[QUOTE="psymon100"]
[QUOTE="nihonking"]
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This is very true companys use percents to make pc players feel they need to buy new gpu's all the time.
nihonking
That's completely untrue.Â
So you wouldn't like to be 15% taller? for me that would make me over 2m tall, and would gain almost one foot in height. The analogy to GPUs works well.Â
A discerning consumer will look at the percentages as one is able to make an accurate prediction regarding the performance of potential cards relative to their existing ones.Â
It would be foolish for a person to upgrade from a 7850 to a 7870, this is true.Â
However, if you were upgrading from something lower, like a 4850, it's important to assess the price/performance of potential replacements. If the performance increase were ~20% for the 7870, and the price were ~20% more, then basically it's a question of if you want to spend the extra money to go that percent faster, or not to spend. If you went for either card, neither is a waste of money. You get identical value from card to card.
However a more enthusiast level card might be 60% faster but as you suggest over 100% more money.Â
Talking in absolutes like the number of frames increased can be helpful, but looking at the relative performance changes as percentages - I think that's the way to go.Â
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Well hit on that no I would not want to be 15 percent taller lol Im happy with my current height. Much like if you have a GPU that was highend with in the last 3 years you have no issues with running games. Example my 5870's run everything at great fps in crossfire or single card set up......All your doing is helping create the sterotype that PC games NEED to upgrade every year to stay on the cuttung edge. To be compltely real with you i dont see much need to upgrade from the 5000 series to the 7000 series unless you went low end. But guess AMD will tell you that you need to and show you a bunch of graphs with percents to prove that weak ass point..... BUT so I dont seem like im dismissing what your saying yes there are cases where looking at percents help like the gen jump you mentioned in your above post.
How am I helping to create the stereotype? If anything all I'm doing is describing a method to "make an accurate prediction regarding the performance of potential cards relative to their existing ones".Â
Let's play the game together now. Your 5870 is no slouch.Â
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We can see that an upgrade from 5870 to the 7850 would not even boost performance by ~10%. From experience, I know that to go to the 7870 would only push that by another 20%. In your case it's not really worth it, these cards are at the top of their game in terms of performance per dollar - I feel we come to the same conclusion.Â
Normally, when I'm helping friends or people online, I don't suggest a GPU upgrade unless they're going to get at least a 50% performance increase (I myself prefer closer to 100%, doubling or almost doubling frame rate) at a price point which the prospective purchaser finds attractive. If you like we could do this a bit longer, just for a bit of fun. You could set me a budget for you, and I'll see what could replace the 5870 and whether or not I'd consider it economically sensible, then you could critique me? A thought experiment.Â
My last card was a 5770, as mentioned I'm now on the 7850. I'll admit - I didn't have to upgrade from the 5770. The 7850 was hardly expensive and every day now I get to enjoy graphics which I think are pretty excellent. Graphics aren't everything but it is an icing on the cake which I now enjoy all the time. One example of an improvement:
Unigine Heaven - 31.6 --> 54.5 fps, so about ~72% faster, I don't think that's anything to sneeze about.Â
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