the box than we would have if the consoles had been as different from PCs as the PS360.

[Raestloz]

Well, catching up with consoles in terms of processing power isn't that hard, I was talking about any special features that they'd have, which is to say, so far none lol. I mean, Since PS4 and XBONE don't actually use standard PC hardware, if any of their features are proprietary/exclusive to that hardware, PC gamers will never see it.

 

Still, so, I should just wait on the GPU? I don't really know about that, since exciting new features usually equals not-so-exciting higher price, especially when it's just out, kind of like USB 3.0 motherboards.

 

is OpenCL even that new? I mean, surely hardwares available today is capable of running OpenCL? Or are you saying that PS4 will have a newer version of OpenCL that today's hardware do not support?

[FMod]

and running Nvidia PhysX effects through an AMD cpu (to replace outdated Havok physics)

Havok and PhysX are actually orthogonal, i.e. they do not replace or substitute for one another. Havok is an engine for gameplay-affecting physics, while PhysX is for particles and noclipping cloth.

 

Havok is used to process complex interactions between significant objects and return results to the game engine; PhysX works on simpler effects that are immaterial gameplay-wise and sends results directly to rendering.

 

 

 

Well, catching up with consoles in terms of processing power isn't that hard, I was talking about any special features that they'd have, which is to say, so far none lol. I mean, Since PS4 and XBONE don't actually use standard PC hardware, if any of their features are proprietary/exclusive to that hardware, PC gamers will never see it.

They'll see it in the next generation of video cards. Both AMD and Nvidia explicitly promised that.

 

It is pretty close to standard PC hardware, especially the PS4 APU (Xbone's has stacked RAM). It's just next generation PC hardware. Not high-end, but next generation, like 2014.

 

 

Still, so, I should just wait on the GPU?

More realistically just give up on the idea of ein fanbelt that will last a thousand years. You easily have a year or two till current hardware becomes inadequate rather than merely not the best. Buy something you can afford without effort, don't save up for a super GPU and swear to stand by it.

 

Or are you saying that PS4 will have a newer version of OpenCL that today's hardware do not support?

Something like this. Its hardware has code-defining features that current hardware doesn't.

Edited July 31, 2013 by FMod

[JimboUK]

Well, catching up with consoles in terms of processing power isn't that hard, I was talking about any special features that they'd have, which is to say, so far none lol. I mean, Since PS4 and XBONE don't actually use standard PC hardware, if any of their features are proprietary/exclusive to that hardware, PC gamers will never see it.

 

Still, so, I should just wait on the GPU? I don't really know about that, since exciting new features usually equals not-so-exciting higher price, especially when it's just out, kind of like USB 3.0 motherboards.

 

is OpenCL even that new? I mean, surely hardwares available today is capable of running OpenCL? Or are you saying that PS4 will have a newer version of OpenCL that today's hardware do not support?

 

It's not new at all, here's a list of supported hardware http://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products/