This article goes much deeper than I expected, and is a nice recap of the last few years of "green" gpu drama.
Liars or not, the performance has not been there for me in any of my usecases, from personal to professional.
A system from 2017/2018 with an 8700K and an 8GB 2080 performs so closely to the top end, expensive systems today that it makes almost no sense to upgrade at MSRP+markup unless your system is older than this.
Unless you need specific features only on more recent cards, there are very few use cases I can think of needing more than a 30 series card right now.
> The RTX 50 series are the second generation of NVIDIA cards to use the 12VHPWR connector.
This is wrong. The 50 series uses 12V-2x6, not 12VHPWR. The 30 series was the first to use 12VHPR. The 40 series was the second to use 12VHPWR and first to use 12V-2x6. The 50 series was the second to use 12V-2x6. The female connectors are what changed in 12V-2x6. The male connectors are identical between 12V-2x6 and 12VHPWR.
> Pretty much all upscalers force TAA for anti-aliasing and it makes the entire image on the screen look blurry as fuck the lower the resolution is.
I feel like this is a misunderstanding, though I admit I'm splitting hairs here. DLSS is a form of TAA, and so is FSR and most other modern upscalers. You generally don't need an extra antialiasing pipeline if you're getting an artificially supersampled image.
We've seen this technique variably developed across the lifespan of realtime raster graphics; first with checkerboard rendering, then TAA, then now DLSS/frame generation. It has upsides and downsides, and some TAA implementations were actually really good for the time.
High end GPU has over the last 5 years slowly turning from an enthusiast product into a luxury product.
5 or maybe 10 years ago, high-end GPU are needed to run games at reasonably eye candy setting. In 2025, $500 mid-range GPUs are more than enough. Folks all over can barely tell between High and Ultra settings, DLSS vs FSR, or DLSS FG and Lossless Scaling. There's just no point to compete at $500 price point any more, that Nvidia has largely given up and relegating to the AMD-built Consoles, and integrated graphics like AMD APU, that offer good value in low-end, medium-end, and high-end.
Maybe the rumored Nvidia PC, or the Switch 2, can bring some resurgence.
I don’t want to jump on nvidia but I found it super weird when they clearly remote controlled a Disney bot onto the stage and claimed it was all using real time AI which was clearly impossible due to no latency and weirdly the bot verifying correct stage position in relation to the presenter. It was obviously the Disney bot just being controlled by someone off stage.
I found it super alarming because why would they fake something on stage to the extent of just lying.i know Steve jobs had backup phones but jsut claiming a robot is autonomous when it isn’t I just feel it was scammy.
It reminded me of when Tesla had remote controlled Optimus bots. I mean I think that’s awesome like super cool but clearly the users thought the robots were autonomous during that dinner party.
I have no idea why I seem to be the only person bothered by “stage lies” to this level. Tbh even the Tesla bots weren’t claimed to be autonomous so actually I should never have mentioned them but it explains the “not real” vibe.
Not meaning to disparage just explaining my perception as a European maybe it’s just me though!
EDIT > Im kinda suprised by the weak arguments in the replies, I love both companies, I am just offering POSITIVE feedback, that its important ( in my eyes ) to be careful not to pretend in certain specific ways or it makes the viewer question the foundation ( which we all know is SOLID and good ).
EDIT 2 >There actually is a good rebuttal in the replies, although apparently I have "reading comprehension skill deficiencies" its just my pov that they were insinuating the robot was aware of its surroundings, which is fair enough.
Not sure why my comment got so upvoted, all my comments are my personal opinion based solely on the publicly streamed video, and as I said, I’ll happily correct or retract my impression.
I wonder if the 12VHPWR connector is intentionally defective to prevent large-scale use of those consumer cards in server/datacenter contexts?
The failure rate is just barely acceptable in a consumer use-case with a single card, but with multiple cards the probability of failure (which takes down the whole machine, as there's no way to hot-swap the card) makes it unusable.
I can't otherwise see why they'd persevere on that stupid connector when better alternatives exist.
Remember when nvidia got caught dropping 2 bits of color information to beat ati in benchmarks? I still can't believe anyone has trusted them since! That is an insane thing to do considering the purpose of the product.
For as long as they have competition, I will support those companies instead. If they all fail, I guess I will start one. My spite for them knows no limits
The article complains about issues with consumer GPUs but those are nowadays relegated to being merely a side hobby project of Nvidia, whose core business is enterprise AI chips. Anyway Nvidia still has no significant competition from AMD on either front so they are still getting away with this.
Deceptive marketing aside, it's true that it's sad that we can't get 4K 60 Hz with ray tracing with current hardware without some kind of AI denoising and upscaling, but ray tracing is really just _profoundly_ hard so I can't really blame anyone for not having figured out how to put it in a consumer pc yet. There's a reason why pixar movies need huge render farms that take lots of time per frame. We would probably sooner get gaussian splatting and real time diffusion models in games than nice full resolution ray tracing tbh.
Seems a bit calculated and agreed across the industry. What can really make sense of Microsoft's acquisitions and ruining of billion dollar IPs? It's a manufactured collapse of the gaming industry. They want to centralize control of the market and make it a service based (rent seeking) sector.
I'm not saying they all got together and decided this together but their wonks are probably all saying the same thing. The market is shrinking and whether it's by design or incompetence, this creates a new opportunity to acquire it wholesale for pennies on the dollar and build a wall around it and charge for entry. It's a natural result of games requiring NVidia developers for driver tuning, bitcoin/ai and buying out capacity to prevent competitors.
The wildcard I can't fit into this puzzle is Valve. They have a huge opportunity here but they also might be convinced that they have already saturated the market and will read the writing on the wall.
If it’s manufactured it implies intent. Someone at Microsoft is doing it on purpose and, presumably, thinks it’ll benefit them. I’m not sure how this can be seen as a win for them. They invested a massive amount of money into buying all those game studios. They also admitted Xbox hardware is basically dead. So the only way they can any return on that investment is third party hardware: either PlayStation or PC. If I were to choose it would be pc for MS. They already have game pass and windows is the gaming OS. By giving business to Sony they would undermine those.
I don’t think nVidia wants gaming collapse either. They might not prioritize it now but they definitely know that it will persist in some form. They bet on AI (and crypto before it) because those are lucrative opportunities but there’s no guarantee they will last. So they squeeze as much as they can out of those while they can. They definitely want gaming as a backup. It might be not as profitable and more finicky as it’s a consumer market but it’s much more stable in the long run.
> With over 90% of the PC market running on NVIDIA tech, they’re the clear winner of the GPU race. The losers are every single one of us.
I have been rocking AMD GPU ever since the drivers were upstreamed into the linux kernel. No regrets.
I have also realized that there is a lot out there in the world besides video games, and getting all in a huff about it isn’t worth my time or energy. But consumer gotta consoooooom and then cry and outrage when they are exploited instead of just walking away and doing something else.
Same with magic the gathering, the game went to shit and so many people got outraged and in a big huff but they still spend thousands on the hobby. I just stopped playing mtg.
> I have also realized that there is a lot out there in the world besides video games, and getting all in a huff about it isn’t worth my time or energy.
I'd really love to try AMD as a daily driver. For me CUDA is the showstopper. There's really nothing comparable in the AMD camp.
> I have also realized that there is a lot out there in the world besides video games
...and even if you're all in on video games, there's a massive amount of really brilliant indie games on Steam that run just fine on a 1070 or 2070 (I still have my 2070 and haven't found a compelling reason to upgrade yet).
> I have also realized that there is a lot out there in the world besides video games, and getting all in a huff about it isn’t worth my time or energy.
I'm with you - in principle. Capital-G "Gamers" who turned gaming into an identity and see themselves as the real discriminated group have fully earned the ridicule.
But I think where the criticism is valid is how NVIDIA's behavior is part of the wider enshittification trend in tech. Lock-in and overpricing in entertainment software might be annoying but acceptable, but it gets problematic when we have the exact same trends in actually critical tech like phones and cars.
I want to love AMD, but they're just... mediocre. Worse for gaming, and much worse for ML. They're better-integrated into Linux, but given that the entire AI industry runs on:
1. Nvidia cards
2. Hooked up to Linux boxes
It turns out that Nvidia tends to work pretty well on Linux too, despite the binary blob drivers.
Other than gaming and ML, I'm not sure what the value of spending much on a GPU is... AMD is just in a tough spot.
If I hadn't bought a 3090 when they were 1k new, I likely would've switched back onto the AMD train by now.
So far there hasn't been enough of a performance increase for me to upgrade either for gaming or ML. Maybe AMDs rumored 9090 will be enough to get me to open my wallet.
Sticking with AMD GPUs has worked well for me, especially since switching to Linux. If you want to keep track of your gaming and hobby spending without stress, using Loyally AI to monitor your habits helped me stay balanced. It’s easier to step back and focus on what really matters.
That might work for you, but in general just hoping other consumers will stop wanting to do things because they’re starting to get exploited is hope based denial about how people work.
Systematic fixes are required because as we know advocating for abstinence isn’t an effective solution ;)
NVIDIA is, and will be for at least the next year or two, supply constrained. They only have so much capacity at TSMC for all the chips, and the lion's share of that is going to be going enterprise chips, which sell for an order of magnitude more than the consumer chips.
It's hard to get too offended by them shirking the consumer marker right now when they're printing money with their enterprise business.
> So 7 years into ray traced real-time computer graphics and we’re still nowhere near 4K gaming at 60 FPS, even at $1,999.
The guy is complaining that a product can’t live up to his standard, while dismissing barely noticeable proposed trade off that can make it possible because it’s «fake».
The 4090 was released coming up on 3 years and is currently going for about 25% over launch msrp USED. Buying gpu's is literally an appreciating asset. It is complete insanity and an infuriating situation for an average consumer.
I honestly don't know why nvidia didn't just suspend their consumer line entirely. It's clearly no longer a significant revenue source and they have thoroughly destroyed consumer goodwill over the past 5 years.
Nobody’s going to read this, but this article and sentiment is utter anti-corporate bullshit, and the vastly congruent responses show that none of you have watched the historical development of GPGPU, or do any serious work on GPUs, or keep up with the open work of nvidia researchers.
The spoiled gamer mentality is getting old for those of us that actually work daily in GPGPU across industries, develop with RTX kit, do AI research, etc.
Yes they’ve had some marketing and technical flubs as any giant publically traded company will have, but their balance of research-driven development alongside corporate profit necessities is unmatched.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 82.9 ms ] threadLiars or not, the performance has not been there for me in any of my usecases, from personal to professional.
A system from 2017/2018 with an 8700K and an 8GB 2080 performs so closely to the top end, expensive systems today that it makes almost no sense to upgrade at MSRP+markup unless your system is older than this.
Unless you need specific features only on more recent cards, there are very few use cases I can think of needing more than a 30 series card right now.
This is wrong. The 50 series uses 12V-2x6, not 12VHPWR. The 30 series was the first to use 12VHPR. The 40 series was the second to use 12VHPWR and first to use 12V-2x6. The 50 series was the second to use 12V-2x6. The female connectors are what changed in 12V-2x6. The male connectors are identical between 12V-2x6 and 12VHPWR.
I feel like this is a misunderstanding, though I admit I'm splitting hairs here. DLSS is a form of TAA, and so is FSR and most other modern upscalers. You generally don't need an extra antialiasing pipeline if you're getting an artificially supersampled image.
We've seen this technique variably developed across the lifespan of realtime raster graphics; first with checkerboard rendering, then TAA, then now DLSS/frame generation. It has upsides and downsides, and some TAA implementations were actually really good for the time.
5 or maybe 10 years ago, high-end GPU are needed to run games at reasonably eye candy setting. In 2025, $500 mid-range GPUs are more than enough. Folks all over can barely tell between High and Ultra settings, DLSS vs FSR, or DLSS FG and Lossless Scaling. There's just no point to compete at $500 price point any more, that Nvidia has largely given up and relegating to the AMD-built Consoles, and integrated graphics like AMD APU, that offer good value in low-end, medium-end, and high-end.
Maybe the rumored Nvidia PC, or the Switch 2, can bring some resurgence.
For cheaper guys like me, I'll just give my son indie and low graphic games which he enjoys
I found it super alarming because why would they fake something on stage to the extent of just lying.i know Steve jobs had backup phones but jsut claiming a robot is autonomous when it isn’t I just feel it was scammy.
It reminded me of when Tesla had remote controlled Optimus bots. I mean I think that’s awesome like super cool but clearly the users thought the robots were autonomous during that dinner party.
I have no idea why I seem to be the only person bothered by “stage lies” to this level. Tbh even the Tesla bots weren’t claimed to be autonomous so actually I should never have mentioned them but it explains the “not real” vibe.
Not meaning to disparage just explaining my perception as a European maybe it’s just me though!
EDIT > Im kinda suprised by the weak arguments in the replies, I love both companies, I am just offering POSITIVE feedback, that its important ( in my eyes ) to be careful not to pretend in certain specific ways or it makes the viewer question the foundation ( which we all know is SOLID and good ).
EDIT 2 >There actually is a good rebuttal in the replies, although apparently I have "reading comprehension skill deficiencies" its just my pov that they were insinuating the robot was aware of its surroundings, which is fair enough.
The failure rate is just barely acceptable in a consumer use-case with a single card, but with multiple cards the probability of failure (which takes down the whole machine, as there's no way to hot-swap the card) makes it unusable.
I can't otherwise see why they'd persevere on that stupid connector when better alternatives exist.
For as long as they have competition, I will support those companies instead. If they all fail, I guess I will start one. My spite for them knows no limits
It became obvious when old e-waste Xeons were turned into viable, usable machines, years ago.
Something is obviously wrong with this entire industry, and I cannot wait for it to pop. THIS will be the excitement everyone is looking for.
Of course the fact that we overwhelmingly chose the better option means that… we are worse off or something?
Deceptive marketing aside, it's true that it's sad that we can't get 4K 60 Hz with ray tracing with current hardware without some kind of AI denoising and upscaling, but ray tracing is really just _profoundly_ hard so I can't really blame anyone for not having figured out how to put it in a consumer pc yet. There's a reason why pixar movies need huge render farms that take lots of time per frame. We would probably sooner get gaussian splatting and real time diffusion models in games than nice full resolution ray tracing tbh.
I'm not saying they all got together and decided this together but their wonks are probably all saying the same thing. The market is shrinking and whether it's by design or incompetence, this creates a new opportunity to acquire it wholesale for pennies on the dollar and build a wall around it and charge for entry. It's a natural result of games requiring NVidia developers for driver tuning, bitcoin/ai and buying out capacity to prevent competitors.
The wildcard I can't fit into this puzzle is Valve. They have a huge opportunity here but they also might be convinced that they have already saturated the market and will read the writing on the wall.
I don’t think nVidia wants gaming collapse either. They might not prioritize it now but they definitely know that it will persist in some form. They bet on AI (and crypto before it) because those are lucrative opportunities but there’s no guarantee they will last. So they squeeze as much as they can out of those while they can. They definitely want gaming as a backup. It might be not as profitable and more finicky as it’s a consumer market but it’s much more stable in the long run.
I have been rocking AMD GPU ever since the drivers were upstreamed into the linux kernel. No regrets.
I have also realized that there is a lot out there in the world besides video games, and getting all in a huff about it isn’t worth my time or energy. But consumer gotta consoooooom and then cry and outrage when they are exploited instead of just walking away and doing something else.
Same with magic the gathering, the game went to shit and so many people got outraged and in a big huff but they still spend thousands on the hobby. I just stopped playing mtg.
I'd really love to try AMD as a daily driver. For me CUDA is the showstopper. There's really nothing comparable in the AMD camp.
...and even if you're all in on video games, there's a massive amount of really brilliant indie games on Steam that run just fine on a 1070 or 2070 (I still have my 2070 and haven't found a compelling reason to upgrade yet).
I'm with you - in principle. Capital-G "Gamers" who turned gaming into an identity and see themselves as the real discriminated group have fully earned the ridicule.
But I think where the criticism is valid is how NVIDIA's behavior is part of the wider enshittification trend in tech. Lock-in and overpricing in entertainment software might be annoying but acceptable, but it gets problematic when we have the exact same trends in actually critical tech like phones and cars.
1. Nvidia cards
2. Hooked up to Linux boxes
It turns out that Nvidia tends to work pretty well on Linux too, despite the binary blob drivers.
Other than gaming and ML, I'm not sure what the value of spending much on a GPU is... AMD is just in a tough spot.
You don’t even have to walk away. You pretty much never need the latest GPUs to have a great gaming experience
So far there hasn't been enough of a performance increase for me to upgrade either for gaming or ML. Maybe AMDs rumored 9090 will be enough to get me to open my wallet.
Running most inference models (quantized of course) via Vulkan. Playing games using Wine and/or Steam+Proton on Linux.
Sweet spot in price.
Systematic fixes are required because as we know advocating for abstinence isn’t an effective solution ;)
It's hard to get too offended by them shirking the consumer marker right now when they're printing money with their enterprise business.
> So 7 years into ray traced real-time computer graphics and we’re still nowhere near 4K gaming at 60 FPS, even at $1,999.
The guy is complaining that a product can’t live up to his standard, while dismissing barely noticeable proposed trade off that can make it possible because it’s «fake».
I honestly don't know why nvidia didn't just suspend their consumer line entirely. It's clearly no longer a significant revenue source and they have thoroughly destroyed consumer goodwill over the past 5 years.
The spoiled gamer mentality is getting old for those of us that actually work daily in GPGPU across industries, develop with RTX kit, do AI research, etc.
Yes they’ve had some marketing and technical flubs as any giant publically traded company will have, but their balance of research-driven development alongside corporate profit necessities is unmatched.