video card how many years ago? Should I spend more?

Here at Adrenaline we run a lot of testing to help people buy devices, but sometimes users overestimate our ability and ask us to predict the future. These are questions likeDo you hold this X card for three years? “or”If I spend on this Y, can I run everything on Ultra until the next generation of consoles?“We cannot answer it, because, unfortunately, we still do not have a future world in service.

However, at the same time, we have a very large collection of old cards and also a test of knowledge. If we can’t predict the future, we can at least try to map the past. Often the key phrase “video card for six years‘Let’s work with that value and see how that time span has passed for a bunch of graphics cards, both My God What is the price nvidia, of multiple price segments, run some analog games every year to see how well they’ve performed so far. So, from 2015!

Boards tested

We will be using four video cards from each brand, using the launch price as a reference and seeking to match direct competitors. The guinea pigs that will launch us in 2015 are:

$649 – Top of the Line
AMD Radeon R9 Fury X – Released June 2015 – Analytics
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti – Released June 2015 – Analytics

$329 – High End
AMD Radeon R9 390 – Released June 2015 – Analytics
Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 – Released September 2014 – Analytics

$199 – Medium
AMD Radeon R9 380 – Released June 2015 – Analytics
Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 4GB – Released January 2015 – Analytics

$149 – Entry
AMD Radeon R7 370 – Released June 2015 – Analytics
Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 – Released August 2015 – Analytics

The graphics in this article will be a little different from what we usually do. Instead of all devices being in the same graphical configuration, We modify all of them for 60fps. With colors, we’ll make these differences easier to visualize, with blue to indicate the ultra-high composition, green at the top, medium at yellow and low at red. Purple indicates that the card simply failed to complete the test.

2015

– Continues after announcement –

2016

2017

– Continues after announcement –

2018

2019

2020

2021

conclusion

Spending more on your card will, yes, buy more time

Some things become clear when we look at the progress of the tests. The first is, yes, spending more on a graphics card will not only give you higher quality graphics right away, but it will also make it viable for playing at better settings over the years. High-end cards only need mid-range tweaks from year 4 onwards, something that’s quite packed into the new generation of consoles in 2020. The other group that did well were high-end cards – the Radeon R9 390 and GTX 970 were more than 2/ 3 of the time they run the games in high or super quality.

In the entry and middle segment, the situation is more complicated. The GTX 950 and R7 370 ran with difficulty in most tests and even reached a level unplayable Even with very low graphics quality and resolution. On the other hand, brokers spent half the time in medium or high quality, but they started to suffer a lot from the third year onwards, increasingly needing to use the medium or low fee beforehand. This is very evident in the graph below, where we have compiled the settings used on each card over the course of the 13 games we tested:

Looking at this graph, the result would probably be: I will spend as much as I can to get six years of playing any game. But we think one last piece of information is missing. As we’ve shown many infographics so far, here’s one last. Here is the official launch price for these products in dollars:

When we look at the cost curve, high-end models usually show a giant leap over a quality product—much more than a mid-range entry card or a mid-range card to a high-end card. Analyzing the two graphics together, the GeForce GTX 970 and Radeon R9 390 chipset seem to be the best long-term strategies, maintaining roughly 2/3 of the performance of FullHD/Ultra and costing much less than the higher-end ones.

It’s good to remember that we use heavy games as a reference, including the high-demand versions. The GTX 960 or R9 380 card can more easily handle the release of competitive games, for example, that require lower graphics performance. Another factor to consider is the devaluation of a high-quality card.

The balance of price and durability makes mid-range / high-quality cards the most interesting

If all the data and trends are preserved in the future, it is beyond our reach to know if it will happen, it is always good to remember, today models with these characteristics are cards such as the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti up to the RTX 3070 Ti by Nvidia, the Radeon RX 6700 XT and 6800 by AMD. Or, at least, they would be in the realm of normal prices, closer to what manufacturers suggest. Unfortunately, it will be up to the consumer to research the values ​​and price evolution curve to find the “ideal point” in this balance between how much they will spend and how long they will be able to play at a good level of quality.