Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

pcworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 290 posts

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#131

Post by gs17 »

pegasus wrote: post #105
bilegeek wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason is that it would finally motivate game developers to be more realistic in their minimum hardware requirements, enabling games to be playable on onboard GPUs. They'll just move to remote rendering you'll have to subscribe to. Computers will stagnate as they are, and all new improvements will be reserved for the cloud providers. All hail our gracious overlords "donating" their compute time to the unwashed…

Is remote rendering a thing? I would have imagined the lag would make something like that impractical.

GeForce NOW is supposedly decent for a lot of games (depending on connection and distance to server), although if Nvidia totally left gaming they'd probably drop the service too.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#133

Post by nerdsniper »

mikepurvis wrote: post #129
sombragris wrote: post #33

I doubt that this would ever happen. But... If it does, I think it would be a good thing. The reason is that it would finally motivate game developers to be more realistic in their minimum hardware requirements, enabling games to be playable on onboard GPUs. Right now, most recent games (for example, many games built on Unreal Engine 5) are unplayable on onboard GPUs. Game and engine devs simply don't bother anymore…

They're not targeting high-end PCs. They're targeting current generation consoles, specifically the PS5 + 1080p. It just turns out that when you take those system requirements and put them on a PC—especially a PC with a 1440p or 2160p ultrawide—it turns out to mean pretty top of the line stuff. Particularly if as a PC gamer you expect to run it at 90fps and not the 30-40 that is typical for consoles.

Without disagreeing with the broad strokes of your comment, it feels like 4K should be considered standard for consoles nowadays - a very usable 4K HDR TV can be had for $150-500.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#134

Post by filleduchaos »

WackyFighter wrote: post #111
pegasus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is remote rendering a thing? I would have imagined the lag would make something like that impractical.

The lag is high. Google was doing this with stadia. A huge amount of money comes from online multiplayer games and almost all of them require minimal latency to play well. So I doubt EA, Microsoft, Activision is going to effectively kill those cash cows. Game streaming works well for puzzle, story-esque games where latency isn't an issue.

Hinging your impression of the domain on what Google (notoriously not really a player in the gaming world) tried and failed will not exactly give you the most accurate picture. You might as well hinge your impression of how successful a game engine can be on Amazon's attempts at it.

GeForce NOW and Xbox Cloud are much more sensible projects to look at/evaluate than Stadia.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#135

Post by gunalx »

georgefrowny wrote: post #86
sombragris wrote: post #33

I doubt that this would ever happen. But... If it does, I think it would be a good thing. The reason is that it would finally motivate game developers to be more realistic in their minimum hardware requirements, enabling games to be playable on onboard GPUs. Right now, most recent games (for example, many games built on Unreal Engine 5) are unplayable on onboard GPUs. Game and engine devs simply don't bother anymore…

One wonders what would happen in a SHtF situation or someone stubs their toe on the demolition charges switch at TSMC and all the TwinScans get minced. Would there be a huge drive towards debloating software to run again on random old computers people find in cupboards?

Until we end up spending trillions recreating the fab capacity of tsmc, they dont have a full monppoly (yet)

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#136

Post by keyringlight »

jaapz wrote: post #12

AMD will be very happy when they do. They are already making great cards, currently running an RX7800XT (or something like that), and it's amazing. Linux support is great too

Similar with nvidia, you've got to consider what partner companies AMD likes working with. AMD/nvidia design chips, contract TSMC to make them, then sell the chips to the likes of ASUS/MSI/gigabyte/etc to put them on cards the consumer buys. The other market AMD serves is Sony/MS for their consoles and I'd argue they're a major motivator driving radeon development as they pay up-front to get custom APU chips, and there's synergy there with Zen and more recently the AI demand. Ever since ATi bought up the company (ArtX) that made the Gamecube GPU it seems to me that the PC side is keeping the motor running in-between console contracts as far as gaming demands go, given their low market share they definitely don't seem to prioritize or depend on it to thrive.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#137

Post by filleduchaos »

woah wrote: post #85
forrestthewoods wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it would be a good thing. This is an insane thing to say. > Game and engine devs simply don't bother anymore to optimize for the low end All games carefully consider the total addressable market. You can build a low end game that runs great on total ass garbage onboard GPU. Suffice to say these gamers are not an audience that spend a lot of money on games. It’s totally fine and good to build premium content…

I always chuckle when I see an entitled online rant from a gamer. Nothing against them, it's just humorous. In this one, we have hard-nosed defense of free market principles in the first part worthy of Reagan himself, followed by a Marxist appeal for someone (who?) to "make hardware available at an affordable price!".

...what exactly about "make hardware available at an affordable price" is "Marxist"?

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#138

Post by iwontberude »

vachina wrote: post #118
sombragris wrote: post #33

I doubt that this would ever happen. But... If it does, I think it would be a good thing. The reason is that it would finally motivate game developers to be more realistic in their minimum hardware requirements, enabling games to be playable on onboard GPUs. Right now, most recent games (for example, many games built on Unreal Engine 5) are unplayable on onboard GPUs. Game and engine devs simply don't bother anymore…

You wish. Games will just be published cloud-only and you can only play them via thin clients.

This hurt my soul. Kudos.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#139

Post by iwontberude »

fxtentacle wrote: post #27

I don’t think they can. NVIDIA, like everyone else on a bleeding edge node, has hardware defects. The chance goes up massively with large chips like modern GPUs. So you try to produce B200 cores but some compute units are faulty. You fuse them off and now the chip is a GP102 gaming GPU. The gaming market allows NVIDIA to still sell partially defective chips. There’s no reason to stop doing that. It would only reduce…

Well the good thing for NVIDIA AI business is that most of your chips can sit unused in warehouses and still get rich. 6 million H100s sold but infrastructure (water cooled dc) for only a third of them exists in the world.
Post reply on HN