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GPUs Keep Getting Faster, But Your Eyes Can't Tell
itwbennett writes "This brings to mind an earlier Slashdot discussion about whether we've hit the limit on screen resolution improvements on handheld devices. But this time, the question revolves around ever-faster graphics processing units (GPUs) and the resolution limits of desktop monitors. ITworld's Andy Patrizio frames the problem like this: 'Desktop monitors (I'm not talking laptops except for the high-end laptops) tend to vary in size from 20 to 24 inches for mainstream/standard monitors, and 27 to 30 inches for the high end. One thing they all have in common is the resolution. They have pretty much standardized on 1920x1080. That's because 1920x1080 is the resolution for HDTV, and it fits 20 to 24-inch monitors well. Here's the thing: at that resolution, these new GPUs are so powerful you get no major, appreciable gain over the older generation.' Or as Chris Angelini, editorial director for Tom's Hardware Guide, put it, 'The current high-end of GPUs gives you as much as you'd need for an enjoyable experience. Beyond that and it's not like you will get nothing, it's just that you will notice less benefit.'"
Aren't there are other areas of science that a faster GPU benefits namely structural biology and the modeling proteins?
-- Jim
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they need to handle more stuff happening on the screen.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Make it draw less power!
Mr. America walk on by your schools that do not teach Mr. America walk on by the minds that won't be reached
-Multimonitor gaming
-3D gaming (120 Hz refresh rate or higher)
-4K gaming
keep em coming, and keep em affordable!
One thing they all have in common is the resolution.
So 2560x1440 and 2560x1600 27"s only exist in my imagination?
... can certainly tell. The more onscreen objects there are the more slowdown there is. This is why I like sites like HardOCP that look at MIN and MAX framerates during a gameplay session. No one cares that a basic non-interactive timedemo gets 100's of frames a second, they are concerned with the framerate floor during actually playing the game.
In cutting edge games, FPS still suffers even at low resolutions.
Many users are going to multi-monitor setups to increase their visualization and even cutting edge graphics cards cannot handle gaming at 1920x1080 x 3 display setups on taxing games or applications (e.g. Crysis).
For games, GPU's have to process 3D geometry, light, shadows, etc. Number of pixels is not the only factor. This is so lame.
Sig? Heil
8K resolution, 120hz. Nuff said.
That statement makes the rash assumption that GPUs will somehow continue to grow in speed and complexity while everything around them remains static. What about stereoscopic displays which would double the required number of pixels to be rendered for the equivalent of a 2d image? What about HMDs like the forthcoming Oculus Rift, which over time will need to continue pushing the boundaries of higher resolution displays? Who on earth is thinking that the display industry is thinking "whelp, that's it! we've hit 1080p! we can all go home now, there's nothing left to do!" ? 1080p on a 24 inch display is nowhere close to the maximum PPI we can perceive at a normal desktop viewing distance, why is that the boundary? Why are 24" displays the end? Yes, improving technology has diminishing returns. That's nothing groundbreaking, and using that to somehow suggest that we have peaked in terms of usable GPU performance is just downright silly.
If you're talking 2D desktop-type computing (surfing, emails, writing documents etc) the point of this article has already been true for at least a decade.
If you're talking 3D hardware rendering (most usually gaming), there is no such thing as enough GPU power, as its also about consistently achieving the highest framerates your monitor can handle, while having every eye-candy setting maxxed out on the latest AAA games, which are mostly already developed to get the most out of the current and next generation hardware. Its a moving goalpost on purpose.
Get some volunteers, let them play on a machine with an old GPU and a machine with a new one. If they can tell which is which, then apparently our eyes can see the difference. I'd be curious to see the result.
A GPU is no longer a Graphics Processing Unit, it's a general purpose DSP usable for tasks that have simple logic that must done in a massively parallel fashion. No, I'm actually not talking about mining bitcoins or specialty stuff, I'm talking about things like physics engines.
On the other hand, they are still WAY behind the curve measured by the "My screen isn't 4xAA RAYTRACED yet" crowd.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Now maybe we can have gameplay and originality again.
"There is considerable debate over what is the limit of the human eye when it comes to frame rate; some say 24, others say 30,"
That's what is studied and discussed as as the lower limit to trick people into thinking it is in motion. I believe there are other studies where they have used pilots as test subjects where they could spot an object between 1/270 a second and 1/300 a second. In addition, there's another study that our brain (and perhaps eyes) can be trained by watching movies/tv to be more relaxed and accept lower frame rates such as 24 as fluid, or higher. Different careers can have an impact as we are exposed to different things visually.
Additionally frame latency can continue to be driven down (with diminishing returns) with higher performing cards even if the frame rate stays constant.
I'm not excited about the "next" generation of cards because they'll be able to maintain a solid framerate at higher resolutions (I haven't been for almost ten years), I'm excited because they'll contain more and faster programmable shader units. That's where the magic sauce happens, and the more shader power you have the more awesome stuff you can do. And as other people pointed out, they're incredibly useful for a wide range of applications outside of pure graphics processing.
If your dropping 300 - 1k for a high end video card why would you be driving a 150 buck 1080p monitor off it? 2560x1600 monitors are 350 ish with decent ips panels.
I'm running 3 32 inch 2560x1600 panels on my primary desktop and still want more pixels.
No sir I dont like it.
I like high framerates and can see the difference, and there are other ways to spend the bandwidth and processing time, like color depth. 24bit is still quite limiting compared to 'real life' color gamut.. Of course, in order to be of benefit, we need displays capable of 'real life' color gamut, and normalizing even a 30bit depth on today's monitors is pointless.
Another place GPU is (ab)used is with antialiasing and post process effects, which many like. I dislike antialiasing because it causes me eye strain with the slightly blurrier image. I'd rather live with the jaggies and have higher framerate. Same with the 'blur' and bloom effects now abused by modern titles. Enough already. It's not 'realistic' in the slightest to have all that blown out color in post processing. Example titles include battlefield 4, bioshock infinite, batman arkham origins, and the codemasters' racing games, though there are plenty of others.
Wow, how can something so stupid get chosen as a post? Seriously. Even at 1080p, even the high end GPUs fall below 60fps on the most demanding games out there. People to buy high-end GPUs often do so to pair them up with 3 1080p monitors, or a 1440p monitor, or even a 1600p monitor. In fact, these people need to buy 2 to 4 of these top-end GPUs to drive that many pixels and triangles.
I would like my 2560x1600 display to update at more than 60hz if possible...
There is absolutely no reason to have 1080p as a "standard" max resolution. 5 years ago I got a nice Princeton 24", 1920 x 1200 monitor at a good price. And I expected resolution to keep going up from there, as it always had before. Imaging my surprise when 1920 x 1200 monitors became harder to find, as manufacturers settled on the lower "standard" of 1920 x 1080 and seemed to be refusing to budge.
It's great and all that a 1080p monitor will handle 1080p video. BUT... when it does, there is no room for video controls, or anything else, because it's in "full screen" mode, which has limitations. I can play the same video on my monitor, using VLC, and still have room for the controls and other information, always on-screen.
Now certain forces seem to want us to "upgrade" to 4k, which uses an outrageous amount of memory and hard drive space, super high bandwidth cables, and is more resolution than the eye can discern anyway unless the screen is absolutely huge AND around 10 feet away.
Whatever happened to the gradual, step-wise progress we used to see? I would not in the least mind having a 26" or 27", 2560 x 1440 monitor on my desk. That should have been the next reasonable step up in monitor resolution... but try to find one from a major manufacturer! There are some on Ebay, mostly from no-names, and most of them are far more expensive than they should be. They should be cheaper than my 24" monitor from 5 years ago. But they aren't. Everything else in the computer field is still getting better and cheaper at the same time. But not monitors. Why?
only 60? pff, 120 please..
Most games are written for the Lowest Common Denominator, that is, Game Consoles.
Hopefully PC games will be 'allowed' to improve when the next generation of console becomes standard.
Until, when I look at a video game on my screen and look at a live action TV show and can't tell the difference, there is room for improvement. Perhaps the improvement needs to come from the game developers, but there is still room and I do not believe we have hit the pinacle of GPU performance.
By the way, 4K will replace 1080p very soon, so the article is doubly moot.
Price?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Oooh. Shiny!
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Really? GPU's are being used more and more for more than just graphics processing. Many interesting parallel processing problems are being off loaded to GPU's where they are number crunching on hundreds of cores much faster than can be done on your main CPU. See http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home_new.html for one such set of libraries for Nvidia cards.
So WHO CARES if you cannot see the difference in what gets displayed. There is a LOT more going on.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
1080p on a 27" screen? Those are some pretty big pixels! Actually my 27" iMac has far higher res than that, though still looks a little fuzzy after using my "retina" laptop screen. I hope to see these 300-ish ppi values reaching 27" screens sometime soon, and that's what these GPUs will need to be fast for. Unlike a TV set, which is viewed from a distance, a monitor is used much closer, so higher res is a very obvious benefit.
If there is a widely accepted standard, there is a guaranteed customer base. 4K is the next logical plateau since it is gaining traction as the next broadcast standard (although NHK is pushing for 8K!).
There are only two suppliers of flat panels, Samsung and Sharp (and Sharp isn't looking good financially). If you ask them to make a common, but not wildly common resolution, it will cost much more.
In two years, you will be able to buy a 4K monitor for the same price as a 1080p screen, and all new video cards will support it.
640kHz is a really fast frame rate.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
So that's lower resolution than the 12 year old, 22.2" IBM T220? Yeah, it's mind-blowing all right. Where did it all go so horribly wrong?
The game we've chosen for this test is Dwarf Fortress
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
1080p @ 120 Hz with V-Sync OFF for multiplayer FPS is the gold standard on my GTX Titan.
you need to buy a bigger monitor .
You don't need a GPU at all. A screen is 2Mpixels. Refreshing that about 60 times per second is enough to create the illusion of fluid motion for most humans. So that's only 120Mpixels per second. Any modern CPU can do that!
Why do you have a GPU? Because it's not enough to just refresh the pixels. You need (for some applications, e.g. gaming) complex 3D calculations to determine which pixels go where. And in complex scenes, it is not known in advance what objects will be visible and which ones (or part) will be obscured by other objecs. So instead of doing the complex calculations to determine what part of what object is visible, it has been shown to be faster to just draw all objects, but to check on drawing each pixel which object is closer, the already drawn object or the currently being drawn object.
When I can have 32fps full screen animation of real-time zoom into a fractal I might be satisfied. Till then I will politely suggest that the premise is flawed...
I remember when the manufacturers of speakers believed that humans couldn't sense audio information below 30Hz. There are still arguments about whether human beings can discern 100,000 colors or 10million. (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/JenniferLeong.shtml)
Oh, and don't forget that people really can't tell the difference between a 128-bit MP3 and one at 320-bit. And those who tell you that vinyl sounds better? Or that there's a difference between audio recorded digitally and audio recorded using analog processes. Pfft.
Please. The new GPUs are about more than just framerate.
I'm kind of surprised that a supposedly technologically sophisticated site like Slashdot feels the need to repeat these "We've reached the limits!" stories that always, without exception, turn out to be wrong."
And by the way, I think 128k is plenty of RAM for any computer user. Of course, you could stuff more than that into a computer, but do we really need to?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've seen side-by-side comparisons at SONY stores. This applies to monitors 4 feet or larger. 4K is 2x in each direction and 4x overall. There is not a lot of true 4K programming out there however. More movies are being filmed in 4K. No real plans to braodcast at the resolution in the US.
I know there are many other posts that are saying the same but regardless: bullshit. Polygon counts CAN get better, texture resolution CAN get better, detail quality CAN get better, particle counts CAN get better. And that's while keeping the same "classic" rasterizing concept. If you move into the raytracing world, there's plenty of space for improvement.
Cuda, OpenCL and PhysX would tend to disagree about that statement.
I'm pretty sure there's still room for improvement in framerate on a 6 4K monitor setup.
Besides, technology has a tendency to trickle down, like F1 Racing technology from years ago is used in today's Fords and GMs, My cellphone blows the doors off a 2003 computer, heck, my Dollar-store calculator is probably faster than a 1995 supercomputer.
Besides, ATI and nVidia fighting off brings us cheaper and more silent GPUs...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Your eyes might not gain much benefit, but your dog's flicker fusion threshold is somewhere up to 80Hz. How's Fido supposed to enjoy TF2 at your paltry 60Hz refresh?
But can it run Crysis?
First, 1080p is nice from 12 feet away watching a movie, but sucks when 2 feet away on a 24" monitor.
I game using a trio of Dell 30" panels connected to an AMD 7970HD card, and frankly with 12 million pixels being pushed, it still needs MSAA to not look like crap to me. I can see the pixels, they stick out perfectly fine to my eyes.
4K panels can't get here fast enough, and frankly it will take 8K panels to really close the gap with our eyes. The amount of GPU power required to drive 3x panels at that resolution (24 million pixels) is impressive and we aren't there yet.
Second, even if resolution wasn't going up, there are "pixels" and then there are "pixels". Do you want to play DOOM at 1080P? Great, any 5 year old card can do that. Do you want to play CoD Ghosts at 1080P? A 5 year old card might well have a struggle with that.
The PS3 could do 1080P out of the box, if that was "good enough", then why does the PS4 have FAR better graphics at the same resolution?
The problem here is not the resolution but the stupidity of software not being able to scale on a high resolution display.
I also have excellent eye-sight but reach for the browser 'zoom' functionality more often than I would like on my high res work display. *sigh*
Even at 1920x1080 they still haven't achieved photorealism for gaming, and yes it get's better, but if you look at the latest BF4 trailers, those video's are done with triple highend GPU's, and even those seem to be rather smooth and lifelike, they still need a lot of extra detail to make it even more realistic, and it will still take a few years before we have GPU's in the what we call 'mainstream' (100-200 euro for a videocard). Upping the resolution for gaming isn't really usefull (except maybe on larger monitors (27" and up) as with higher resolutions more powerfull GPU's are needed to 'fill' the extra resolution.. We've still got a long road ahead to get lifelike facial animations (yes even though the nvidia demo's looked awesome, but those were only one face and everything dedicated to that face, will be a different matter if you have a crowd)..
The current high-end of GPUs gives you as much as you'd need for an enjoyable experience. Beyond that and it's not like you will get nothing, it's just that you will notice less benefit.
Pushing pixels is not the be-all and end-all of GPUs. A faster GPU can compute more shadows, more reflections, caustics, subsurface scattering and all those other beautiful things that are slowly pushing us out of the uncanny valley.
Or as Chris Angelini, editorial director for Tom's Hardware Guide, put it, 'The current high-end of GPUs gives you as much as you'd need for an enjoyable experience. Beyond that and it's not like you will get nothing, it's just that you will notice less benefit.'
Or as Bill Gates may or may not have said, "640k ought to be enough for everyone."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Is he really not taking into account the ever-increasing requirements of games? Doesn't matter how fast your GPU *was*, when the next wave of AAA games comes out, you *will* be able to tell the difference, and you'll be hurting for a new one if you want to keep running with maxed out settings. Happens every time.
What about the need to play them on crazy things like 2560x1440 IPS displays? Or other uses like scientific calculations, video compositing, or bitcoin mining? You'll want all the GPU muscle you can get.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Why are the practical alternatives to deferred shading?
Regardless of which methods you use, you've gotta sacrifice something. Forward rendering doesnt do so well with lots of dynamic lights, deferred shading doesn't do so well with lots of materials, and deferred lighting doesn't do so well with lots of geometry.
"His name was James Damore."
Does anybody else hate the 1920x1080 "standard" resolution? It seems to be the only thing available now. At least give me 1200 vertical pixels...
No, I'm not spending that much on video cards actually. I've never spent more than $160 on one if I recall correctly. This is precisely the effect of the point of the OP - you don't need all that for gaming. The so-called "mid range" cards quite sufficient for gaming on any size monitor nowadays.
Regardless of whether we can see fine grained detail, reality looks pretty good through our vision because of all of the neat stuff that happens with photons that bounce off of stuff or are absorbed by other stuff (stuff being a technical term). With fast GPUs, just because we're near the limits of our eyes to make out detail in resolution, does not mean we are at the limits of rendering an image, whether simulating real visual phenomenon (HDR, subsurface scattering etc) or some newly created means of processing a visual output of some form. Faster GPUs mean more time to process such imagery for different effects, and even possibly realtime raytracing or radiosity in the near future. Even televisions from the 1980s look good in terms of reality detail when watching a television signal and they weren't particularly high res. So a gain in GPU power means a better looking image despite what detail our eyes can make out, and our eyes can make out quite a bit of detail. Combine that with high res screens, and you still get more cycles per second to handle transformation and lighting (for 3D) and post process your output. A good thing in all. Besides, when we start using a 64 bit colour space at the consumer level, we're going to need all that processing power to handle a finer detail of colours with 16 (or 32 bits) per channel colour when the screens can handle that. What about when GPUs are used as part of the processing pipeline in creating artificial eyes for the blind? We'll need GPU processing power then, seeing as our wonderful organic mechanisms for processing visual information do so with information messaging that runs at roughly 50 m/s, and we've got to be able to match that with information messaging that operates at nearly the speed of light through a semiconductor. GPU power and DSPs will likely be what gives us the ability to give (artificial) sight to the blind. I say that's a worthy goal. So there's plenty of reasons for faster GPUs that go beyond what we can see. They may help someone else who can't.
We need at least 60 fps constantly to experience a normal sense of motion. GPUs need to keep getting better because very few of them are able to *maintain* 60fps in modern games when scenes become more complex in certain areas. We also need to look ahead to 4K gaming which no graphics card currently can handle at acceptable framerates. http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html
There is a lot of need for faster cards, and for developers to start making use of the processing abilities of these cards in their games. I'm looking at you MMOs! ( One genre which still makes heavy use of the CPU). Now if the author had said that in gaming the CPU's speed is becoming irrelevant to frame rate, I would tend to agree. http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html
-Gel214th
It sounds like the side scroller dude didn't know much about OpenGL then. It supports putting 2D images on the screen. Anything from full 2D game like Super Mario, to playing 2D animated sprites in a 3D world (3D modeled ship explodes with 2D fireball). I suppose if you selected a poorly made 3D engine that did not implement all the features of your 3D api, then that will give you problems.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
players have to know that when the press "x" they will get the same result.
That's sort of hard to do when every console puts "x" in a different place.
Some games use "frames" only as a discrete time unit for game simulation. Tetris the Grand Master series is tightly coupled to a 60 Hz update rate. Players expect that rotation, sideways motion, and downward motion happen in that order each frame to make "synchro" moves (slide moves that combine rotation with sideways autorepeat) work correctly. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is tied to frames as well. Game simulation frames happen at a steady 60 fps; if rendering lags, some game simulation frames just don't get rendered.
If, however, it simply isn't possible to cater to people who I need as customers if my environment has 500 NPC armies clashing
If a 1.8 MHz, 1-core, 8-bit NES can have 22 guys on the field in Tecmo Bowl, then why can't a 1.8 GHz, 2+-core, 64-bit PC have 22,000 guys on the field?
this is compounded by the fact that a lot of web developers are still making content that assumes we're back in the age of non-widescreen monitors
It appears a lot of web designers design their layouts for an 8:9 display with close to 960x1080 pixels. Snap one browser window to half of your screen and something else to the other half.
Actually, you'll find working at that DPI to be easier on the eyes than the current ~100DPI on a standard screen, assuming the text, images, and UI elements are scaled up to be a reasonable size. The reason is text and such will be rendered with more pixels and will give a much smoother and clean appearance than the jagged appearance with current screens, even with tricks like subpixel rendering. There is a reason why 400DPI+ is the standard for printed text, which is pretty much unheard of when it comes to computer screens.
Obviously the software isn't there yet, which does make some interesting times for the early adapters, but until something changes we're not going to get out of the current rut that we seem to be stuck in since LCD went mainstream.
I wonder if you could do triple buffering but only render 2 frames and then have the gpu create a 2d composite frame of the 2 in the frame buffer to sandwich inbetween the frames. You would probably be able to double your perceived framerate while not increasing load too much. Would essentially get the benefits of motion blur.
So what's the best practice for a web site to use all 116em* of a 1920x1200 monitor's active width without making the main text column wider than the 30-36em** that's best for readability?
* Assuming the default font size of 16px per em, minus 2em for scrollbars and 2em for outer margins.
** Assuming the 80-character line length and just over 2 characters per em.
Or at least, he shouldn't be writing tech articles. To say that extra rendering power is only for higher resolution and framerate totally misses the point.
Despite continuing gains in performance, current graphics cards remain woefully underpowered for truly photo-realistic rendering.