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

[Ottonomous]

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.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

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

- Makes me wonder if the $1200 cards of today will look like a crazy good deal 4 years from now...

 

[moonbogg]

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]

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.

 

[beginner99]

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]

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.

 

[beginner99]

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]

 

[Krteq]

Heh, where is that from?

 

[maddie]

Heh, where is that from?

Only one post.

 

[Krteq]

I'm just curious why NV wouldn't compare any RT(X) games... but nice try

 

[jpiniero]

I'm just curious why NV wouldn't compare any RT(X) games... but nice try

Maybe a slide for raster games and another for RT? I would say fake but plausible. But to get something like 90% it would mean the 2080 Ti was being severely bottlenecked by something.

 

[DeathReborn]

Anthem... must be a fake.

 

[psolord]

I'm just curious why NV wouldn't compare any RT(X) games... but nice try

Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, do have RT though.

 

[Krteq]

You are right, my bad

 

[CakeMonster]

- Makes me wonder if the $1200 cards of today will look like a crazy good deal 4 years from now...

Nah, probably not since prices can't continue increasing like this.

The 1080Ti held up well since the 2080Ti was more expensive. The 2080Ti held up well since it took 2 years for an upgrade to arrive.

 

[pj-]

That chart is annoyingly vague enough to be real

 

[Bouowmx]

It's most likely just user speculation or a ruse (like what the heck, Anthem?), but good work on emulating the NVIDIA look.

 

[tajoh111]

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]

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.

 

[Mopetar]

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.

It won't work out in reality even if people agree to it. I recall a similar protest/boycott over a CoD game many years ago. There's a funny image of all of the people in the Steam boycott group playing the game right after launch.

The only way prices come down is if AMD has a competitive product in a product range. Even if they initially set prices high to match NVidia based on relative performance of the two products they'll both face pressure to cut prices to scoop up additional sales.

 

[moonbogg]

It won't work out in reality even if people agree to it. I recall a similar protest/boycott over a CoD game many years ago. There's a funny image of all of the people in the Steam boycott group playing the game right after launch.

The only way prices come down is if AMD has a competitive product in a product range. Even if they initially set prices high to match NVidia based on relative performance of the two products they'll both face pressure to cut prices to scoop up additional sales.

The advocacy group side of the organization could focus on several core consumer-related issues, not only hardware. The influence could build and become substantial which may end up helping to keep prices in check for hardware related to the union side.

 

[Kenmitch]

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

Expecting AMD to compete with the lack of willingness to buy their products is selfish.

 

[CastleBravo]

Expecting AMD to compete with the lack of willingness to buy their products is selfish.

I would have bought a 5700 XT at launch if they would have said in no uncertain terms there wouldn't be a more powerful AMD card for at least another year and a half. Now I'm probably going to buy a 3080 unless AMD finally gives us some information on their upcoming products instead of just hoping once again they will release a high end card before 2021. "Year of the Gamer" my ass Lisa.

 

[beginner99]

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.

I think AMD sets prices so high because they simply couldn't fulfill demand anyway

 

[Stuka87]

I would have bought a 5700 XT at launch if they would have said in no uncertain terms there wouldn't be a more powerful AMD card for at least another year and a half. Now I'm probably going to buy a 3080 unless AMD finally gives us some information on their upcoming products instead of just hoping once again they will release a high end card before 2021. "Year of the Gamer" my ass Lisa.

Lisa Su has specifically said the cards will release this year.