ATI overtakes nVidia in discrete graphics marketshare

[Scali]

sounds like you drank the coolaid dude.

Well, I write Cuda code myself from time to time. I've had a Radeon 5770 for the past 8 months, but I'm going to a GTX460 now.

Basically I was just pointing out that 8800 already was much more than just a DX10 GPU, much like Fermi is more than just a DX11 GPU.
Whether you care about the extra features or not, they are included in the architecture. So the criticism of nVidia's GPUs which "try to be everything to everyone" is not entirely justified. nVidia actually succeeded just fine with the 8800. And it seems like GTX460 is going to succeed aswell, so I don't see a reason for nVidia to change their strategy.

 

[bryanW1995]

I'm not seeing this.

5970 stands alone for now, but...

GTX 480 > 5870
GTX 470> 5850
GTX 465 is mostly crap but so is 5830 (compared to cards above or below)
GTX 460 > 5830

5770 and below stands alone also. But for segments that Nvidia actually has cards for, ATI's "old" architecture is not as good.

yes, but their die size is ~ 50% smaller, which allowed them to actually, you know, come out with a gpu 10 months earlier. plus, they have the competition bracketed, not the other way around. here's what you SHOULD have written:

5970>gtx 480
5870>gtx 470
5850>gtx 460
5830 = sux
5770/50/etc = unopposed domination

amd still controls the market at every price point, so much so in fact that even after gtx 460 came out and we all went gaga over it 5850 prices are still extremely high.

with 4xxx vs gtx 2xx amd dictated the market from the middle by forcing huge and embarrassing price cuts from nvidia. this round nvidia just slotted their cards into the price/performance slots that amd left open, and only now that gtx 460 has come out has nvidia had any ability to dictate anything at all to the market.

Originally Posted by bryanW1995
sounds like you drank the coolaid dude.

Well, I write Cuda code myself from time to time. I've had a Radeon 5770 for the past 8 months, but I'm going to a GTX460 now.

sorry, forgot that you're a dev. however, my point is still valid. you and I benefit from cuda so we like nvidia cards. the vast majority of people buying $150+ video cards don't do dev work or crunch DC, they play games. That is unlikely to change in the near/mid term. Amd has designed their last several generation of cards with this fact in mind. Nvidia has not. Amd's strategy appears to be better for the past 2 generations. We'll see if that continues to be the case going forward.

 

[OCGuy]

yes, but their die size is ~ 50% smaller, which allowed them to actually, you know, come out with a gpu 10 months earlier. plus, they have the competition bracketed, not the other way around. here's what you SHOULD have written:

5970>gtx 480
5870>gtx 470
5850>gtx 460
5830 = sux
5770/50/etc = unopposed domination

amd still controls the market at every price point, so much so in fact that even after gtx 460 came out and we all went gaga over it 5850 prices are still extremely high.

with 4xxx vs gtx 2xx amd dictated the market from the middle by forcing huge and embarrassing price cuts from nvidia. this round nvidia just slotted their cards into the price/performance slots that amd left open, and only now that gtx 460 has come out has nvidia had any ability to dictate anything at all to the market.

Well that sure is an interesting spin.

 

[evolucion8]

Well that sure is an interesting spin.

It isn't a spin, is a reality, the HD 5870 doesn't compete with the GTX 480, the HD 5970 does, the same goes with the GTX 470, its competition isn't the HD 5850, its the HD 5870, both are priced similarly.

 

[faxon]

It isn't a spin, is a reality, the HD 5870 doesn't compete with the GTX 480, the HD 5970 does, the same goes with the GTX 470, its competition isn't the HD 5850, its the HD 5870, both are priced similarly.

yea, it's all about price bracket when it comes to competition. sure, when fermi came out that may have been the way it was slotted, but prices change. right now nvidia is trying to shape the market as best it can for when it releases some fully enabled GF104 parts and GF106 parts, since thats going to be their saving grace for the long haul if they can pull it off. keep in mind, im not factoring the GTX470 or 465 into this equation at all right now. its been widely announced that nvidia is slowing production of GF100 wafers and that they intend to discontinue the 470 and 465 in favor of GF104 parts at those pricepoints, so the prices are artificially low right now to move inventory since without these cuts the inventory wouldnt sell at all. if nvidia was able to price these parts how they did at launch and still move the remaining inventory they most definitely would, since they need all the money they can get right now

 

[Wreckage]

It isn't a spin, is a reality, the HD 5870 doesn't compete with the GTX 480, the HD 5970 does, the same goes with the GTX 470, its competition isn't the HD 5850, its the HD 5870, both are priced similarly.

A 480 is similarly priced to a 5970?

NVIDIA wins every price point in the enthusiast market. From at least $170 on up.

A pair of 460's can be had for around $400 and competes well with the $600+ 5970.

Face it NVIDIA has the fastest chip. No contest. They have tons of features like CUDA, 3D, PhysX, etc. All the good things a new architecture brings. AMD is behind until Northern Islands launches, which won't be until 2011 at best. At one point NVIDIA was up around 68% marketshare. In fact when was the last time ATI was ahead? Exactly. I don't consider a minor glitch in the market anything more than a mole hill.

 

[OCGuy]

It isn't a spin, is a reality, the HD 5870 doesn't compete with the GTX 480, the HD 5970 does, the same goes with the GTX 470, its competition isn't the HD 5850, its the HD 5870, both are priced similarly.

What is the cheapest you can get a 480?

What is the cheapest you can get a 5970?



Yea, not even close to the same bracket.

Id rather have 2X 260s and OC the crap out of them than a 2 foot long $700 5970 from an Asian board partner.

 

[Skurge]

A 480 is similarly priced to a 5970?

NVIDIA wins every price point in the enthusiast market. From at least $170 on up.

A pair of 460's can be had for around $400 and competes well with the $600+ 5970.

Face it NVIDIA has the fastest chip. No contest. They have tons of features like CUDA, 3D, PhysX, etc. All the good things a new architecture brings. AMD is behind until Northern Islands launches, which won't be until 2011 at best. At one point NVIDIA was up around 68% marketshare. In fact when was the last time ATI was ahead? Exactly. I don't consider a minor glitch in the market anything more than a mole hill.

I don't know about you, but I buy graphics CARDS not chips. AMD's Older architecture uses less power for the better performance (5970 uses less power than a 480), runs cooler (5970 is cooler than a 480), quieter (5970 is quiter than a 480) is more efficient (smaller die size), more scalable (it took AMD about 3 months to bring out their entire DX11 lineup, I'm still waiting for nVs)

I would like to know about these "good things a new architecture brings"

 

[Skurge]

What is the cheapest you can get a 480?

What is the cheapest you can get a 5970?



Yea, not even close to the same bracket.

Id rather have 2X 260s and OC the crap out of them than a 2 foot long $700 5970 from an Asian board partner.

It's still faster, and you pay for that performance.

You realize 2x 260s are slower than a 5870 or a 480, so I don't see your point here. oh and the way SLI works if one card won't OC, your stuck at the slowest card's speed.

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

I don't consider a minor glitch in the market anything more than a mole hill.

Just hilarious... I remember you bringing marketshare into threads that had nothing to do with it just because you didnt have anything else (cuz you know, Nvidia didnt have competition for months), and now that AMD is ahead, its a "glitch"

Ah well, at least reading your posts never fails to make me laugh

 

[golem]

Something to consider: if AMD clocked its cards up to the TDP's that NVIDIA has, how do you think the cards would then compare? I think the Fermi architecture has potential, but its current implementation (besides the GTX 460) just plain sucks.

It's really hard to say. Current ATI cards after a certain point, just don't scale as well at current Nvidia cards.

 

[golem]

yes, but their die size is ~ 50% smaller, which allowed them to actually, you know, come out with a gpu 10 months earlier. plus, they have the competition bracketed, not the other way around. here's what you SHOULD have written:

5970>gtx 480
5870>gtx 470
5850>gtx 460
5830 = sux
5770/50/etc = unopposed domination

amd still controls the market at every price point, so much so in fact that even after gtx 460 came out and we all went gaga over it 5850 prices are still extremely high.

with 4xxx vs gtx 2xx amd dictated the market from the middle by forcing huge and embarrassing price cuts from nvidia. this round nvidia just slotted their cards into the price/performance slots that amd left open, and only now that gtx 460 has come out has nvidia had any ability to dictate anything at all to the market.

Are your brackets based on prices outside the US? Based on US prices maybe I shouldn't have compared GTX 480 to 5870, but then a 5970 shouldn't be compared to a GTX 480 either.

But the rest of my brackets were pretty good based on lowest US based pricing within the last week or so.

GTX 470 was actually cheaper than a 5850 until newegg had the sale on the MSI 5850, while being faster. In price points where ATI had Nvidia had cards within striking distance, the Nvidia cards were usually faster, though sometimes more power hungry and hotter.

Due to the oc scaling issues of ATI cards, with OC, Nvidia cards where within spitting distance of the ATI card one performance bracket above in the case of the GTX 470 and GTX 460. With driver improvements, the gap could close even further.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Why does a GTX480 have to be exactly comparable to a 5870 or a 5970? Can't you guys accept that it's just somewhere in between?

 

[evolucion8]

Just hilarious... I remember you bringing marketshare into threads that had nothing to do with it just because you didnt have anything else (cuz you know, Nvidia didnt have competition for months), and now that AMD is ahead, its a "glitch"

Ah well, at least reading your posts never fails to make me laugh

hehe I second that, he claims that nVidia has the fastest chip, yes, it is, but not much faster, specially with 50%+ higher TDP and power consumption and less than 18% in performance difference.

The fastest videocard in the market is the HD 5970, consumes less power, is faster and dissipates less heat and AFAIK, we don't buy chips, we buy videocards!!

 

[bryanW1995]

I was just throwing that "other" bracket out there to show how it can be taken either way. a much better view would be:

5970
.......gtx 480
5870
.......gtx 470
5850
.......gtx 460 (both)
5830
5770
5750
etc from amd


nvidia slotted their fermi cards into price brackets that amd had established. 5850 was $300 and 5870 was $400, so gtx 470 was $350. gtx 480 was faster than 5870 but slower than 5970 so it was, what, $450 - $500? nothing changed until gtx 460 came out and nvidia actually had the ability to make cards in decent volume. didn't charlie predict that they would only make one run of gf100 just to put a good show on for everybody while they were working like mad to do a respin? he might have gotten the numbers wrong, but honestly how many gtx 470/80's did nvidia sell with all the terrible pr that the got? even gtx 460 only got good press because it was actually priced competitively.

remember the difference with this late/crappy fermi launch vs amd's shot at taking back the market with 4xxx? amd aggressively moved the market from the word go, forcing nvidia to drop prices $150 on gtx 260 and as much as $250 on gtx 280. they could do that because they had the ability to make a ton of cards and were desperate for market share and profits (ANY profits). nvidia's gf 100 launch showed that they obviously either a.) don't care about market share, b.) don't care about market share, c.) don't care about profits, or d.) they couldn't make enough cards to price them at a more aggressive level.


now that they have a card that they can make in volume and sell at an aggressive price they're doing it, but don't mistake that for them "setting the market".


edit: are you guys taking wreckage seriously? sometimes if you starve a troll it goes to another cave...

 

[OCGuy]

It's still faster, and you pay for that performance.

You realize 2x 260s are slower than a 5870 or a 480, so I don't see your point here. oh and the way SLI works if one card won't OC, your stuck at the slowest card's speed.

You realize the 5970 is Xfire, right? If the game does not support Xfire, you are stuck with one GPU.

And I just went through Anand's review of the 460, and I see SLI 460s being faster than a 480 and 5870. Even on games where nV performs worse than usual.


http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-the-200-king/11

 

[jvroig]

What you are saying is true, but what happens when AMD needs to produce a new architecture on a new process? Doesn't that involve a steep learning curve?

Why would you need to produce a new arch on a new process? Intel, the undisputed king of RnD/Process/Manufacturing, didn't do that for SB, for example. It made Westmere on 32nm before Sandy Bridge on 32nm. And didn't Anand get around to explaining that already? AMD made the learning curve on the 4770, and what education they got from there they managed to apply to the 5xxx, which helped a lot, compared to nVidia's trials of only small, uncomplicated chips on 40nm.

Anyway, forget about that. In fact, forget about my entire first paragraph. Consumers and OEM's just dont care about invisible things like "architecture". They only care about tangibles like performance, power draw, TDP, silence/loudness, etc. Architecture is like a black box, we don't care about what goes on inside, what matters is what we get as a result of it.

I was not saying "architecture is not important". Rather, I was saying "new architecture" is not a feature by itself. More performance than last gen is a feature. Lower power draw is a feature. Even less audible fans can be a feature. But just saying "new arch", in the absence of any of the tangible features, is not a feature upon itself. It's not something you can use in isolation to judge two products. It's only better if the tangible features it offers are actually better.

That is why I quoted you and responded in the first place, because you agreed with an obvious trolling post. Architecture, by itself, means nothing if it does not result in the tangible features that are important. So saying "yeah, X company is behind" solely due to having older architecture (despite the obvious advantages in tangible features) is completely misguided. If it was under a specific context such as a GPGPU/compute card, then yeah, arch vs arch AMD is behind - by a lot. But the statement was made with no such context, and in that absence it has no good point at all.

As a developer myself, and a Linux user, I have a soft spot for nVidia. Things were painless with the 8600GTS I bought 3 years ago. With my newer 4770, there were some things I had to sacrifice (obviously, some nVidia specific features), and even some things that were Linux issues, not nVidia features - for example, I can't even play Battle for Wesnoth (and it's not even a 3D game), as it ends up corrupting the graphics driver and the screen is permanently color-inverted until I restart X. That's something that hasn't happened on my 8600GTS, and I went through several versions and distributions of Linux on it, all painless. I even used to run a 3D compositing desktop on it, yet another thing I had to sacrifice on my 4770 on Fedora 13 (thank you, AMD, for only supporting the latest Ubuntu releases, making my Fedora box unsupported due to using certain package versions that have not made it into Ubuntu yet).

But as a gaming card, I can't fault my 4770. And that's the issue at heart here. Yes, GPGPU and everything will take over the world someday, maybe. And yes, I love nVidia because it makes Linux computing experience easier. But the thread isn't about who has a better GPGPU (obviously, that's nVidia), or who has better Linux support (nVidia, no contest), or who loves devs more. The thread is about marketshare, and this is the domain of the OEMs and consumers, who both don't give a crap about anything that isn't one of the tangible features, and also don't care about Linux, and also don't care about what we enthusiasts think. And that's where AMD is ahead right now and have been for the better part of a year.

You should have just known better than to bite that troll post.

 

[evolucion8]

You realize the 5970 is Xfire, right? If the game does not support Xfire, you are stuck with one GPU.

And I just went through Anand's review of the 460, and I see SLI 460s being faster than a 480 and 5870. Even on games where nV performs worse than usual.


http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-the-200-king/11

The same scaling issues goes for the GTX 460 SLI, its inherent in all multi GPU solutions. The odd thing is that in your review of the GTX 460 SLI, the HD 5970 is still faster overall which is basically a pair of glued HD 5850.

"We’ve seen the GTX 460 lock horns with the 5850, and while the 5850 is undoubtedly the faster gaming card the $300 price point no longer makes as much sense as it once did with a $230 1GB GTX 460 below it. AMD either needs a 5840, or a price drop on the 5850 to bring its price more in line with its performance."

 

[Skurge]

You realize the 5970 is Xfire, right? If the game does not support Xfire, you are stuck with one GPU.

And I just went through Anand's review of the 460, and I see SLI 460s being faster than a 480 and 5870. Even on games where nV performs worse than usual.


http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-the-200-king/11

Yes, what you're saying is true, but you were talking a about GTX260s, so I don't see your point.

 

[Keysplayr]

The same scaling issues goes for the GTX 460 SLI, its inherent in all multi GPU solutions. The odd thing is that in your review of the GTX 460 SLI, the HD 5970 is still faster overall which is basically a pair of glued HD 5850.

"We’ve seen the GTX 460 lock horns with the 5850, and while the 5850 is undoubtedly the faster gaming card the $300 price point no longer makes as much sense as it once did with a $230 1GB GTX 460 below it. AMD either needs a 5840, or a price drop on the 5850 to bring its price more in line with its performance."

I thought the 5970 had two downclocked 5870 GPUs? E.G. 1600 shaders each.

 

[jvroig]

I thought the 5970 had two downclocked 5870 GPUs? E.G. 1600 shaders each.

That is correct. The 5970 is a pair of 5870 GPUs, but downclocked to 5850 speeds.

 

[Skurge]

I thought the 5970 had two downclocked 5870 GPUs? E.G. 1600 shaders each.

yeah, but crossfire 5850 is usually faster. Doesn't make any sense really.

 

[maddie]

I hope all the nvidia supporters realize that with the smaller market share comes great prices on cards. You should welcome a fall from arrogant grace. I for one might be returning to Nvidia soon from a 4850. All I care about is performance/price.

 

[SlowSpyder]

A 480 is similarly priced to a 5970?

NVIDIA wins every price point in the enthusiast market. From at least $170 on up.

A pair of 460's can be had for around $400 and competes well with the $600+ 5970.

Face it NVIDIA has the fastest chip. No contest. They have tons of features like CUDA, 3D, PhysX, etc. All the good things a new architecture brings. AMD is behind until Northern Islands launches, which won't be until 2011 at best. At one point NVIDIA was up around 68% marketshare. In fact when was the last time ATI was ahead? Exactly. I don't consider a minor glitch in the market anything more than a mole hill.

What I think you are missing is that AMD's older chips won in most of the metrics that mattered. Why did you bold and tell us to face it, that Nvidia has the fastest chip? Who here said otherwise? That's not something that's being questioned. It's also something that doesn't matter to very many people because we buy video cards. We don't socket a GPU on the motherboard.

AMD got their parts out significantly ahead of Nvidia. Nvidia's best part could not surpass AMD's best part, so they did the next logical thing... the same thing AMD did when the 2900 and 3870 couldn't beat Nvidia's fastest part. They found a place in the market that they could price it and have it exist there. It's no small mystery why the 480 is priced in between the 5970 and 5870.

And you can call this a 'glitch' all you want, but I'd say it's far more than that. Nvidia was so very dominant in market share, how many times did we hear you shout about how Nvidia sells two part for every single AMD part (before you disappeared while Nvidia had absolutely nothing to show, now they have one good part so we're lucky enough to have you back)? From this two to one advantage they let their competitor outsell them. They had delay after delay and when the parts launched they failed to impress. Where are their lower end DX11 parts? This is one hell of a glitch.

 

[maddie]

If Wreckage really is an Nvidia "agent provocateur", as some seem to think, then an appeal to logic is totally useless.