Quote Originally Posted by ***Deimos*** View Post
Everybody here remember 2004 - the big unveiling of THE 6800 ULTRA.

What a huge change that was. Night and day. Suddenly, you could actually play Far Cry. AA performance was immense. 35GB/s 256bit memory... seemed like something pulled out of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. And 16 "pipelines".. wow it seemed like SO MANY.

Fast forward a bit over 5 years later. 256bit HD5870 features over 150GB/s. 1600 SP. 384bit Fermi will be around 200-240GB/s. Seems like hitting a ceiling since don't see anything beyond GDDR5 on the map and only option is 512bit.

But the surprising thing is, all those BILLIONS of transistors, yet its still just little simple textured triangles. Voxel didn't catch on. Ray tracing is still a pipe dream. Nobody even makes use of geometry morphing. Its approaching 20 years after Terminator2 and Jurassic Park, yet where are all the photo realistic virtual worlds?

Hoping the industry won't sour like the Simpsons.. 10 years from now playing as Rodriguez in Call of Duty 17 - same old point and shoot.
good post

Photo realistic gaming won't happen in our lifetime. "little simple textured triangles" will be around for a long time to come - drawn in numbers they work fairly well. When all is said and done, gaming graphics are still an absolute galaxy away from where they were in the days of T2 and Jurassic park.