Is it all AMD's fault?

[NIGELG]

PC gaming is not for whiny,cheap ass bastards.Like the hobby?Then shell out the damn cash.

There are many other truly worthy causes in the world than whining about video card prices.

It's bad enough though that there is a duopoly in video cards but both companies must survive....If Nvidia becomes a monopoly then many of you might have to leave this hobby...so whine more about 'premium' prices.

[Xion X2]

Originally Posted by trinibwoy

Consumers don't expect technology to get more expensive every generation. They expect exactly the opposite. The only time an increase is justified is when there's some disruptive new technology (e.g. 3D TVs).

Just not true. Look back and you'll find price points for the 7900GTX over 500$, 1900XT over 450$, 8800GTX over 600$, etc.

This is nothing new. The only blip in the formula has been when AMD cut costs to gain market share back as Pauly has pointed out ad infinitum now.

[bill dennison]

Originally Posted by SIrPauly

Your average consumer may care about price/performance and believe it is the most important metric of them all.

Your average consumer can't find his video card in his system and will buy whetever new system that a BB or like salesperson tells him to

[SIrPauly]

Just shell out the cash -- performance/value be damned!

[SIrPauly]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

Just not true. Look back and you'll find price points for the 7900GTX over 500$, 1900XT over 450$, 8800GTX over 600$, etc.

This is nothing new. The only blip in the formula has been when AMD cut costs to gain market share back as Pauly has pointed out ad infinitum now.

With new nodes and arches there was redefined price/performance, really since the introduction of 3d acceleration. This may of been the weakest price/performance in history with a new node and arch from both players.

[trinibwoy]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

Just not true. Look back and you'll find price points for the 7900GTX over 500$, 1900XT over 450$, 8800GTX over 600$, etc.

This is nothing new. The only blip in the formula has been when AMD cut costs to gain market share back as Pauly has pointed out ad infinitum now.

And now you can buy a GTX 680 for the same $600. That's my point, technology isn't getting more expensive every generation, quite the opposite. You can get 8800 GTX performance today for less than $100.

[Crisler]

Originally Posted by bill dennison

Your average consumer can't find his video card in his system and will buy whetever new system that a BB or like salesperson tells him to

This has a lot of validity to it. However I will even go a step farther, when they get the gaming bug the majority looking for hardware upgrades do not go to tech sites but rather game sites for advice.

For example when Toby decides he wants to play WoW with his buds and his PC does not run the game well he starts by asking his buds for advice and then if that fails goes to the WoW forums for advice.

He is not looking for the best benchmarks or best value even, he is looking for what will run his game good for him and not cost him a morgage payment. Tech specs and FPS scores are meaningless to him.

He also does not look for upgrades each cycle or even once a year. He waits until what he wants to do does not work in a manner he is ahppy with anymore and then he again goes to the game he is playing at the moments forums for advice.

It is easy for people in the tech forums to forget how the real world works. They do not upgrade to gain a few FPS or say they have the latest and greatest, they upgrade when they NEED to.

[SIrPauly]

You raise a good point about need. Need is very subjective based on tastes and tolerances.

I may need GTX 670 or GTX 680 Sli performance -- not about e-peen or bragging about benchmarks or, the price I may or may not pay but because the added performance is needed for the more modern titles with some level of IQ enhancements in the modern titles with Stereo3d at 1080P.

[Crisler]

This is a great point need in this case is entirely subjective. It comes down to what you have accepted as the level you enjoy. For example I am a huge fan of mechanical keyboards and will not use a membrane keybaord on my personal system, same with SSDs. Now are these things needs? For me they are while for most people they are not.

It is just so easy for those of use that are tech geeks to forget we are, to steal a political term, the one percent. We are the elite in this hobby and our desires are VERY different from the majority of the world.

[SIrPauly]

Imho,

Thing is a great deal is subjective based on tastes, tolerances and wallet size, so, to combat this the need for flexibility and choice may be important.

As long as there is choice and flexibility -- pretty happy for anyone that is satisfied in their purchases, including vocal price/performance advocates, clamoring e-peen views, gaming experience junkies, IQ whores, or simply just desire to play the games without any bells and whistles.

[Ziklitschli]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

The GTX580 was already selling for 450-500$....

The 7970 came out, beat the GTX580... how much do you think they were going to sell it for? Cheaper than the 580?

Going by your logic, if Kepler was x1.5 faster then 580 it should cost 750$... So, maybe if it held the price until 20nm, next gen 1.5x faster one for 1075$? Cards are cheaper to produce with new node and at similar price point vs last gen you should get a significantly faster product, that's how it works.

And yes they should sell it cheaper than 580, the same at least.

[SIrPauly]

For example:

nVidia could of simply added higher pricing to the HD 7970, using similar logic and asked 599 for the GTX 680. But, yet they didn't and asked less to bring some sanity back and offer some price/performance value to 28nm.

The GTX 580 was well over a year old sku -- already premium priced --never was forced to drop pricing by the competition. And for some odd reason it became the objective pricing barometer to set 28nm pricing value for the consumer and some gamers actually defended this strongly -- even though there has been intense strong price/performance value for many, many years.

Ya get what ya wish for and this was questionably the poorest performance value from both players from a substantial and significant node and arch change - but this didn't matter because there has always been 500+ dollar price-points, customers don't know the difference and just shell out the cash.

[nycdarkness]

Originally Posted by SIrPauly

For example:

nVidia could of simply added higher pricing to the HD 7970, using similar logic and asked 599 for the GTX 680. But, yet they didn't and asked less to bring some sanity back and offer some price/performance value to 28nm.

It has 1gb less vram and it's barely faster. Hard to justify pricing it higher or the same considering it came out later too. There's no such thing as sanity in this gen. AMD pricing higher and NV selling mid range cards at high end pricing. It's just called time to shell out.

[SIrPauly]

Originally Posted by nycdarkness

There's no such thing as sanity in this gen.

The GTX 670 may offer some saneness!

[nycdarkness]

Originally Posted by SIrPauly

The GTX 670 may offer some saneness!

a "660" for 410 instead of 200s. Not much sense either. AMD didn't offer up enough perf increase with their high end (yet charged top dollar) and NV is now banking on it. Yields aren't what they like though so Karma at work. I have no problems with shelling out top dollar but I would like a top dollar product in return. Looking at newegg if I were to purchase 7970s today at 460 I would at least feel like I am paying good money for best effort? vs 500 ( if it were actually in stock) for mid range rebadged. Sadly AMD isn't doing it for me CF wise otherwise I'd stick with AMD this round.

[demo]

Even though I like the 670 from what I've seen so far, I couldnt help but feel I'd be buying true mid range "660" lol, with the short PCB and all..

[nycdarkness]

Originally Posted by demo

Even though I like the 670 from what I've seen so far, I couldnt help but feel I'd be buying true mid range "660" lol, with the short PCB and all..

Exactly. If I were you Demo I would just keep the 580s. I'm pretty sure to fight the AMD refresh the real "680" will be out, might as well save your money. I am pretty sure most games run fine on your system. I am only looking for nv cards now thanks to tera. If sli doesn't scale much ( vs cf negative scaling) I'll just stick with 1 680 or 1 670 till refresh. Not going to playing anything else really do to time constraints.

[SIrPauly]

We don't know the exact MSRP or the performance of the GTX 670.

How did the HD 7970 become 469? How can a product that offers a bit more performance and 1 meg less force AMD to reduce pricing?

This is what I mean from "some" saneness.

With choice and competition performance/value is improving.

[SIrPauly]

Originally Posted by demo

Even though I like the 670 from what I've seen so far, I couldnt help but feel I'd be buying true mid range "660" lol, with the short PCB and all..

I just desired the GTX 670ti at 349 MSRP, based on the GK-104!

[nycdarkness]

Originally Posted by SIrPauly

We don't know the exact MSRP or the performance of the GTX 670.

How did the HD 7970 become 469? How can a product that offers a bit more performance and 1 meg less force AMD to reduce pricing?

This is what I mean from "some" saneness.

With choice and competition performance/value is improving.

It's being sold for 409.99 at more than 1 site and out of stock already. Let's just say msrp is really 379.99. Not much difference there since most people buy 1 at most 2. 7970 469 because that's what its worth in relation to nv pricing. If the 680 wasn't rebadged and came out at 310 - 350 we would see a 7970 at that price range. If the gtx 670 really keeps neck to neck with a 7970 the 7970 can still be 459-469.99 due its extra 1gb memory. From what we've seen it holds itself by the 7970. 400.00 is pretty much exactly where to price it.

[SIrPauly]

The GTX 680's MSRP was 549 at online vendors early and was changed at launch day to 499 -- the same may happen with the GTX 670. This is what I mean by exact price.

[SIrPauly]

Originally Posted by nycdarkness

If the gtx 670 really keeps neck to neck with a 7970 the 7970 can still be 459-469.99 due its extra 1gb memory.

Maybe.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by noko

So who is winning so far this generation of graphic cards?

Check this article and it'll give you pretty good hints:


http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvi...its,15606.html


They made less than half the money in the Geforce lineup compared to the last quarter in terms of net profits(60.4 million versus 135.2 million last quarter), and shows that being late with your products while the competition has theirs out first ends up costing you bigtime.....

[SIrPauly]

Their margins were ahead of guidance -- that's not why the profits were lower.

The profits were lower because nVidia invested and spent here:

The quarter-on-quarter increase was largely attributable to planned hiring and related infrastructure spending to support our strategic businesses as well as the impact of the payroll FICA tax reset that affects every first quarter.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/5816...all-transcript

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by SIrPauly

Their margins were ahead of guidance -- that's not why the profits were lower.

The profits were lower because nVidia invested and spent here:



http://seekingalpha.com/article/5816...all-transcript

They made the same money with the tesla and quadro cards as last quarter, and only the Geforce line dropped 55%, so i find it hard to believe that hiring new people or a tax rest affects only the Geforce sales, and nothing else...They would all suffer equally if that was the case.

[SIrPauly]

This is GeForce:

Our GPU business was down 6.7% quarter-on-quarter due to the 28-nanometer supply shortage, which largely impacted our high-end desktop business as well as shorted supply for our new Kepler GPUs for notebook.

This is Quadro and Tesla:

Our professional business was down slightly at 4.2% from the fourth quarter, within normal seasonality.

This is Tegra and things like 3d vision:

Our Consumer business was up 20.8% on the strength of our Tegra business as we've launched Tegra 3 for smartphones and tablets, offset by a decrease in our embedded business.

The added costs impacted a lot of the profit this quarter --- that's the official data.

[shadow001]

I was thinking mostly about add in cards for PC's and notebooks, specifically the Kepler based ones, as that's where the drop came from.


I realise that Nvidia makes a lot of different products for different markets all under the Geforce line, and can add them up in one group when it comes to financial statements, but that somewhat hides specific problems that need resolving.


Meaning GTX680's still aren't avaialble in enough volumes and that AMD did have about 3 months of peace and quiet with their HD7970's, and it'll be fun to watch their financial report for the last quarter with regards to GPU sales...

[demo]

Well they are here now and from what I read are outselling 7970 at 4 to 1. I can only imagine how much hurt 670 is going to put on AMD... AMD really need to get their 1.5GB 7950's out the door for under $350 imo, and 1GHz 7970 for ~$400.

[noko]

Originally Posted by demo

Well they are here now and from what I read are outselling 7970 at 4 to 1. I can only imagine how much hurt 670 is going to put on AMD... AMD really need to get their 1.5GB 7950's out the door for under $350 imo, and 1GHz 7970 for ~$400.

Agree on the 1.5gb 7950's price, the 7970 for $400 , maybe later. $479 does seem very reasonable. The problem is the 3gb 7950, where do you price that skew? Just let the AIB partners worry about the 7950's 3gb version. 6870? $329? $299? Yes indeed the 570 can cause some havoc on AMD if supplies stay up.

[nycdarkness]

Originally Posted by noko

Agree on the 1.5gb 7950's price, the 7970 for $400 , maybe later. $479 does seem very reasonable. The problem is the 3gb 7950, where do you price that skew? Just let the AIB partners worry about the 7950's 3gb version. 6870? $329? $299? Yes indeed the 570 can cause some havoc on AMD if supplies stay up.

The 4gb 670 is priced at 469.99-489.99 Thats 1gb more ram and on par with the 7970 why would you say the 7970 should stay at it's current price