Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Are GPUs Even Worth it Anymore?”.
Oh okay, the RTX 4070 was released and can I say I think we finally managed to nail a GPU review yeah. I think you can we uh yeah. We we managed to get all the all the synergies lined up between the last writing team. Um they’ve got a lot of their data collection. It’S nailed down better uh.
We’Ve got a lot of our processes in terms of ingesting that data and turning it into the important beats that matter in video form uh, rather than just being a written article that we read out to the camera. So I think we managed to maintain the LTT Soul, while also authoritatively speaking based on Rock Solid data, about what you need to know about this product. I think we did a great job of figuring out where the RTX 4070 fits in both nvidia’s plan, as well as in sort of Gamers worlds. Um, I’m really really happy. The next level for us is to have supplementary written articles on lttlabs.com, but that’s we’ve got it in our sights. It doesn’t need to happen yet um.
I think there’s, I think, there’s room for us to go in more depth in the right medium for that kind of additional depth. But that is what I want a GPU review video to be what you need to know with good energy in a in a non-confusing way um, and I’m really glad that we did manage to nail it on the RTX 470, because there was a ton of room For us to get this one wrong, I think that we did a better job than we’ve done in the past of presenting both sides of the story. I think that during the GPU pricing crisis that took place during the pandemic, we we were kind of. I don’t know realists about the situation like yeah um. The only answer is wait and like sorry, but people didn’t like me saying, look, there’s nothing I can do about this. This is the way that it is and in the context of the market, as it is right now. This is a good deal or you know like I like I could. I could sit and complain about this, but it’s not going to do anything. People didn’t like sort of that defeatist sort of attitude um, but then we also can’t just whine yeah, that’s not constructive. It does absolutely nothing other than be fatiguing.
I understand for everyone, but it’s just yeah there’s there is genuinely nothing we can really do so. I feel like what we did better with the RTX 470. Is we empathize better um? There was. There was one video in particular, I can’t remember which one it was where we just we did.
We did kind of a a post-mortem on it and we went okay. Well, what did we get wrong here because we didn’t say anything that was actually incorrect, but people didn’t want to hear it and I’m reminded of that bit in Rick and Morty where Rick says something. I don’t remember what it is. Um and Morty basically says you know, yeah. No one cares if you’re right, because you’re right um and so we kind of looked at, we went yeah. This was this was a little bit, so it was a little too abrasive.
Like we’ve got ta. We’Ve got to take a more empathizing tone where we’re delivering the bad news: the 40 70. The bad news is that this is a super tepid GPU yeah um, but we’re finding a way to tell the good parts of the story and that in that it is the best value we’ve seen in a long time. So if you must have a GPU today, what kind of lame is that yeah? I guess you’re good to go um. So if you must have a GPU today, I guess it’s it’s. You know the best deal from Nvidia in in quite some time, but we’re tempering that with the reality that Nvidia shapes the GPU market and can make something a good deal or a bad deal anyway, there’s uh blah blah blah launched this week to deeply mixed reception.
Nvidia has been advertising it as a major jump uh, but I mean that’s only in games that support DLS says three frame generation. I that I I mean I’m calling it. I guess I I don’t think that’s ever going to take off in the competitive scene. I just don’t think it’s realistic, yeah, more latency, more bad, especially if you’re going to spend half of your time talking out of this side of your mouth marketing.
You know Nvidia reflex and you can’t spend the other half of your time talking out of this side of your mouth with. You know: dlss three, the beautification. As long as you’re talking to two very different Gamers, then I guess it’s okay, but for competition. Dlss3 is never going to matter for experiential games; it might get pretty okay um yeah, because without frame generation, it’s closer to a 1.3 X performance increase.
The new graphics card is also 100 more expensive than the previous gen card was at launch, despite the fact that discrete graphic sales have been dropping for over a year and hit a 20-year low last Financial quarter. Discussion question here is: what do the shrinking differences between graphics card generations mean for the future of the market? I mean longer upgrade Cycles, yeah longer upgrade cycles and I think um a shift from game developers towards targeting a lower spec right like we’re. Not I don’t think we’re ever going to see a crisis again c-r-y-s-i-s. I don’t think we’re ever going to see. I don’t think we’re gon na ever. Have that moment again where a game developer goes out of their way to create a game that literally nothing on the market can run, because why would you do that? You’D be so much better off targeting the steam deck yeah? You can create a pretty visually stunning game that will run on the steam deck and has this built-in audience of people sitting there on their handhelds going. What am I going to play on this thing? Now? Let’S go it’s it’s it’s! It’S the console mentality.
It’S! It’S totally different right. I also just I I think that’s been kind of the idea for quite a while. To be honest, like a long time yeah I mean look at the super popular games right now. The word we have for it is Esports titles yeah. It’S targeting Esports tier so basically making sure that it can run on anything and then adding some bells and whistles that realistically nobody’s gon na turn on anyway, because they want to compete, yeah and they’re on it’s.
It’S all like fortnite and stuff. Like I don’t know, yeah not difficult at all to run, there was a friend of mine who was shopping for a laptop recently and they’re, asking about like specs of dedicated gpus uh, and they mentioned like these are the games that I play I’m like yeah, you Don’T need a dedication, you don’t upgrade well, they they do need a laptop, but they don’t need a dedicated GPU in their laptop right because they don’t have a laptop right now. They need a laptop in general right. But like the games that the player like Little Indie titles, yeah speaking of vampire survivors, I’m pretty sure I could run that on onboard Graphics, yeah so like whatever it’s like that type of stuff and then uh original, like whatever it was 1999 EverQuest.
I’M like yeah that’ll, run fine, like whatever people are talking about cyberpunk some of the Sony ports. The difference is that crisis wasn’t just poorly optimized get around. It was also a Leap Forward, visually the likes of which we saw at times like Half-Life 2.
Wasn’T such a visual leap? It was more of just like uh, it was. It was a gameplay leap for sure. Um Doom from that era was what was it Doom, 3 or whatever the one at that time was, was like visually really cool when you catch a flashlight on um, like I’m, trying to think like what what was what was like, really really mind-blowing, I mean Far Cry blew my mind.
It was the first like next gen shooter of of the the big three at the time, which was your your Half-Life 2, your Doom 3 and your Far Cry, and no one saw it coming, came out of nowhere. That’S crytek again, I. I am not that familiar with stuff that came before, though, because I wasn’t really a PC Gamer other than just like 2D casual games. Until you know, ati’s 90 9000 Series the old 9000 Series when I got a discreet GPU like I didn’t, I played some stuff, but I wasn’t purchasing Hardware, so it was just like whatever the computers that my dad had could run um. Yes back, then it was like descent and like old school like Civ, one and stuff, like that, you know what cyberpunk has that Ray tracing overdrive mode? I guess I guess is that, but I almost I don’t know – maybe I’m maybe I’m looking at this wrong, but I don’t really see that as part of the base game, the same way that just like a graphic slider at release was like, where you’re, where it Came out targeting Hardware that didn’t exist, that’s why I said that that’s new yeah like it’s, it doesn’t seem fair, they’re, more trying to keep up um, but that’s not a bad, that’s not about happy they’re doing it yeah. I was also going to mention that everyone that I currently know that plays cyberpunk are people that also play like Star Citizen and whatever else, and you can tell like the reason why they like playing games is so they can make that GPU burn um and they They want like Super Hyper, visual realism and, like all this other type of stuff, not necessarily because they’re actually like enjoying the game right so they’re, basically a me or a jake yeah. They like setting things up and like seeing them run like morphologists. We we played Star Citizen with him – I he posted some screenshot but like wow cyberpunk’s amazing, because he turned on the new Ray tracing thing and I was like yep yep, not not surprised. That makes sense.
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