Question 'Ampere'/Next-gen gaming uarch speculation thread

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Ottonomous

Senior member
May 15, 2014
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How much is the Samsung 7nm EUV process expected to provide in terms of gains?
How will the RTX components be scaled/developed?
Any major architectural enhancements expected?
Will VRAM be bumped to 16/12/12 for the top three?
Will there be further fragmentation in the lineup? (Keeping turing at cheaper prices, while offering 'beefed up RTX' options at the top?)
Will the top card be capable of >4K60, at least 90?
Would Nvidia ever consider an HBM implementation in the gaming lineup?
Will Nvidia introduce new proprietary technologies again?

Sorry if imprudent/uncalled for, just interested in the forum member's thoughts.
 

MrTeal

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2003
3,614
1,816
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Still does not change the fact that if you have an option of spending 500$ on gaming device, Console is your best option.

Even if we assume that for 500$ you can get R3 3300X+ RTX 2060/RX 5600 XT performance levels, with next gen hardware, its still is completely trashed by both PS5 and Xbox Series X.

And yes, plenty of people will have to make this decision. Do they pick a PC, or do they get a console, even if they have only 500$ to spend.
I don't think that's a reasonable assumption, given the current state of the DIY hardware market. I just carted up a system on pcpartpicker that was a 6 core Zen 2 (3600), 16GB of the cheapest ram, the cheapest B450 MB, the cheapest 256GB SSD + 2TB HDD, and the cheapest case and 80+bronze PSU listed. It was still $470, without a video card. You could shave $50 off that by choosing a four core 3100, but even that doesn't help much. All the other various bits are too expensive, you just can't find the $20 AR deals for a 500W Corsair PSU anymore. You're at the price for a new XBox just getting your system built to put a GPU in. Higher cost is just one of the things we have to suffer for PC gaming.
 
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maddie

Diamond Member
Jul 18, 2010
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If you really believe prices going down, you will be up for a rude awakening. It should be clear by now why prices are as they are and there is no way going back. In particular companies will not make prices based on what YOU think they should be.
Companies can price at whatever they want, but if you think sales don't matter, then Oh boy. No going back? Ha, just let a generation of cards underwhelm in sales and you'll see how fast prices adjust.
 

CP5670

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2004
5,539
613
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Sell your 1080Ti today for $500, give $300 and buy RTX3080 at $800 day one. You get ~50% higher performance in Raster + RT for only $300, I will say thats a very nice upgrade ;)

That's probably what I will do, but only after a few months. I generally don't like buying on day one and would rather wait until the prices stabilize and they iron out any initial issues. (like the 2080ti space invaders)
 

moonbogg

Lifer
Jan 8, 2011
10,637
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We should form a consumer's union for gamers where we have a website we sign up at and promote it on social media and youtube. We collectively agree to buy or not buy a product based on fair or unfair pricing. You get an email or visit the site after the release of a GPU or other product, everyone votes "accept" or "reject" and we have the honor to respect the decision and not buy the product if that's what has been decided by the majority.

People will say the free market already decides that, but I see it differently. I see enormous untapped power in the consumer to control prices when faced with a lack of healthy competition in the market. It can be done through influence and promotion, and with today's powerful social networking tools in all areas of modern life, such promotional efforts can snowball and become effective. It makes more sense with a population of consumers who repeatedly buy cycles of products, such as the gaming GPUs we are discussing today, where price hikes are only possible in the absence of outside pressure. Without competition, consumers themselves can organize and obtain enough participants to exert a non-trivial amount of pressure sufficient to make prices more fair for certain products.
 

IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
8,686
3,786
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Thing is, the market (including the competition) pretty much has agreed to this pricing structure and there was no pressure to NVidia to reduce prices further here - despite your and likes of yours ranting in the forums in unison.

The market being manipulated and being basically forced to accept has little to do with whether they should be doing this.

If they were pricing it reasonably as they did for many previous generations nobody would complain.
 
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beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
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My point is that the Series X pricing is completely irrelevant to what AMD prices the dGPUs.

I disagree. If need to pay $400 or more for a GPU I can get in a $500 xbox, why should I stay with PC gaming? On top of that the xbox will certainly also work nice a htpc/media player since my smarttv isn't really all that smart in this regard.

I see this will end badly as someone already had foreseen couple years ago. The insane prices lead to lower sales which lead to higher prices. The cycle can't be broken because the real problem is wafer supply. If one company decides to offer a fair price, they can't create enough units and the price will rise on it's own giving the profit to the retailer. So it's better for GPU company to release at high price.
In that regard NV being on Samsung, if one can dream, could be a lucky turn of events if they actually have enough supply and good enough yields. If they have that, NV could actually deliver a death blow to AMD by simply lowering prices (margin) for higher volume. AMD will have no answer as they lack the supply for the cheap prices.
 

Thala

Golden Member
Nov 12, 2014
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The market being manipulated and being basically forced to accept has little to do with whether they should be doing this.

If they were pricing it reasonably as they did for many previous generations nobody would complain.

What they should do? They should price the cards according to what is best for the company and its shareholders. This among others things this means maximizing gross margin. That having said, there a few effects at play here since the release of the GTX10xx series (2014), which people like to cite as reference:

1) inflation - while not big contributor it adds up to like 10%
2) while cost per transistor going down with each shrink, cost per die area going up. This has gotten worse the last few process generations. Keep in mind that performance comes mostly from area/xtor budget nowadays (and not much from frequency increase anymore)
3) At times when we have a shortage of wafer capacity, we see low margin products competing with high margin products for the same wafer capacity of the latest process nodes. It should be clear, that a certain upwards pressure comes from here as well.

Finally, if both NVidia and AMD would have figured, that the prices are not where they should be, they would have adjusted long time ago within the Turing generation timeframe.

Taking all of the above together, makes me confident, that there is no way going back to GTX10xx price structure or more precisely - not going backwards at all.
 
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beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,233
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This among others things this means maximizing gross margin.

if that where the case they should stop selling geforce and only make quadro and tesla.

Volume obviously matters too. Currently we are in an upwards spiral. The more insane prices get especially compared to new consoles, the less sales/volume there will be further increasing price for next generation.

Repeating myself the only small,tiny hope is that NV has tons of capacity at samsung (is anyone lese using that node at all?) and NV is willing to put a big blow in AMDs GPU "comeback" for reasons mentioned in earlier post (AMD can't lower prices much due to lack of volume).
 

OnlyOnePost

Junior Member
Aug 19, 2020
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tajoh111

Senior member
Mar 28, 2005
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What makes you say that?

Economically speaking there are only two ways price do not go up when revenue is maximized.

Competition and AMD deciding to be the value company, rather than a luxury company that prices there cards the same as Nvidia.

Or Revenue ceases to increase further, in which Nvidia claws back on R and D, Chip sizes and becomes like Intel for the last 6 or 7 years and maximizes profit through minimizing cost. Notice intel did not increases prices, but performance basically ceased over the years and price to performance increase was minimal. Chips stayed 4 cores and chip size shrank. Another way is Nvidia follows AMD's lead and fires their North American engineer team and replaces them with a Chinese team like AMD which could save them 75% on Labor and R and D.

Since AMD is deciding to price their cards like Nvidia now, rather than value price their cards and absorb more marketshare, they decided to maximize profit by increasing their pricing, they are just as much to blame for high videocard pricing.

Remember the highest marketshare AMD has had over the last 15 years was during the 4870 generation when AMD decided to kick Nvidia in the nuts when they priced the gtx 280 too high. If we want prices to lower, AMD and Nvidia need to fail at high pricing and AMD needs to be the value company again in the GPU market.

The thing is AMD can do this strategy even better now because of ryzen revenue and Nvidias workforce being mostly North American based.

Because of AMD Ryzen revenue and their GPU work being mostly done in China, they can afford to get into a price war with Nvidia.

Nvidia's North American workforce would quickly become an anchor which could bleed them out money unless they fire and replace them with Chinese workforce like AMD if AMD got into a price war. While Nvidia spends 770 million quarterly on R and D, AMD likely spends 100 million or so when you take out the CPU R and D. AMD needs to value price their cards because they would not really bleed out that much money because of there reduced R and D cost.
 

Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
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Since AMD is deciding to price their cards like Nvidia now, rather than value price their cards and absorb more marketshare, they decided to maximize profit by increasing their pricing, they are just as much to blame for high videocard pricing.

We have no clue on pricing for anybodies cards. And we won't until they launch.
 
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