I am only getting snippets of recent posts via quotes, due to the fact that I ignored Balla already, but apparently the NV fanbois are resorting to the ol' "popularity" argument. Brand X sells more than Brand Y, therefore Brand X "must" be better. Right? Right? By that logic, I guess console gaming is superior to PC gaming, since consoles are collectively much more popular than gaming-grade PCs. And obviously Windows 7 is the best OS since they have such a dominant market share among client PCs. Right? Right? Lmao.
NV cards are not bad. To the contrary, NV cards are quite good. They are just overpriced for enthusiasts. But there are many more non-enthusiasts than there are enthusiasts. This entire forum is a collective outlier. There are many, many, many people who are non-techies. They don't know how to do driver updates so 12.7beta, 12.11, etc. won't ever help them. They use default settings and don't know how to overclock, so GPU Boost helps them. They don't know what VSync even stands for, so A-Vsync might help them. These "hold my hand" people like NV because it is a known, safe quantity. You might not get the best bang for the buck, but if you plug it in, it works. NV does a good job on launch drivers, better marketing, has better brand equity (AMD is a damaged brand and it's stupid to label video cards AMD instead of ATI; AMD has long been known as Intel's whipping boy), better multi-GPU support, PhysX, CUDA and other support (remember how Adobe used to support NV only), and stuff like tri-monitor support without having to fiddle with adapters, A-Vsync, and GPU Boost (rather than AMD's inelegant copycat boost).
Also, two points about consumer behavior in general:
Price is a signal.
Consumers in general rely on generally-accurate heuristics when purchasing things they are unfamiliar with. One of the core heuristics is "you get what you pay for," i.e., people assume that price correlates with quality. Like the other day in the photography forum, someone was saying his novice friend wanted to blow $1k on a camera. There was no discussion of what she needed the camera to DO, or her skill level, or whatever. No discussion of price/perf, or even perf, or if a $300 camera would be good enough for the job. Nope, it was apparently: "I have a problem worth $1k to me and want to spend $1k on solving it."
And let's be honest here, who here is an expert in everything. Nobody. There are some areas in which we know a lot (say, video cards), and some in which we don't. If you are put into a situation where you must buy something without knowing much about it, and don't want to pore over reviews, what are you going to do? You probably take your cue from price, right? Example: Your gf starts her period and for some reason loses consciousness so that you are forced to go into a store and buy tampons. How much do you know about tampons? Probably not a hell of a lot (this forum is what, 99% male with a +/- 3% margin of error?). The store has 3 choices. Do you buy the cheap, medium, or expensive tampon? If you care about your gf at all, you probably buy the medium or expensive tampon regardless of what their relative performance or comfort levels are, correct? It's a rare man who would want to pore over tampon reviews on his smartphone in the store, right? You have a problem, you just want it fixed, and fixed now, even if you lose on price/perf.
Recognition also matters, in part because people tend to be risk-averse. By extension, market share matters. A lot.
People pick what they recognize. NV is more recognized than AMD. Hell, AMD is associated with CPUs, not GPUs. That all by itself matters a LOT. This is the McDonald's problem. You are driving and get hungry in unknown territory. There are three restaurants. One is a McDonald's, another is a company you vaguely recall as maybe having something to do with food but can't remember if it is good food or not, or if they even sell food in the first place, and the third you don't recognize at all. Given those options, many people would opt for the "safe" choice: McDonald's.
NV also has important niche advantages in certain things like CUDA and Folding@Home which are important for some people. NV also has deep and broad driver support, as stated in the other thread about how NV supports its cards via driver updates longer than AMD does.
So you have non-techie people who want to play it safe with their video cards, much like many people would rather eat at a roadside McDonald's in unfamiliar territory rather than risk it and eat at some hole in the wall restaurant that looks like it could be better and/or cheaper but isn't worth the risk of food poisoning (far away from home) to find out. Many of them probably look to price to guide them. And for the slightly less-tech-illiterate, they may have bought NV before and just want something that works, and they've had good experiences with NV in the past, so NV it is.
And then you have people who buy NV cards for niche or compatibility reasons.
It all adds up to sales, sales, sales.
Is it so hard to see how NV does so well?
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