Buzz
Humorously speaking, the GPU trend of 2021 could be summed up as... non-existent, as every product was prohibitively expensive due to the semiconductor shortage and the cryptocurrency craze, dissuading most from investing in new graphics cards for gaming.
Good news, it only took a few months into 2022 for the cryptocurrency market to collapse along with a significant decrease in PC market demand, following the surge in home office computer purchases due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, both the supply and prices of gaming graphics cards have shifted positively, sometimes even cheaper than the recommended retail prices from manufacturers.
Well, AMD and Intel both unveiled products like the RX 6500 XT and Arc A380 last year to compete for the huge market share that GTX 1650 currently dominates. However, they all have their undeniable drawbacks.
The RX 6500 XT is essentially a laptop GPU, supporting fewer display outputs. If used on motherboards with PCIe standard 3.0 slots, its performance is significantly impacted as the connection pins are only x4 instead of x16.
As for Intel's Arc A380, its ability to encode video in AV1 standard is remarkable, serving content creators or streamers exceptionally well. At the same bitrate threshold, livestream clips have much better quality compared to VP9. Unfortunately, like every other Intel Arc product, the drivers restrain the power of the A380.Are Thousand-Dollar GPUs the New Standard?
In the complete opposite extreme of the GPU market are the high-end products, the most powerful performers in the market. There was a time when GPUs priced in four digits were disregarded by most. Why spend on GTX or RTX Titans when we could get RTX xx70 or xx80 for a fraction of the price, yet deliver 70 to 80% of Titan's power?Neither the mid-range nor the near-high-end products of both Ada Lovelace and RDNA 3 architectures have emerged yet, while the world's most powerful graphics cards like the RTX 4090 or RX 7900 XTX are being sold at significantly higher prices than the previous generation's flagships.
There's a very objective reason for this reality, that is, as chip processes shrink and the distance between transistors gets closer, the cost of semiconductor die production increases. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has also been straightforward, stating that processor chip prices will only rise from now on, not decrease.FSR vs DLSS
DLSS has been around for almost 4 years now alongside the RTX 20 series graphics cards. But this year, the real competition between the two image upscaling technologies, Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR, has truly brought about new breakthroughs, genuinely benefiting gaming systems in terms of both resolution and frame rate.FSR 2.0, AMD's algorithmic enhancement and image quality upgrade, perhaps deserves the most praise this year. Of course, compared to DLSS 2, FSR 2.0 still lags behind in graphics quality, especially in object details. However, unlike DLSS, FSR runs on every graphics card, even those from other manufacturers, especially products like the GTX 1060, which lack tensor cores for DLSS support.
On the other hand, Nvidia makes another leap in AI application solutions for entertainment graphics with DLSS 3. Combining tensor cores and the Optical Flow Accelerator processing unit, graphics cards can interpolate new frames based on available data, boosting frame rates without burdening both the CPU and the GPU's streaming microprocessor.But the fact that FSR supports both old and new graphics cards from Nvidia and Intel alone is enough to rate AMD's technology higher than DLSS 3, as currently only two graphics cards allow users to utilize DLSS 3 and Frame Generation features.EVGA Halts Production
The reason many PC component enthusiasts admire the US-based brand EVGA is quite simple. The failure rate of their products, as well as the durability of the graphics cards EVGA designs and assembles, has always been highly regarded by the gaming community. Therefore, the surprising news CEO Andrew Han announced, that EVGA would completely halt its production of Nvidia graphics cards, is perhaps the most notable shock of the year.
After the RTX 3090 Ti, there will be no more EVGA-branded graphics cards hitting the market. CEO Han candidly admitted that Nvidia has not maintained communication with EVGA in their OEM component assembly partnership. Even the launch dates and prices of new graphics cards are unknown to EVGA until we all tune into the livestream product introduction events, with no prior briefing like other companies receive.Another reason lies in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the semiconductor chip shortage. Market analysts have pointed out that the profit margins of graphics card assembly units are sharply declining, mainly due to the high production costs of input sources, leading to affected prices. EVGA could be more severely impacted than Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte because they cannot internally produce as many components within a graphics card.
EVGA will continue to manufacture power supplies and various other PC components, but there's no plan yet to return to the graphics card arena, whether for Intel or AMD.Farewell to the King, GTX 1060
The overthrow of the GTX 1060 from its throne as the king of the PC gaming industry has finally succeeded. From mid-2017 to October 2022, according to Steam's PC configuration statistics, the GTX 1060 consistently held the top spot.
However, the top 10 most popular GPUs on the planet, according to Steam's statistics, are still mid-range and budget graphics cards, from the GTX 1650 to the RTX 3050 and 3060. This demonstrates that the market trends and choices have not changed much over the past few years.That being said, the GTX 1060 at 1080p resolution still remains a perfect graphics card for casual gaming needs, where graphic quality isn't a major concern, or for serving gamers playing CS:GO, Valorant, DOTA 2, and League of Legends without complaints, especially the 6GB VRAM version.
In November, unofficial reports surfaced suggesting Nvidia ceased production of new models of RTX 2060 and GTX 1060, focusing on the Ampere and Ada Lovelace architectures. With such a long-lasting and public-pleasing 'reign', it's only fitting to bid farewell to the 'king' now.According to ArsTechnica
