That sounds disappointing considering I was expecting to get something that would have at least 30%+ performance advantage against the Titan X this year ...

We already have that, ARK Survival Evolved maxed out brings an OC'ed Titan X to it's knees and Tom Clancy's The Division with Nvidia HFTS is obliterating tons of hardware left and right ... 

What I want to see is someone doing ray tracing at 720p on real time framerates of 20 fps on the highest end hardware ... 

That sounds disappointing considering I was expecting to get something that would have at least 30%+ performance advantage against the Titan X this year ...

We already have that, ARK Survival Evolved maxed out brings an OC'ed Titan X to it's knees and Tom Clancy's The Division with Nvidia HFTS is obliterating tons of hardware left and right ... 

What I want to see is someone doing ray tracing at 720p on real time framerates of 20 fps on the highest end hardware ... 

As for maxing things out, ARK is only doing this due to the fact the game hasn't even been completely optimized, Star Citizen runs more smoothly for others than Ark and Ark is a multiplat title while SC won't be. The devs behind Ark are also putting out a spinoff of their Survival of the fittest portion out into early access on top of trying to handle ARK on PC and X1 let alone PS4, I honestly don't see that game being fully optimized for PC and as such the high end current cards are deliberately going to be crushed unfairly. 

Nvidia gameworks isn't a rig ender though, nor should it be and that's an issue loads of PC gamers are pointing out over on sites like Youtube. TD is another multiplat title that's not 100% stellar for PC either from the benches and PC port reports I'm seeing, a game like that at 1080p that looks practically the same as a PS4 should not be completely wiping out a GPU like my 980, multiplat console ports should never be doing that, like at all, crammed FX or not, in fact crmaming a few FX in there is the last thing I want crushing my card and forcing me to go out and spend another £5-700 just to get a few wavy hair or snow particles.

ARK may not be the most optimized game there is out there but the performance impact is somewhat justifiable when it is one of the best in terms of foliage quality and geometric detail ...

Nvidia GameWorks is fine for the most part and it's definitely becoming a genuine tool to explore the limits of PC hardware ... 

If you don't like your framerate tanking there's always an option to lower your settings, you can't have everything. Concessions are needed and the devs aren't obligated to not add on new features from console ports either ... 

I want VXGI, HFTS, Nvidia Flex, HairWorks, and FlameWorks altogether even if it kills my framerate ... 

Everybody needs to determine what's important for them in a perf vs quality scenario ... (For me I value higher quality visuals so I'm OK with gaming @ 30fps even on PC!)

One good thing about the GPU market is that neither Nvidia nor AMD (especially AMD) have the luxury to not go for the max they can, because they have a lot to lose.

That said, I think the problem lies more in the rest of the industry than in AMD/Nvidia. The 14 and 16nm manufacturing processes aren't ready yet to produce the big chips that are needed for Fury/Titan class cards, GDDR5X won't be here until summer (we may still see it in board partner cards, but not reference models) and HBM2 seems to be too expensive for the mainstream market if what Raja Koduri said in the PCPer interview.

I still think that we may get cards that are ˜10% faster than the current flagships at a lot lower power consumption and price, which seems small but it's still more than what we get from every new gen of Intel CPUs .

Whatever you say but me and others are seeing things differently with gameworks than you are and how things are being used. If AMD manages to get the leg up on Nvidia (and they will with time) without demanding you to buy a new card every few months a new effect is crammed in then we'll see the better GPU manufacturer and one that knows where to put the actual power.

I don't buy new high end cards only to have a multiplat game with a few loaded fx to cripple my frames, that's completely illogical and anti consumer from my pov.

I honestly don't need all those, I'd rather trade for better quality of textures and settle for HBAO+ or even an AMD option that seems to work on both branded GPU's (and doesn't cost your very soul). You seem to want to kill your fps but I on the other hand don't, it's clear you and I come from very different pov's and lifestyles along with understandings.

For me I value having both because I paid to get both, not paid to get both but only get one and that's pretty much what I'm seeing from time to time. If I bought an 8gigs VRAM GPU for nearly 1k, I would damn well expect to get both and at the same time not having it drained thanks to last minute effects being thrown in to make it appear as if it's leagues apart from being a console port.

Is it wrong of Nvidia to promote GameWorks to sell their hardware ? 

The GTX 980 is not the end all be all, that goes to the Titan X and you don't see those owners getting up in arms about Nvidia's "sabatoging". How is it illogical to pay for a few frames for those effects ? If you don't like them you can turn them off just like how many PC gamers had to tone down settings for Crysis despite the fact that they owned the latest hardware too ... 

Having both comes down to whether or not the developer want to add an x effect. If you had to pick between two versions, one with the demanding graphical effect and the other without it which one would it be ?

Does the illusion of getting the best possible experience matter that much to you ?

Is it wrong to have issues with some of their software?.

Titan X isn't the end all to be all either from what I've seen, especially from some sporting dual Titan X's for some benchmarks of multiplat console ports, the GTX 980 is still seen and also advertised as a high end card compared to the 960-70 series, I definitely don't expect them to do 4k but I do expect them to handle the majority of games at higher settings at 1080p 60fps, like I have seen in previous benches for other games beforehand. YOu don't see people egtting up in arms because you're not looking, nor does it sound like you'd ever want to.

It's illogical to me to pay £50-700+ for a new high end GPU only for it to get tanekd thanks to some crammed in effects that don't really justify the really high price point, especially if the gain's aren't massive in a big "omg this was well worth me paying nearly 1k for", which we still aren't seeing much of from these console ports thus far. I've just looked recently into Hitman DX 11-12 benches and haven['t seen insane gains, looked at comparisons to the visuals of PC-PS4-X1, no huge night and day differences there either and you think it;s perfectly logical to demand imaginary power for very little differences for console ports to PC?.

You know back when Crysis came out there wasn't that much new end hw coming out to quickly change how tanked people's rigs were getting, times have changed and it's become a better game for Nvidia to just keep throwing out more premium cards that add little gains each time rather than massive leaps each time, do you honestly think it;s perfectly fine each time to keep bringing out new hardware to forcefully cripple it and throw us back into the stone age each and every time?.

I don't need hair FX to get the "best" version though that's the thing.

I want to get the experiences I pay for, if I buy their upcoming flagship and find it crippled the same way as a 980 thanks to come console ports then you're damn right I'm going to complain. I don't buy premium products and experiences if all they are going to do is be constantly crap each and every time, this is more or less why I;m looking into moving over to AMD and watching Vulkan and Steam OS grow.

I'll tell you this though, you and I definitely aren't going to agree and it;s likely going to be the same situation you had with the Prof in a thread a few days back on the Division's FX.

Performance wise ? Only a programmer with access to the source code would know ... 

Talking of issues with the effects and the resources they take and how they impact the game, not coding issues that only a programmer would actually be able to know.

The GTX 980 is high end but it's already 1 & 1/2 year old, just don't expect to always get 1080p60fps down the road or even some games before it like Crysis 3. Almost everyone I know buys videocards for how well they perform at LAUNCH, not how well they will age ... 

Well you and I know different sets of people then.

Whether the "difference" was worth it or not comes down to each person, personally speaking if I thought like that I wouldn't have built my new PC ... 

So basically it has to be worth it in your eyes for everyone else then or just don't build a PC if I'm correct?.

Cripple how exactly ? With the demanding effects ? Then just turn it off, lord knows I hate PCSS cause I think it makes shadows look worse but I just turn it off and move on ... 

I do turn them off but having to turn them off clearly shows that what they are doing just isn't worth it, the epformance cost is definitely not worth it, not from the benches I'm seeing and the folk going "you don't need this, turn it off", if it actually gave huge gains then we'd be seeing tons more of "you cannot live without this, keep it turned on, it;s always well more than worth it". 

Nvidia aren't godlike perfect either and not everything is demanding by default, you can make a game demanding that doesn't give you much if any gains at all and you can make something demanding that actually gives you a lot more than you bargained for.

So your definition of best is "optimized" console ports without the GameWorks ? Ok fair enough but I think having highest quality visuals is what constitutes the best in terms of technicals ... 

You can still optimize for higher end GPU's without crippling them deliberately to force people to get the enxt best card that just so happens to be coming out enxt month and then the following year after, I have actually seen great ports and great games that make good use of high end hardware that don't absolutely melt the machine to a point where that machine is shit and then the next built rig being good for about 1 month. They can totally keep GW, just give us actual massive night and day gains that don't absolutely melt shit into the ground on purpose to sell us a new card because lord knows that strat totally hasn't ever been used in the history of mankind's product/marketing history, makes perfect sense to me in business sense to do that and bring out a new card every now and then with tiny gains while forcing effects that cripple each new "high end" card to it's knees, that idea gets you a shit ton of money and marketshare and look where it's landed Nvidia, 70%.

I'm justified in my view and similarily the same goes to you but in the end it's a choice that the developers pit against gamers ... 

Yeah you totally are but I just don't agree with how this is gone about because my money isn't worth a damn if I'm not getting what I want, I want what I pay for, not "oh I see you paid 1 and a half grand for your PC, tisk, should have spend another 2k to get a better experience", it's like being told by the very company you buy from that you'll get the best possible experience but find out each time that you never will unless you jump through their yearly card releases each month or two, spending thousands upon thousands because they cba to actually allow for your card to breathe and actually perform.

Chazore said:

I do turn them off but having to turn them off clearly shows that what they are doing just isn't worth it, the epformance cost is definitely not worth it, not from the benches I'm seeing and the folk going "you don't need this, turn it off", if it actually gave huge gains then we'd be seeing tons more of "you cannot live without this, keep it turned on, it;s always well more than worth it". 

Nvidia aren't godlike perfect either and not everything is demanding by default, you can make a game demanding that doesn't give you much if any gains at all and you can make something demanding that actually gives you a lot more than you bargained for.

The visual gains are dependent from user to user and I know that not everything has to be demanding but some of the stuff in GameWorks is cutting edge RESEARCH! (Frustum-traced raster shadows in Tom Clancy's The Division only materialized on a PAPER LAST year.) 

Yeah you totally are but I just don't agree with how this is gone about because my money isn't worth a damn if I'm not getting what I want, I want what I pay for, not "oh I see you paid 1 and a half grand for your PC, tisk, should have spend another 2k to get a better experience", it's like being told by the very company you buy from that you'll get the best possible experience but find out each time that you never will unless you jump through their yearly card releases each month or two, spending thousands upon thousands because they cba to actually allow for your card to breathe and actually perform.

It's just the way things are, even if PC gamers with Nvidia cards are discontent with GameWorks they are likely just the few voices out of the many who will actually switch or maybe not but who knows. For me, may the winner get my money even if they have to play dirty ...