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I fear that they're pricing out their market. This might be a great card for a CAD or video rendering workstation, but AAA game studios aren't going to be able

I fear that they're pricing out their market. This might be a great card for a CAD or video rendering workstation, but AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k because it costs $1600 for just the graphics card.

dotnet00 4y ago
I don't think AAA studios have been doing that for a while. The top cards aren't so much faster than the mid-range of the generation as to require extra effort in the content pipeline. Usually the top card can just dial up the visual effects higher (eg using more ray tracing samples per frame).
dncornholio 4y ago
Why people have big GPU's is not because games look better (they don't). It's because they want the best fps and no micro-stutters. A game on max settings looks the same on different cards. The thing that really changes is the framerate. Game studio's bring in more demanding settings when people have the power to run them. So what will happen is even more raytracing and post processing effects that you can turn on or off.
Hamuko 4y ago
>AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k I've always thought that they start off making the best graphical version of the game and then just start cutting off bits and bobs to make the lower tier versions.
mywittyname 4y ago
> AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k They do this anyway for future proofing. The tools they use capture far more detail than can be used on modern hardware. So they down-sample for target hardware and keep the hi-res assets around for the eventual next-gen "remaster". Publishers have realized that AAA titles have long legs. GTAV and Skyrim have seen releases on several generations of hardware because people will keep buying them. So now the concept of a "remaster" release on future hardware is baked into development.
yrgulation 4y ago
We are looking at this the wrong way. The latest iteration of any tech is always expensive and over time it leads to a drop in price for the “old” tech. Because of the 4090, my 3090 is likely to drop in value. Similar to older models that are still very capable. Game studios find these cards useful because their own processes get faster not because they expect people to run games on a 4090. The 3090 in my case has sped up my workflows quite significantly. I can render, play, model and bake textures at the same time. So if anything this will improve the state of things.
jayd16 4y ago
I don't think you really understand the asset workflow or why artists lovingly draw things. The artist pipeline usually spits out massively over detailed assets. Everything from cuticles to the roughness on scales comes out of an artist's model. Making a usable asset from that is almost always a task of reduction not iterative addition.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> but AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k because it costs $1600 for just the graphics card. That's not really how it works. The faster cards allow people to play at higher resolutions and higher framerates with full resolution textures, wider field of views, more detail rendered off in the distance, higher resolution shadows, and so on.
ericd 4y ago
I'm not sure this is really targeted at gamers. For eg deep learning workstations, it's extremely reasonably priced for the amount of horsepower it provides - it seems likely to stomp 2-3 2080 Ti's, at a much lower power draw, while fitting larger models. For games, unless I was running a top-of-the-line res/refresh rate monitor, I'd probably just get whatever the 4060-4080 ends up being and call it a day.
selfhoster11 4y ago
Don't worry. Soon you won't even own your graphics card, you'll just rent it out from a cloud gaming platform like Stadia. /s

dotnet00 4y ago

I don't think AAA studios have been doing that for a while. The top cards aren't so much faster than the mid-range of the generation as to require extra effort in the content pipeline. Usually the top card can just dial up the visual effects higher (eg using more ray tracing samples per frame).

dncornholio 4y ago

Why people have big GPU's is not because games look better (they don't). It's because they want the best fps and no micro-stutters. A game on max settings looks the same on different cards. The thing that really changes is the framerate. Game studio's bring in more demanding settings when people have the power to run them. So what will happen is even more raytracing and post processing effects that you can turn on or off.

Hamuko 4y ago

>AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k I've always thought that they start off making the best graphical version of the game and then just start cutting off bits and bobs to make the lower tier versions.

mywittyname 4y ago

> AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k They do this anyway for future proofing. The tools they use capture far more detail than can be used on modern hardware. So they down-sample for target hardware and keep the hi-res assets around for the eventual next-gen "remaster". Publishers have realized that AAA titles have long legs. GTAV and Skyrim have seen releases on several generations of hardware because people will keep buying them. So now the concept of a "remaster" release on future hardware is baked into development.

yrgulation 4y ago

We are looking at this the wrong way. The latest iteration of any tech is always expensive and over time it leads to a drop in price for the “old” tech. Because of the 4090, my 3090 is likely to drop in value. Similar to older models that are still very capable. Game studios find these cards useful because their own processes get faster not because they expect people to run games on a 4090. The 3090 in my case has sped up my workflows quite significantly. I can render, play, model and bake textures at the same time. So if anything this will improve the state of things.

jayd16 4y ago

I don't think you really understand the asset workflow or why artists lovingly draw things. The artist pipeline usually spits out massively over detailed assets. Everything from cuticles to the roughness on scales comes out of an artist's model. Making a usable asset from that is almost always a task of reduction not iterative addition.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> but AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k because it costs $1600 for just the graphics card. That's not really how it works. The faster cards allow people to play at higher resolutions and higher framerates with full resolution textures, wider field of views, more detail rendered off in the distance, higher resolution shadows, and so on.

ericd 4y ago

I'm not sure this is really targeted at gamers. For eg deep learning workstations, it's extremely reasonably priced for the amount of horsepower it provides - it seems likely to stomp 2-3 2080 Ti's, at a much lower power draw, while fitting larger models. For games, unless I was running a top-of-the-line res/refresh rate monitor, I'd probably just get whatever the 4060-4080 ends up being and call it a day.

selfhoster11 4y ago

Don't worry. Soon you won't even own your graphics card, you'll just rent it out from a cloud gaming platform like Stadia. /s