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Post by scorcherofthorns on Mar 9, 2015 10:07:36 GMT -5
Ahh! I think there's a cult out there among the PC gaming fanatics and it's called the GPU cult! After wrapping up 2014 and booking it as the year I worked hardest in my whole life, due to the momentarily income boost I'm left with a collection of PC gear I eagerly and mindlessly bought and didn't even have the time to enjoy, and in some cases couldn't even pull out of their boxes! Two motherboards, two CPUs, about 15 fans, most of them SP type, massive amounts of water cooling gear, including acrylic tubing bending gear, radiators, fittings of almost every type, but most interesting of all are the graphics cards which are six in total. Now they are the more interesting part because of the massive amount of money they cost me, and because of the simple little fact I only need a few of them. Yet that didn't prevent me from acquiring an HD 7990, two R9 280X, two R9 290X, and one GTX 970! The PC building frenzy has now forever prevented me from issuing any type of criticizing to my girlfriend over her obsession with shoes since I'm "the graphics card guy" and as I look at the "collection" I can't take this off my mind; what the hell was I thinking! I feel like a guy who went over to Vegas and it's now returning home to evaluate the damage! And I keep reading among the many enthusiast sources in the net and I keep bumping into guys that have been doing the same thing for a long time, and that is buying gear for the sake of it even despite the fact their gaming needs are met already, and at the top of their shopping list are always these graphics cards!
how the hell did this happened? How did graphics cards went from being this funky little card you add to your PC, to a glamorous, sexy, and coveted gadget that more often than not will get replaced sooner than needed? How did a whole community become obsessed with them? Well I think the answer to that is marketing and Youtube, and there is hardly another reason we could site. The technology development with GPUs is disappointingly slow, with every generation being only slightly better and hardly giving any logical reason for a gamer to start over and buy new. Yet that's precisely what we do, we just buy new. the main reason for the slow development is because the two existing GPU giants, AMD and Nvidia, have to spend more time and resources fixing their existing products than developing remarkably better ones, this inevitably means the next gen is always just a slightly better one, and it takes some MASSIVE marketing to sell it off to the masses because us sheep will gladly buy their stuff, but we like to have a little brain massaging before we do so.
So in this obsessed community of compulsive consumers it's not surprise at all the subject have gotten sensitive, with terms such as "AMD fanboy", "Nvidiot", and the "Master Race" being used derogatorily to describe gamers who engaged in the consumer frenzy, and this little war that results have occasionally gotten amusing. So in the lights of the Nvidia's recent scandal with the 3.5gigs of ram in the GTX 970, their second most powerful GPU card in their new lineup, a lot of material have shown on the net specifically made to anger Nvidia's fans much in the same way they were doing it to AMD back when it was discovered that team Red's cards have serious micro stuttering issues. However for Nvidia it won't be as easy as a solving it with a drivers update the way AMD did it, because this time the problem is hardware, and as Nvida recently admitted, miscommunication with their marketing team! Now the loss of consumer confidence could be severe here and the reaction of the community is truly hilarious!
And perhaps the funniest thing of all is the way AMD capitalized on it!
The funniest vid might be the "Hitler Reacts To The GTX 970 Being 3.5GB + .5GB" one, and that one you are gonna have to search on your own.
There's a large list of things we obsess with for no logical reason and graphics cards must definitively be the strangest on that list.
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Post by Lantesh on Mar 9, 2015 13:01:26 GMT -5
Congratulations! You have come to the realization that humans are petty, vain, stupid little monkey creatures that scurry about the surface of a rock flying through space in search of the next shiny but ultimately useless object.
Welcome to enlightenment.
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Post by scorcherofthorns on Mar 9, 2015 20:22:17 GMT -5
Congratulations! You have come to the realization that humans are petty, vain, stupid little monkey creatures that scurry about the surface of a rock flying through space in search of the next shiny but ultimately useless object. Welcome to enlightenment. I don't know if I could call it enlightenment when I seen to have a VIP pass to the monkey club, and when my anger goes away, I go "shopping" while criticizing my GF of exhibiting the same behavior. You are so right, we are just monkeys with computers, which reminds me I have to go shave my beard in open denial of my monkey nature. And Nvidia and AMD have certainly been doing well because of it. Here is a footage of evil people making fun of my fellow monkey only to be humiliated by him!
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Post by not1stepbackwards on Mar 9, 2015 23:44:37 GMT -5
I was enlightened by this post. Thanks for sharing your honest experiences.
It was the details like your shelf of hardware, some that never left their boxes. I imagine it's like a trophy case. It's you being "the graphics card guy", or that's how others define you (for you). But most of all, you could see beyond yourself; there's a whole community of hardware addicts out there. That's good.
Enlightenment, epiphany, etc. I think what you had was what alcoholics call "a moment of clarity." If you ever feel like you're having a relapse, just watch those YouTube videos you posted again and you'll remember how you felt when you achieved this moment of clarity.
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Post by Lantesh on Mar 10, 2015 8:13:25 GMT -5
I don't know if I could call it enlightenment when I seen to have a VIP pass to the monkey club, and when my anger goes away, I go "shopping" while criticizing my GF of exhibiting the same behavior. You are so right, we are just monkeys with computers, which reminds me I have to go shave my beard in open denial of my monkey nature. And Nvidia and AMD have certainly been doing well because of it. Now, now...don't beat up on yourself too much just because you fell for the marketing monkey's graphics card ploy. Sometimes you need to experience the absurd for yourself in order to attain a broader view of the world. I can understand this because I used to be like that too. I was a horribly materialistic bastard, especially with video games and computers, until I went through some stuff. However, you had the critical "What was I thinking?!" moment happen, so now you can safely turn in your VIP monkey pass back to the club attendant while flippin' the bird. That might not be complete enlightenment, but it's a step on the road toward it. In the meantime, you now have another source of entertainment. Namely, watching the other monkey creatures uselessly scurry about. Especially when it's new iPhone launch time. Watching them literally fight each other in line is both entertaining and sad. But mostly entertaining.
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Post by scorcherofthorns on Mar 11, 2015 11:07:52 GMT -5
Compulsive consumerism have indeed made monkeys out of us, and when it shows the fools we could be it can be very irritating. I got hit by the same train twice, 1st. the underpowered Tahiti AMD cards that will never be apt for the 4k gaming I craved due to their micro stuttering issues at resolutions higher than 2k, then the 970s with their 3.5 gigs of ram that clearly aren't the 4k killer they were advertised to be. Now I keep hearing these talks of the incoming 300 series of AMD cards and the GTX 980ti and Titan X that will make all of the cards in this gen a complete joke, especially because the cards in the 300 series will have competing price ranges which I figure all the people who bought into this Nvidia fiasco will see how their "high end" cards will be humiliated. Perhaps the main rules I broke was 1st. lack of research (with the AMD cards), and 2nd. in the case of Nvidia, NEVER buy the 1st generation of any new family of products at launch. Hard lesson learned. With that statement I have to say that I'm still in the game, and that I'm still an enthusiast and PC building is my hobby (gotta have one) but when it comes to buying new stuff I'm going to be a bit wiser from now on. So it boils down to these basic rules: 1st. Never buy anything at launch, let the product become known 1st. (Would have saved the money wasted on the GTX 970) 2nd. Buy stuff only when you need to and not when some some marketing campaign is telling you. (Would have prevented me from wasting any money on the R9 280x) 3rd. Research the crap out of your products (would have saved me from buying an HD 7990) If I would have obeyed those rules I would have gotten the right product for my need without wasting money on anything else. And I will enjoy watching people kill each other when the new iphone comes out or the next gen of graphics cards
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Post by Lantesh on Mar 11, 2015 21:31:24 GMT -5
Heh, those are the rules I use myself so you're definitely on track.
Honestly though, I think people underestimate the power of marketing. Or perhaps aren't even aware of it. See, I used to play Final Fantasy with a guy who worked in marketing research so I got a peek at the industry now and then. The company that he worked for existed for the sole reason of researching ways to make people buy things. His entire job was receiving products from various companies, using those products himself, and then brainstorming with his team to come up with ways to make people buy that product. The amount of money that goes into this kind of research is in the billions.
Everything from the initial hype from ad campaigns down to the packaging is heavily researched. What shape should the package be? What should the picture on that package be? What font, size, and color should the text be? What should the rest of the colors on the package be? Should they be "hotter" colors to influence a strong emotion or maybe "cooler" colors to invoke a feeling of calm and peace? And that's only a little bit of it, they scrutinize every single little thing with a mix of research and psychology in order to make people buy stuff. It's crazy.
Of course this all applies to graphics cards too. It's no wonder at all to me that people get caught up in the graphics card hype. It's all highly researched and specifically engineered so that they do. It sounds all evil megacorp and conspiracy like, but it's really not that horrible. After all, marketing and advertisement is how we find products that meet our needs. And in our little monkey world, we do need those. You just have to take a step back and not let yourself get all caught up in it. Those rules you laid out are a great start.
As a side note, my marketing buddy did have some funny stories once in a while. He once got a contract from a pizza chain and they delivered 500 pizzas for him and his crew to research and evaluate. At first he was all like "OMG all this pizza is great! I'm literally getting paid to eat pizza right now!" But then after 3 days he was like "OMG MAKE THE PIZZA STOOOOOOOOP!" I don't think he ever recovered from that haha.
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Post by scorcherofthorns on Mar 12, 2015 22:12:06 GMT -5
Heh, those are the rules I use myself so you're definitely on track. Honestly though, I think people underestimate the power of marketing. Or perhaps aren't even aware of it. See, I used to play Final Fantasy with a guy who worked in marketing research so I got a peek at the industry now and then. The company that he worked for existed for the sole reason of researching ways to make people buy things. His entire job was receiving products from various companies, using those products himself, and then brainstorming with his team to come up with ways to make people buy that product. The amount of money that goes into this kind of research is in the billions. Everything from the initial hype from ad campaigns down to the packaging is heavily researched. What shape should the package be? What should the picture on that package be? What font, size, and color should the text be? What should the rest of the colors on the package be? Should they be "hotter" colors to influence a strong emotion or maybe "cooler" colors to invoke a feeling of calm and peace? And that's only a little bit of it, they scrutinize every single little thing with a mix of research and psychology in order to make people buy stuff. It's crazy. Of course this all applies to graphics cards too. It's no wonder at all to me that people get caught up in the graphics card hype. It's all highly researched and specifically engineered so that they do. It sounds all evil megacorp and conspiracy like, but it's really not that horrible. After all, marketing and advertisement is how we find products that meet our needs. And in our little monkey world, we do need those. You just have to take a step back and not let yourself get all caught up in it. Those rules you laid out are a great start. As a side note, my marketing buddy did have some funny stories once in a while. He once got a contract from a pizza chain and they delivered 500 pizzas for him and his crew to research and evaluate. At first he was all like "OMG all this pizza is great! I'm literally getting paid to eat pizza right now!" But then after 3 days he was like "OMG MAKE THE PIZZA STOOOOOOOOP!" I don't think he ever recovered from that haha. Well said man, I think you nailed it. I wonder if your friend will survive a night with my friends (who are all pizza junkies) LOL Have you heard of the guy that was so into WoW that he died after spending 19 consecutive hours of gameplay, clearly it was marketing that drew him to that game, however I wonder how he could last 19 hours of WoW? Hell I would have died after the 1st 20 minutes, some people really have endurance... www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/19/gamer-dies-3-days_n_6501082.html
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Post by scorcherofthorns on Jun 1, 2015 2:45:16 GMT -5
This is getting even more interesting!!!!!!!
Nvidia's launch of the GTX 980ti humiliates the $300 more expensive GTX Titan X! While the AMD Radeon R9 290x continues to tail the $250 more expensive GTX 980! So with two of her high end cards being humiliated by cheaper alternatives, one of which is her own product, a sane person may ask, what's have gotten to Nvidia? Other than power consumption savings, what reason is there for me to buy the $500-800 GTX 980 while the $300-$400 R9 290x is just a frame or two behind in the benchmarks? Or even better, why should a gamer buy the $1,000 Titan X when the $700+ GTX 980ti is right there in the same level of performance, and the $600-800 dual GPU, Partially water cooled, R9 295x2 completely destroys it.
If you are buying Nvidia cards right now, you'll have to face the fact the GTX 960 isn't enough for high end gaming, the GTX 970 only has 3.5 gigs of vram and will likely become obsolete very soon, and the GTX 980 and the Titan X, for the reasons I explained, simply don't make sense, leaving the GTX 980ti as the sole logical choice here, but what if you don't have the $700? I doubt the average gamer will have a $700 computer let alone a single graphics card at that price!
If you are buying AMD, then you will have to face the fact that while the R9 series of cards are this era best bang for the buck, they tend to consume a heck of a lot of power and will force you to have a beefy PSU, plus the fact that AMD being AMD, they will likely abandon driver development for their existing Radeon cards as soon as the incoming 300 series comes around (which could happen any time now).
So after taking the above points into question, with only one card making sense in the market (the $700 GTX980ti), I can tell you it's a really bad time to buy graphics cards right now, really REALLY bad time!!
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Post by not1stepbackwards on Jun 1, 2015 4:05:19 GMT -5
So after taking the above points into question, with only one card making sense in the market (the $700 GTX980ti), I can tell you it's a really bad time to buy graphics cards right now, really REALLY bad time!! Damn, thanks for the warning.
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Post by scorcherofthorns on Jun 18, 2015 10:37:09 GMT -5
AMD's vengeance is right around the corner!
With cooling performance, frame rates, and build quality matching the GTX 980, and having twice the Vram count (useful for extreme resolutions), plus a way bigger buffer (useful to video editors), while costing about $100 less (between $420-$470 vs the $500-$800 the GTX 980 cost), the R9 390x is one mean beast, this could end up making Nvidia lower the prices of their GTX980s and maybe even their entire lineup. Bear in mind the 390x is NOT AMD's flagship, that title is reserved for the also incoming "Fury" a card designed to go face to face with the GTX 980ti and Titan X. Taking its price to performance into consideration, and the way it fares versus its competition, the R9 390x could easily end up being the best graphics card of this year. Initial reviews of it are absolutely amazing, here is "Mr I talk a lot" Logan reviewing the pristine MSI gaming version of this card.
As of this moment, we could consider the entire AMD Radeon R9 200 series of cards obsolete, with no driver development in the future, so avoid buying any of those cards, even if they offered at killer discount prices. Also worth mentioning is that if you don't have $400+ then there is the $300+ R9 390 that's coming to kick the GTX970 in the nuts, and the $200+ R9 380 that's there to do the same with the GTX 960. It seems Nvidia is now facing some really aggressive competition from AMD lets see how it reacts to that.
Edit: Found an awesome review of the 390 that basically confirms my point about it.
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