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Is the Gaming PC Dead?
An anonymous reader writes "Rahul Sood, HP's CTO of gaming, argues that the days of a market that wants PCs running three $500 GPUs is history; he argues that it's really a tough or impossible sell. '... let's face it, high-end hardware has delivered diminishing returns in terms of value. This is why you don't see ridiculous offerings like Quad SLI and 2-kilowatt power supplies coming from our company.' But don't the ideas of customization and market pricing for components tend to undercut that? Is the gaming PC dead?"
Until Netcraft confirms it, I won't believe it.
No, but I did throw granola at a deaf person once
Not to mention RTS games, simulators like MS Flight Sim, and fisrt-person shooters. All those games are much better on a PC.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Are there MMOs that require multiple $500 GPUs to run properly?
I thought the PC-MMO connection had to do with needing a keyboard to play effectively... nothing to do with the gaming rigs this article is talking about.
But I agree, the topic itself is lame.
I walk into a coffee shop with people using WiFi and chugging coffee. More than half of the people at these coffee shops are using Macs.
I hang out with my geek friends, most of them have switched to Ubuntu, but a couple of us are Debian hold outs. Many of us have completely given up Windows.
Everyone seems to be pissed off at Windows and Microsoft issues.
Game developers make everything for Windows. I used to be a gamer, when I switched to Linux I played games on Linux. Now the companies that used to make Linux Games (Hello Unreal 3!) have decided not to do it anymore because they're kissing Microsofts ass.
People aren't moving away from gaming rigs, game companies don't cater to gamers who are on the cutting edge - i.e. ditching Microsoft!
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was there ever a PC game that *required* more than one gfx card? no? didnt think so...
BTW, try playing GTA IV on the PC... for that crippled console port you need a 1.5k cluster farm of PCs
As before not too long ago, once the consoles start to show their age (which is round about this or next year) and neither Sony nor MS plan on revising theirs soon (they practically bankrupt themselves with them previously) ... PC gaming will rise from the ashes.
First there's the assumption that you have to have some really powerful PC for gaming. Uhhh, no. I know lots of people who game on mid range or lower end hardware. Heck right now one of my friends is in my living room, happily playing WoW on his Lenovo Thinkpad. It's no high end mega machine, just a normal mid range business laptop with a reasonable graphics card (8600M I think).
However the bigger issue is one that these high end rigs DO exist and sell... Just not from HP. There's tow reasons for that:
1) Many people who buy those sort of computers want to build their own. I would fall in that category. While I don't buy latest and greatest all the time, I have a pretty high end system. It is also all built from parts. No OEM was involved. I like customizing my system, and I've the knowledge to do so.
2) A bigger reason in their case is that HP blows at consumer systems. You'll note that companies like Falcon Northwest DO sell high end (often ridiculously so) gaming PCs. HP's problem is they have a reputation for cheap crap, a well deserved reputation in my opinion and I do computer support professionally so I feel it is an informed opinion. They load their PCs full of shit you don't want, use second rate hardware, have poor warranty support, have an amazingly bad download site (anyone who has an HP printer knows) and seem to fail more frequently than our other brands at work. Is it any wonder high end gamers are not interested?
I find this "Gaming PCs are dead," to be a really stupid idea. Oh really? Then who the hell is buying all this stuff targeted at them? Who is buying GTX 280s, Logitech G15s, Razer Mice? Offices? Not likely. Further who is buying all the games? Best Buy has a whole isle devoted to PC games. That's about as much shelf space as they devote to any single console. Now retail space is expensive. You REALLY think they are doing that just to have them sit there and not sell? You think if they really didn't move that they wouldn't just be special order items? Not hardly. Their beancounters know math. They aren't devoting the shelf space to it because it doesn't move.
Sounds to me like he's mad that gamers don't want to buy the crap HP pushes. Well I tell you what, I'll give you the magic formula that'll make gamers buy:
Make a system that has the latest technology from trusted manufacturers, put it in an attractive functional case, don't install a ton of crapware on it, and charge a reasonable price. Done. Gamers will buy that shit. You keep selling crap boxes, well don't expect to get much gamer market.
Ah. Now I'm reminded of why I don't have too many geek friends. They're obsessed with their operating systems more than what they can do with them. :)
I think the problem is not just higher production costs, but that the games themselves cannot take advantage of having 3 or more GPUs. The diminishing returns of having more than 1 GPU fall off harshly after adding the 2nd GPU.
I think that if the GPUs delivered better scalability across multiple units you would see higher end setups. I believe this is a software issue, so if 3 GPUs don't yield much increase in performance people won't bother. It's the old adage of software driving the hardware, and not vice versa.
FWIW, I have dual Dell 3007s with an 8800GTX attached to it. The main reason I got the GPU was for my main game, City of Heroes. It sort of chugs along between 20-40 fps with all eye candy on, and if the GTX280 delivered a lot more performance I would have upgraded to that too. As it stands, City of Heroes does not benefit from a second GPU so adding another 8800GTX does nothing for me. Otherwise I would have done that in a heartbeat if I could double my performance. Unfortunately NCSoft doesn't make City of Heroes very compatible with all the eye candy for ATi cards or I'd have gone 4870x2.
Now that I'm playing Left 4 Dead as well, I might get an improved setup since the game is not very playable at 2560x1600 with the 8800GTX solo. I turn it down to 1920x1200 non anti-aliased to get 40-50 fps. I'll probably holding out for a GTX295 with dual GPUs on a single card since my motherboard only does AMD/ATI crossfire and not nVidia SLI, or maybe the next generation single GPU setup.
This is on a Core2 quad running at 3 GHz and 8GB RAM, which isn't too far off the mark of what HP's CTO is complaining is a 'tough or impossible sell'. If the performance of a triple GPU monster actually gave a decent return on performance over a single or dual GPU setup, I believe a decent set of gamers would buy it.
However, most people who are into the top tier of gaming performance also have their own preferences to any gear, and wouldn't pick a whole system from a single vendor, especially HP. I think that segment of the market likes to tweak and build their own boxes in order to get the biggest bang for the buck.
They didn't say PC gaming was dead. They said the gaming PC was dead.
The implication is very, very different. One means nobody is gaming on PCs any more - and that's very clearly wrong. The other means that few people are churning vast sums into making dedicated PCs just for gaming - and that quite likely is true.
I still game on my PC, but I'm one of many who have completely stopped customising my PC for the ultimate gaming performance, because it simply isn't worth the expense any more. I do most of my gaming on other platforms, and the games that do get played on my PC aren't really ones that benefit much from a mega powerhouse anyway.
So yes, the dedicated gaming PC is dead - or at least, in its death throes if you ask me. But PC gaming won't be going away any time soon. We'll just be gaming on the same type of machines we're using for work, mucking around with our photos and video editing, etc. etc.
X-Wing isn't a flight sim. Try jumping out of a 50 story window with your arms spread out, and make engine noises (your choice of plane) as you plummet to earth. Talk about hi-resolution (for a while).
Windows isn't built for more than one core CPU
The Windows NT kernel was doing SMP when trying to run Linux on an SMP boxes was experimental and very immature, I should know I tested both back then. The problem isn't the OS, it's the way games are designed. If game developers did things like split off AI, physics, networking, etc into their own threads you would likely see some improvement on multicore systems (though you would have to evaluate message passing overhead vs extra resource availability). The fact is game development for almost all shops is a lower margin business so it's just not worth it to them to add the development and testing complexity.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Yeah! That stupid game won't run well at merely double the resolution of 1080p on mainstream hardware. God forbid.