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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.'"
they need to handle more stuff happening on the screen.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... 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
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.
Aren't there are other areas of science that a faster GPU benefits namely structural biology and the modeling proteins?
Even ignoring that, the guy is a fucking idiot.
He seems to be confused about the function of a GPU- they are doing far more than simply pushing pixels onto the screen. Wake up buddy, this isn't a VGA card from the 90's. A modern GPU is doing a holy shitload of processing and post-processing on the rendered scene before it ever gets around to showing the results to the user. Seriously man, there's a reason why our games don't look as awesomely smooth and detailed and complex as a big budget animated film- it's because in order to get that level of detail, yes on that SAME resolution display, you need a farm of servers crunching the scene data for hours, days, etc. Until I can get that level of quality out of my desktop GPU, there will always be room for VERY noticeable performance improvement.
And it depends on what part of the eye you're talking about. The Rods (The detail-oriented parts of the eye) see at around 30Hz. The Cones (The black-and-white but higher light sensitivity and faster responding parts) see at around 70Hz. This is why CRT monitors were recommended to be set at 72Hz or higher to avoid eyestrain - at 60Hz the Rods couldn't see the flickering of the display, but the Cones could, and the disparity caused headaches (You could also see the effect if you looked at a 60Hz monitor through your peripheral vision - it appears to shimmer).
I do some work on the side for a hardware raytracing company and you're mostly right. Shameless plug: http://caustic.com./ And speaking as a VFX artist ray tracing is way easier. When you aren't cheating everything it becomes much simpler to get to "realistic". Global Illumination also goes a long way to help. I can take a game asset with textures and geometry and normal maps etc and render it with a raytracing engine and it looks dramatically better.
The problem with current technology is that there is something of a divide in performance. Present ray tracing technology is about 5x too slow to match a good rasterized game. You could deliver 10-20 fps at decent resolution with ray tracing but wouldn't get any noticeable benefit. To really get that silky smooth GI you need another 20-30x faster or so (even with a dedicated ray tracing chip).
The challenge then is to improve ray tracing chips fast enough to catch up to GPUs. I think in 3-4 years you'll see a number of games which deliver exceptional ray traced images. Rivaling film renders in real-time. But 3-4 years in spite of this author's nonsense is a long time in GPU technology. In the last 3-4 years we've seen tessellation, the first instances of GI and dynamic light reflections. These make a huge difference. They're total hacks but game developers can't sit still and as much of a pain as they are--they work. It would be more of a paint to rewrite their engines from scratch to take advantage of a whole new rendering pipeline.
The other challenge is that the reason many films look so good is because of 2D cheats in the composite. If you look at a raw render out of Arnold, Brazil, Renderman or Vray it's not really like what shows up on screen. There is a lot of sweetening, a lot of one-off lighting tricks in post and in the render which only look great from the one angle. Games have to look good from every angle. I don't know that they'll ever achieve that. They'll look more photographic but the ultra polish of a film comes from lighting TDs, cinematographers and compositors all working in tandem to polish a shot for days or weeks. If things just looked good from every direction all the time--the VFX work on a feature film would be dramatically reduced. So in that regard game developers are going to have it way harder than film people. Not only does it have to render at 60 fps... but you can't cheat detail. You have to make it look good from 300 yards as you drive your car down main street... all the way to jumping out and walking up to 2" away and reading the headline.