Current GPU Pricing

[ocre]

I disagree. I find myself in agreement with the OP.

Most after market HD7950s were going for $460-490 when GTX680 launched and were still $350-390 when GTX670 launched, while HD7970 was going for $550-590 depending on the version. With current pricing, AMD's lineup actually looks good.

It's not at all like last 2-3 generations (GTX280 vs. 4870, GTX285 vs. HD4890, GTX480 vs. HD5870 or GTX580 vs. HD6970). This time it's literally impossible to claim that GTX680 is the faster card overall. In fact, HD7970 overclocked to 1.2ghz+ with Cats 12.4 or newer would beat any voltage locked overclocked GTX680 in the majority of games.

The comparison of GTX680 vs. HD7970 as it relates to GTX580 vs. HD6970 is not even remotely close. It's beyond laughable or simply ignorant to the benchmarks.

GTX580 smashed HD6970 in pretty much every game that had Tessellation in it or where deferred MSAA was used. Where GTX580 was leading, it was dramatic:

1920x1080/1200

- Civilization 5
GTX580 = 72.9 (+61%) vs. HD6970 = 45.4)
GTX680 = 81.7 vs. HD7970 = 80.3 vs. HD7970 GE = 87.2

- Crysis 2
(GTX580 = 47.3 (+43%) vs. HD6970 = 33.1)
GTX680 = 65.9 vs. HD7970 = 62.2 vs. HD7970 GE = 69.0

- Battlefield 3 4xMSAA
GTX580 = 51.7 (+25%) vs. HD6970 = 41.3
GTX680 = 71.8 vs. HD7970 = 64.4 vs. HD7970 GE = 72.3

During the original launch of HD7970, it took about a 1050-1070mhz HD7970 to catch up to GTX680 but with 3-4 months of driver releases, game patches, HD7970 1050mhz is winning against the 680 in all the games where GTX580 annihilated the 6970. The margin is very small but AMD is now from at least as fast to faster.

Sometimes it's important to revisit reviews since launch to see if the situation has changed.

Recently Xbitlabs pitted a GTX680 overclocked to 1212 (1290 GPU boost) / 7168 memory vs. HD7970 1165mhz/7160 memory and GTX680 couldn't win.

That means anyone with an HD7970 at 1.2ghz+ has a faster card than any voltage locked GTX670 or GTX680 for the majority of games. Considering most HD7970s are going for $450 now, that puts GTX680 in an overpriced position right away, but frankly factory preoverclocked 670s already did that

Tally up the reviews at TPU, Xbitlabs, Computerbase, etc. and the situation has changed dramatically since AMD is very close in BF3 and is winning in SKYRIM and all Dirt games:
................

on average the 580 wasnt that much faster than the 6970, especially later in their existence. There was special cases with tessellation perhaps but this was an exception, not general. In the end there were reviews that showed the 6970 close to the 580, very close like a measly 10%.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970_GHz_Edition/28.html

this is generally, the 6970 wasnt much slower than the580 at all. There were individual titles the 580 was particularly strong in (even tessellation from special game patches and such) but they matter little when you look at the overall sum of averages. Then you also must realize that the premium nvidia was selling the 580 for was much larger than the 680 over the 7970.

No matter how you splice it, nvidia's stronger brand commands higher premiums in the flagship gpu segments. if you refuse to understand this then you will continue to be baffled by the current pricing, i guess. its not even that they are just asking for the premiums, they actually are selling cards in these segments well.

 

[RussianSensation]

No matter how you splice it, nvidia's stronger brand commands higher premiums in the flagship gpu segments. if you refuse to understand this then you will continue to be baffled by the current pricing, i guess. its not even that they are just asking for the premiums, they actually are selling cards in these segments well.

I am saying GTX580 was faster most of the time and when it lead, that lead was a huge 25-30% and it happened to be in modern games such as Batman AC, Crysis 2, Civ5. There are no games worth talking about besides BF3 where GTX680 is winning anything against the 7970 by such large amounts.

Also, you aren't accounting for the fact that an overclocked GTX580 mopped the floor with an overclocked 6970.

"It’s only in one game, Just Cause 2, that the Radeon HD 6970 can compete with the GeForce GTX 580. In the rest of our tests Nvidia’s card is faster by an average 14.5 to 19.9% in FSAA-less mode and by an average 11.5 to 24.3% with FSAA." ~ Xbitlabs

It was the HD6950 2GB version that could unlock to HD6970 and $350 GTX570s (with $370 factory preoverclocked 570s) that both made 580 such poor value. But the performance edge over the 6970 was definitely there. GTX680 for $500+ would lose by at least 10% to an 1100mhz HD7970 for $450! So an 1100mhz HD7970 would be at least 10% faster on average, cost $50 less and come with 3 free games that could be sold. GTX680 is currently overpriced, no doubt about it.

I've been following GPUs since at least Radeon 8500 days and ATI always priced their offerings very close to NV on the high end at $499-649. Maybe you don't remember. It's not correct to say that NV has always commanded a price premium. That's only true in the "AMD days". It wasn't until 8800GTX blew HD2900XT out of the water that AMD/ATI reverted to the small die strategy of 4870 and started competing on price/performance. The same was true for 5870 and 6970.

Now, you can say people are willing to pay more for the NV brand for whatever reasons but strictly from a performance perspective, it's back to the good old days of ATI. HD7970 is at least as fast. The fact that it costs less is a bonus.

There are certain features that both have over the other (better 3D for NV, PhysX, 3D surround, Ambient Native Occlusion in the drivers, TXAA (at some point?). AMD can support up to 6 displays and it does perform miles faster in double precision compute. Depending on which feature set you care about the decision is easier. Paying more $ not based on performance or features just because it's an NV card is fanboism and it has existed for a long time in the GPU space. I know it exists but I think this round GTX670 > HD7950 and HD7970 > GTX680. There is just no way getting around that. Latest drivers, HD7970 price drops and GTX680's losing in recent games has put it back into 2nd place imo.

With latest drivers and overclocked vs. overclocked results, an overclocked GTX680 cannot beat a 1.2ghz HD7970, it's awful slow in distributed computing projects that need double precision performance and it can't make any $ bitcoin mining. For that reason $450-465 HD7970 is more preferable now imo. Not only is it faster in the majority of games now, but it's cheaper. That's a no brainer. The list of games where HD7970 is winning is getting larger and larger while the list of games where GTX680 continues to hold the edge is getting smaller as AMD's driver team is catching up.

Really with GTX670 at $400 and HD7970 at $450-465, there is not many objective reasons at all to buy the GTX680. For the first time in a long time, I cannot possibly recommend the 680. It's not faster and costs more. For what? GTX670 MSI PE $430 > GTX680 $525 for price performance and HD7970 1.2ghz+ is faster. GTX680 is overpriced. GTX480 and 580 were faster and their added price was at least justified.

Overall, I still think GK104 is a mid-range Kepler and this generation isn't as good as it could have been. From that perspective, GK104 is a marvellous chip since it was good enough to go against AMD's best. Unfortunately GK110 is MIA probably until 2013.

 

[Obsoleet]

No issues with my Radeon here. Love it, wouldn't trade it for an equivalent model year Geforce, that's for sure.

 

[3DVagabond]

And according to this one, it's $40. Newegg has a couple models available for $60 less.

That's not the article the perf/$ chart was from. You need to use the same figures W1zzard did if you are going to use his chart. You can't pull numbers from another review and then use W1zzards calculations.

 

[3DVagabond]

I think the AMDs are very competitively priced. Now if only their drivers were not absolute sh*te and they actually worked with devs on the games that mattered, they may actually have sold a fair bit. Nvidia's pricing is a bit high, but in this market, I wouldnt blame any company for pricing according to demand, if they can turn a good profit.

You look at many of the most recent games and AMD had better performing drivers first. Alan Wake and Dirt Showdown. Or, nVidia surround is broken with Civ 5 and Hard Reset. Or single GPU surround doesn't work with Dirt 3. It's bad enough that TechPowerUp can't give us a 5760*1080 overall performance comparison. The AMD fans just don't run around throwing in every single comparison between the two that nVidia drivers suck because they run bad in certain games. nVidia also has it's share of bugs. Again, you don't have people complaining about jittering with adaptive Vsync in every nVidia/AMD comparison thread. This. "AMD drivers suck", excuse is just a fall back if there's nothing legit to complain about.

While support is important in making a buying decision, I hope this thread doesn't get derailed into an AMD drivers are suxor thread. If someone won't buy an AMD card because of drivers, that's their choice. Support is an assumed part of the purchase. Both companies offer support and the cost of it is figured into both company's pricing. If you are saying nVidia support is worth ~$100 per card more than AMD support, I think you are mistaken. As I pointed out above, nVidia's support isn't perfect either.

 

[RussianSensation]

That's not the article the perf/$ chart was from. You need to use the same figures W1zzard did if you are going to use his chart. You can't pull numbers from another review and then use W1zzards calculations.

I am not even sure what's the point of using prices from that review. Just look at current prices.

What answer does NV have to an 1100mhz HD7970 Vortex for $450? Something like a Sapphire Dual-X 7970 is also going to be quieter than a reference 680 as well. So a quiet 680 is really at minimum $525 on Newegg.

Again, even Oced vs. Oced taken into consideration, from Xbitlabs recent review: 1165mhz HD7970 vs. 1290mhz GTX680, GTX680 couldn't win.

$600 MSI GTX680 Lightning looks even more ridiculous now since most HD7970 cards will hit 1150mhz and unless it can somehow manage some a magical 1380-1400mhz overclock, it won't be any faster than a $450-470 average overclocked 7970 and for sure slower than the same magical overclocked 1.25-1.3ghz 7970.

The HD7950 vs. GTX670 comparison is much harder. A lot of 7950s are lower binned 7970s and anecdotally have a lower overclocking success. Still, even at just 1.1ghz on the 7950, that's probably going to be 7-10% within an overclocked 670 for $80 less (20% cheaper).

I think the driver issues and initial high pricing on 7950/7970 cards has hurt their image. AMD's fault to be honest. The "GTX670 is the best bang for the buck" line is too cemented in people's mind. Also, believe it or not but not everyone overclocks. This is where GTX670 has HD7950/7970 beaten. It crushes a stock 7950 and in factory preoverclocked Gigabyte Windforce 3x form for example = GTX680, all for $400. Looking at performance out of the box a $400 Gigabyte Windforce 3x would beat an 800-880mhz HD7970 by 20-25%! (stock GTX680 is 29% faster than a stock 7950)

The early adopters of after market HD7950 cards really paid the price after GTX670 launched at $399.

That card's value has plummeted by $180 in 1.5 months.

 

[3DVagabond]

yea, i think people are really missing the topic completely.

So back on it i think maybe we need to look at this from a greater distance to see the whole picture. The fact that the 680 is priced higher than the 7970 by a bit comes as no surprise to me. I see nothing out of the ordinary. If we look back to past generations everything is falling in line. The 580 vs 6970, gtx 480 vs 5970, and on and so forth.

When we look at the past generations i dont see any mystery what so ever. Everything seems to be falling exactly in place actually. The 580 was faster than the 6970 but was it worth the premium they sold for? The same thing before that generation and before......

Was the 580 worth the premium over the 6790? Considering the performance difference some might not think so. But, now we get to the meat. Performance isnt everything, its obviously important but not everything. People look at other things too, like the brand and its presence. Nvidia has the stronger name, they have for some time. The name means something. It means a lot. In cloths, cars, and watches just about in everything humans purchase the brand name is considered. It may not always be the final say in the matter, but it often has a huge say in it.

AMD has spent generations hammering in that they are the value brand. The budget brand. Sadly this is a common view for them, but they created it. This will not go away just like that. Its effect will be long lasting, just look at how long the ATI/AMD drivers suck has lasted. It may never die. Once people have an impression, it can be next to impossible to change. Their identity is what it is, and partly they are responsible for it.

Nvidia has the stronger brand name and they have a larger user base. Their flagship can sell for a higher price just on name alone even if the performance is equal. With the name people feel like they are getting a better product. And to them it is better. Nvidia strives to give this image. They work to create this. They want to deliver this. Nvidia does a lot to try to uphold this position. A lot that gets noticed by their user base.

Whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, nvidia has a better brand recognition. This is something that doesnt come over night, its pretty embedded and will stick for awhile. Humans are strange at times, but this is fundamental to our social nature.

Yes. People are willing to pay more for something from nVidia. Even when the performance isn't there to justify it. I thought that we were better informed though and wouldn't just blindly accept the price disparage. We know the performance between these cards. We know the difference in BoM. Yet, we still have a lot of people who not only defend nVidia for it, but actually belly up to the bar and pay the price. If the rolls were reversed and nVidia had comparable cards priced that far below AMD, or even $10 below AMD, we'd have threads all over the place telling us how badly AMD was ripping us off. Hell, people are still blaming AMD for the pricing, even when they are markedly cheaper than nVidia.

 

[SolMiester]

Just looked on Newegg and was quite surprised at the way pricing is going on the HD 7900's and the GTX 670/680.

There's now plenty of stock on 680's. They are averaging $550 though. The most shocking to me are the 680 Lightning at $600 while the 7970 lightning is $530, and the Asus 680 DCII at $530 with the 7970 DCII at $430(AR). On the other extreme is the MSI TF 7950 for $320(AR). None of the 670's or 680's are below their release prices. The Cheapest 670 is still $400.

I'm surprised people are willing to pay that much more for the nVidia cards. Judging by the amount of people buying and recommending them on these boards I guess they are still considered competitively priced. Am I the only one that thinks at these prices the 670's and 680's are overpriced relative to the 7900's?

It would seem that demand is still governing the prices suppliers can ask for these 680s....apparently the 7970 doesnt have that issue!...who would of guessed?

 

[3DVagabond]

I am not even sure what's the point of using prices from that review. Just look at current prices.

*snip*

Well, it was posted that the 2 cards were comparable perf/$ and that chart was used for evidence. I merely pointed out that the prices used (as well as the drivers for the 7950/7970 non GE to get those results) were out of date with the current examples from Newegg.

BTW, without quoting your entire last few posts, I am in ~99% agreement with you. The only point I would differ on is the relative value of the 7950. A TFII for $320 is fantastic value in the current market. On average that card should be a good O/C'er. If you look at [H]'s 7950 owners thread there are a lot of people getting some pretty impressive O/C's. At ~1150MHz you've got stock 680 performance for $320. That's not too shabby, IMO.

 

[3DVagabond]

It would seem that demand is still governing the prices suppliers can ask for these 680s....apparently the 7970 doesnt have that issue!...who would of guessed?

Are you trying to say that people just aren't buying the 7900's or are you saying nVidia can't supply. It's hard to tell from that post. It appears the first is what you are saying. If it is then please explain what makes the 680 worth that much more than the 7970. Your statement is exactly what I'm talking about. "Who would of guessed" is not an explanation.

Be careful if you think it's because nVidia can't supply though. You'll have a rash of people posting outright denial or finger pointing in every direction why it's not nVidia's fault if you do. I've mentioned supply problems on nVidia's part and it's never been an acceptable explanation.

 

[RussianSensation]

Hell, people are still blaming AMD for the pricing, even when they are markedly cheaper than nVidia.

Ya, when AMD dropped prices so suddenly starting with HD4870, it almost appeared that AMD has become the budget GPU brand. They were selling HD4870 for $299 when just a 20% faster GTX280 was going for $649! AMD could have surely gotten away with pricing HD4870 for at least $399. After that, it's almost like gamers expected AMD to compete on price and it has hurt their brand image.

Now despite HD7970 GE actually being slightly faster than GTX680, the other intangibles such as poor early drivers, coil whine and higher power consumption in overclocked states are hurting the 7970. I'd even say that many NV users won't even choose an AMD card because they are used to NV drivers, etc. unless the AMD card was a good 20% faster at the same price. The drivers for HD7970 should have been bullet proof from day 1 and I think AMD should have launched it at 1.05ghz from the beginning.

I also think this generation of AMD 'predator pricing' has implications into the future too. After seeing how AMD basically demanded the early adopter premium and 6 months later aftermarket HD7950s have dropped from $480-500 to $320, how many people are going to be lining up to buy HD8950 and HD8970 at their launch prices without seeing GTX770/780?

I think GTX670/680 winning in Blizzard, SKYRIM (initially) and BF3 games has been huge. All those games are massively popular and only recently AMD clawed back SKYRIM and narrowed the gap in BF3. Really, we could list 25+ games where HD7970 GE is faster but they won't be massively popular like the games where NV has the edge. I think it comes down to that also for a lot of people who might put in 100s of hours into Blizzard, SKYRIM and BF3.

 

[3DVagabond]

Ya, when AMD suddenly dropped prices so suddenly starting with HD4870, it almost appeared that AMD has become the budget GPU brand. They were selling HD4870 for $299 when just a 20% faster GTX280 was going for $649! AMD could have surely gotten away with pricing HD4870 for at least $399. After that, it's almost like gamers expected AMD to compete on price and it has hurt their brand image.

Now despite HD7970 GE actually being slightly faster than GTX680, the other intangibles such as poor early drivers, coil whine and higher power consumption in overclocked states are hurting the 7970. I'd even say that many NV users won't even choose an AMD card because they are used to NV drivers, etc. unless the AMD card was a good 20% faster at the same price. The drivers for HD7970 should have been bullet proof from day 1 and I think AMD should have launched it at 1.05ghz from the beginning.

I also think this generation of AMD 'predator pricing' has implications into the future too. After seeing how AMD basically demanded the early adopter premium and 6 months later aftermarket HD7950s have dropped from $480-500 to $320, how many people are going to be lining up to buy HD8950 and HD8970 at their launch prices without seeing GTX770/780?

I think GTX670/680 winning in Blizzard, SKYRIM (initially) and BF3 games has been huge. All those games are massively popular and only recently AMD clawed back SKYRIM and narrowed the gap in BF3. Really, we could list 25+ games where HD7970 GE is faster but they won't be massively popular like the games where NV has the edge. I think it comes down to that also for a lot of people who might put in 100s of hours into Blizzard, SKYRIM and BF3.

AMD marketing strategy is piss poor. I've been in retail for most of my life. The first thing you learn when selling is whoever mentions price first, loses. Anyone can sell anything by simply making it cheaper. People need to perceive value to buy your product. An extreme example is Apple products. Apple has found other ways to get people to perceive high value in what they are selling (When I say value price is only one aspect of value and not even the prime determining factor). It goes beyond numbers and graphs. I'd go as far as saying that relative performance with their competition is irrelevant.

nVidia being stronger in the games you mention is only as important as it's "perceived" because of marketing. Anytime anyone mentions performance AMD to nVidia, someone throws up BF3. EVERYTIME. It was also Skyrim for the longest time and Batman AC. Now that it's no longer the case, nobody mentions them. During the Fermi generations Heaven benchmark was the be all end all to determine that your card performed. Now? Not any more. Same with Crysis II. Tessellation was the one performance parameter that told the whole story. Now? Not any more. I remember when nVidia had an advantage with minimum FPS and it was all the rage and the most important benchmark. Now? Not any more. If a game runs at 90FPS on an nVidia card at 1080p and 82FPS on an AMD card, then the nVidia card is superior because so many people use 1080 monitors. If the same game runs at 48FPS on an nVidia card and 55FPS on an AMD card at 1600 or eyefinity/surround, it doesn't matter because only a few % of people play at those resolutions. It doesn't matter that it's also only a few % of the people buy the cards in question. The performance somehow matters to the masses. It's all marketing and perceived value and AMD sucks at it. Why the CEO's and Board members have allowed it for so long is beyond dumb. There are people out there, competent professionals, who could fix that. The only thing I can come up with is the people in charge are blind to the fact that these things are correctable. The are correctable quickly and easily. Just look at Korean manufacturing. It wasn't that many years ago it was considered sh!t. A Korean car was bought merely because of budget considerations. Not anymore. They are competing with the Toyota's and Ford's of the world. Marketing did that.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I think GTX670/680 winning in Blizzard, SKYRIM (initially) and BF3 games has been huge. All those games are massively popular and only recently AMD clawed back SKYRIM and narrowed the gap in BF3. Really, we could list 25+ games where HD7970 GE is faster but they won't be massively popular like the games where NV has the edge. I think it comes down to that also for a lot of people who might put in 100s of hours into Blizzard, SKYRIM and BF3.

Yeah and when you dig into the numbers and look at the performance you get in each title. The GTX680/670 being slower isn't unplayable. It's pretty close so for the games that someone might play through one time for the story, a 680 is fine and will then run their main staple a little better.

 

[3DVagabond]

Yeah and when you dig into the numbers and look at the performance you get in each title. The GTX680/670 being slower isn't unplayable. It's pretty close so for the games that someone might play through one time for the story, a 680 is fine and will then run their main staple a little better.

When an AMD card runs slower, but is still playable, it's just slower. It doesn't matter that it's perfectly playable. Again, the power of marketing. Any shortcoming of an nVidia card isn't important. Slower but still playable = good enough.

 

[cmdrdredd]

When an AMD card runs slower, but is still playable, it's just slower. It doesn't matter that it's perfectly playable. Again, the power of marketing. Any shortcoming of an nVidia card isn't important. Slower but still playable = good enough.

I don't get what you're saying...

I'm talking about what RussianSensation mentioned in regards to hot popular titles having an edge on Nvidia hardware and other titles being very playable. I was agreeing with his statement and expanding on it.

It's why the 680/670 is more popular and as a result more expensive with no price drop in sight.

 

[blackened23]

Good grief, 7970 prices went down again. Just checked the egg and even aftermarket cards are around 440$, most of them are clocked 1050 to 1100....

 

[3DVagabond]

I don't get what you're saying...

I'm talking about what RussianSensation mentioned in regards to hot popular titles having an edge on Nvidia hardware and other titles being very playable. I was agreeing with his statement and expanding on it.

It's why the 680/670 is more popular and as a result more expensive with no price drop in sight.

I'm talking about the hot popular titles that have an edge on AMD and the other titles being very playable on AMD hardware doesn't matter. The titles that they're behind on but playable they are just slower and not worth buying because of it. The titles they are faster on either don't matter or nVidia is good enough. Basically, the same titles that are perfectly playable on one brand are also perfectly playable on the other. Which brings us back to why aren't they similarly priced? Why pay more for virtually the same performance?

 

[ocre]

AMD marketing strategy is piss poor. I've been in retail for most of my life. The first thing you learn when selling is whoever mentions price first, loses. Anyone can sell anything by simply making it cheaper. People need to perceive value to buy your product. An extreme example is Apple products. Apple has found other ways to get people to perceive high value in what they are selling (When I say value price is only one aspect of value and not even the prime determining factor). It goes beyond numbers and graphs. I'd go as far as saying that relative performance with their competition is irrelevant.

nVidia being stronger in the games you mention is only as important as it's "perceived" because of marketing. Anytime anyone mentions performance AMD to nVidia, someone throws up BF3. EVERYTIME. It was also Skyrim for the longest time and Batman AC. Now that it's no longer the case, nobody mentions them. During the Fermi generations Heaven benchmark was the be all end all to determine that your card performed. Now? Not any more. Same with Crysis II. Tessellation was the one performance parameter that told the whole story. Now? Not any more. I remember when nVidia had an advantage with minimum FPS and it was all the rage and the most important benchmark. Now? Not any more. If a game runs at 90FPS on an nVidia card at 1080p and 82FPS on an AMD card, then the nVidia card is superior because so many people use 1080 monitors. If the same game runs at 48FPS on an nVidia card and 55FPS on an AMD card at 1600 or eyefinity/surround, it doesn't matter because only a few % of people play at those resolutions. It doesn't matter that it's also only a few % of the people buy the cards in question. The performance somehow matters to the masses. It's all marketing and perceived value and AMD sucks at it. Why the CEO's and Board members have allowed it for so long is beyond dumb. There are people out there, competent professionals, who could fix that. The only thing I can come up with is the people in charge are blind to the fact that these things are correctable. The are correctable quickly and easily. Just look at Korean manufacturing. It wasn't that many years ago it was considered sh!t. A Korean car was bought merely because of budget considerations. Not anymore. They are competing with the Toyota's and Ford's of the world. Marketing did that.

we are in alliance in most of what you said. the only thing i have to contest is that AMD could fix their image quickly and easily. while i do think it is possible i dont necessarily think that it could be done quick. It takes time to build your image and make impressions. Its not so easy to erase it and make a new one while sharing the same name. Its not as quick and easy as you may think. But you are correct, this is something that AMD shouldve been working all along. I believe in time progress should be made. But i dot think it will be easy for them.

 

[SolMiester]

Are you trying to say that people just aren't buying the 7900's or are you saying nVidia can't supply. It's hard to tell from that post. It appears the first is what you are saying. If it is then please explain what makes the 680 worth that much more than the 7970. Your statement is exactly what I'm talking about. "Who would of guessed" is not an explanation.

Be careful if you think it's because nVidia can't supply though. You'll have a rash of people posting outright denial or finger pointing in every direction why it's not nVidia's fault if you do. I've mentioned supply problems on nVidia's part and it's never been an acceptable explanation.

I am saying that demand for the NV cards is higher and therefore etailers can still charge a premium, whereas the demand for AMD is not there....

 

[3DVagabond]

I am saying that demand for the NV cards is higher and therefore etailers can still charge a premium, whereas the demand for AMD is not there....

Supply is the other part of that equation. That being said, I'm not asking if there's demand. Obviously there is. I'm asking why people want to pay so much more for the same performance? It's crazy to pay that much more for something because of the brand label.

 

[lavaheadache]

*whoops

 

[ocre]

I am saying GTX580 was faster most of the time and when it lead, that lead was a huge 25-30% and it happened to be in modern games such as Batman AC, Crysis 2, Civ5. There are no games worth talking about besides BF3 where GTX680 is winning anything against the 7970 by such large amounts.

Also, you aren't accounting for the fact that an overclocked GTX580 mopped the floor with an overclocked 6970.

as i already stated before, performance is only part of the reason why nvidia owns 2/3rds the dgpu market. its the brand. And as far as overclocking, in the consumer world its a lot less popular than you think. this is a little off topic sorry.

It was the HD6950 2GB version that could unlock to HD6970 and $350 GTX570s (with $370 factory preoverclocked 570s) that both made 580 such poor value. But the performance edge over the 6970 was definitely there. GTX680 for $500+ would lose by at least 10% to an 1100mhz HD7970 for $450! So an 1100mhz HD7970 would be at least 10% faster on average, cost $50 less and come with 3 free games that could be sold. GTX680 is currently overpriced, no doubt about it.

wow, too bad there is a market that will decided if its over priced or not. your basing your opinion on performance alone and it is not what dictates pricing. Not by a long shot.

I've been following GPUs since at least Radeon 8500 days and ATI always priced their offerings very close to NV on the high end at $499-649. Maybe you don't remember. It's not correct to say that NV has always commanded a price premium. That's only true in the "AMD days". It wasn't until 8800GTX blew HD2900XT out of the water that AMD/ATI reverted to the small die strategy of 4870 and started competing on price/performance. The same was true for 5870 and 6970.

I was talking about AMD and them taking the role as the value brand. This image wasnt constrained to GPUs, when i spoke of it earlier it was across the board. AMD at the same time started selling their CPUs as a low cost intel alternative. They had long lost the ability to go toe to toe and started being the generic budget brand. At least this is how many people started to view them and its mostly to do with AMDs mad skills in marketing.

the budget CPU identity and eventually they reduced the ATI brand to this same failing identity. They pounded in even further by retiring the ATI name and just calling their GPUs AMD instead.

so as far as my statement, nvidia has always got the premium over AMD gpus. What ever before is not relevant to anything i spoke of or anything the OP spoke of.

Now, you can say people are willing to pay more for the NV brand for whatever reasons but strictly from a performance perspective, it's back to the good old days of ATI. HD7970 is at least as fast. The fact that it costs less is a bonus.
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yea, that is exactly what i was saying. People are willing to pay more for nvidia products for "whatever reasons". This i already spoke of........ pertaining to brand recognition and a stronger presence. Them not ever being the budget alternative helps just a little dont you think?

Anyway, think on it.

 

[YBS1]

Supply is the other part of that equation. That being said, I'm not asking if there's demand. Obviously there is. I'm asking why people want to pay so much more for the same performance? It's crazy to pay that much more for something because of the brand label.

It's been stated many times already in the thread. Many people (myself included) feel factors besides the hardware itself are at play and they are willing to pay the small premium for that piece of mind. It's not that hard to figure out.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

 

[RussianSensation]

AMD marketing strategy is piss poor. I've been in retail for most of my life.

I think the AMD Gaming Evolved program is picking up though. Not sure if Dirt Showdown is an outlier since I have read that there is some kind of bug that's slowing down Kepler cards, but we'll have to see with a patch/driver fix.

However, even with more recent releases such as Ghost Recon Future Soldier (that I linked earlier) and Sniper Elite V2, HD7970 is winning.

Source

Now 42 vs. 37 fps for GTX680 isn't going to set the world on fire. But it's yet another game to add to the list that runs faster on 7970. Problem is this game isn't going to be a big seller like Blizzard games or BF3, which is why almost no one will talk about it.

NV somehow works with developers on games that end up some of the best selling. Perhaps their relationship teams get in touch with those teams earlier, I don't know.

For example, NV is again on top of it for Borderlands 2. It's going to have special PhysX effects. You don't need me to tell you that it's going to be a more popular game than Sniper Elite V2 and if NV cards win, it's going to count more than wins in niche games such as Anno 2070 or Sniper Elite 2 because Borderlands is simply the more popular franchise I would imagine.

People need to perceive value to buy your product. An extreme example is Apple products. Apple has found other ways to get people to perceive high value in what they are selling (When I say value price is only one aspect of value and not even the prime determining factor). It goes beyond numbers and graphs. I'd go as far as saying that relative performance with their competition is irrelevant.

That almost seems to be the case now. A lot of people would buy NV for other factors too though, even if they are fully aware that HD7970 or 7970 GE similar or slightly faster in performance.

Source

Maybe it's EVGA's customer service? Maybe it's the fact that many GTX680's have 3 year warranty vs. 2 year for 7970? Maybe it's because NV has won the mind of that consumer back in the GeForce 2/3 days and it's going to be hard to get them to switch. A lot of NV users even on our forum have been using strictly NV cards and when they switch to AMD, at the first sign of driver issues, they "tried AMD and it was horrible" and won't ever give it a chance. That's why it was a mistake imo to release HD7970 with less than stellar original drivers that caused BSOD, black screen issues with cards coming out of sleep. AMD has finally addressed it 6 months after launch with Cats 12.6/12.7B and finally enabled H.264 video decoding. The thing is even some HD7970 CF owners got too tired of waiting and left.

"It supports video transcoding via the Radeon HD 7000 series' VCE block in vReveal and ArcSoft MediaConverter,"
Source

and

"AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Eyefinity/Multiple Display configurations - BSOD when using desktop applications in DirectX 11 mode." Source

:sneaky: 6 months...is a long time for these things that should have been working on release. Many CF users simply gave up when AMD just fixed CF issues. First experience counts.

These small things are especially more important for users switching from NV to AMD because for many it may be their first impression of using an AMD card. Even HardOCP, AnandTech and TechReport admitted to SLI working better than CF for micro-stutter and game support up to this point in their reviews.

I recall I read a study in marketing that if a consumer has a bad experience with a product or service, on average he/she will tell 6 of his/her friends. If a consumer has a positive experience, he/she will on average only tell about it to 2 of his/her friends. Don't quote me on this, but I clearly understood from this study that a negative experience is far more detrimental to perceived brand value and future recommendations for that product/brand than a positive experience is. That seems to be more often the case with AMD than NV since HD2900 days. Ironically, even when AMD had a 6 months head start with HD5850/5870 and priced them at fire sale $269/379, AMD still wasn't able to convincingly win that generation. That just shows you how deep the bias towards NV is worldwide.

nVidia being stronger in the games you mention is only as important as it's "perceived" because of marketing. Anytime anyone mentions performance AMD to nVidia, someone throws up BF3. EVERYTIME. It was also Skyrim for the longest time and Batman AC.

I honestly think it's because those are very popular games. I mean sure it's more impressive to me that a card is faster in Crysis 1 and Metro 2033 since those are actually demanding games and I don't play BF3 multiplayer, but for most people BF3 is more important. Whether or not it's marketing only I doubt.

But I agree with you that winning in Diablo 3 by 13 fps in meaningless when the slower card is running at 146 fps already. Still because D3 is such a popular game, and the average Joe knows that GTX680 is the fastest card, they'll automatically assume that not only NV GTX600 series runs faster, but probably that NV simply runs that game faster regardless of generation. Although HD6970 is no worse than GTX580 in that game, even when AA is turned on (which somehow kills AMD performance in SC2, another Blizzard game).

Now that it's no longer the case, nobody mentions them. During the Fermi generations Heaven benchmark was the be all end all to determine that your card performed. Now? Not any more. Same with Crysis II. Tessellation was the one performance parameter that told the whole story. Now? Not any more. I remember when nVidia had an advantage with minimum FPS and it was all the rage and the most important benchmark. Now? Not any more. If a game runs at 90FPS on an nVidia card at 1080p and 82FPS on an AMD card, then the nVidia card is superior because so many people use 1080 monitors. If the same game runs at 48FPS on an nVidia card and 55FPS on an AMD card at 1600 or eyefinity/surround, it doesn't matter because only a few % of people play at those resolutions. It doesn't matter that it's also only a few % of the people buy the cards in question. The performance somehow matters to the masses. It's all marketing and perceived value and AMD sucks at it.

That's how it is I guess. I think the tessellation advantage of GTX470/480 did come into play in some modern games since these cards are now much faster than HD5870 is. In hindsight, recommending GTX470 1.28ghz with its huge overclocking headroom over the 1GB HD5870 had its advantages.

I find it more ironic that AMD users are now finally touting compute as a key advantage to AMD since AMD was mopping the floor with NV in double precision performance since at least HD4800 generation. But it only now gets mentioned once AMD's marketing went mainstream? AMD cards were faster in double precision compute for at least 6 years now. Not mentioned by many AMD users at the time but now many tout it as a feature. Really for a lot of people running distributed computing projects, AMD was the only way to go for a long time unless all you did was run Folding@Home.

Just look at Korean manufacturing. It wasn't that many years ago it was considered sh!t. A Korean car was bought merely because of budget considerations. Not anymore. They are competing with the Toyota's and Ford's of the world. Marketing did that.

I think companies like Kia and Hyundai actually started to build better looking cars, both inside and outside. If you look at their offerings, they did improve both in terms of quality, design and performance. The design got people talking about them, once they walked into the dealership they saw improved quality / feel of the car, once they drove the cars, they noticed improved fuel economy/good performance vs. the competition.

AMD needs to do the same to reclaim the glory days of ATI video division. Whatever features they have that are an advantage over NV, they should work from day 1.

Like right now AMD has 3GB of VRAM "free", so why isn't AMD working with Crytek to make sure AMD users get an extra high resolution texture pack for Crysis 3? That's probably because NV already won that relationship. AMD needs to be on top for newer games, like Medal of Honor Warfighter or Dishonored or Far Cry 3. But these things cost $ too. Their financial situation as a whole isn't exactly calling for marketing spending of this sort. NV almost has to since graphics is their bread and butter.

You see I think ATI was desperate. Graphics like it was for NV was their primary business. If AMD wants to win in graphics again, it has to operate the GPU division like a leading, "desperate" one, always one step ahead of competition. I foresee HD8900 series again beating GTX700 to launch if AMD is dead serious in winning market share.

 

[ViRGE]

Good grief, 7970 prices went down again. Just checked the egg and even aftermarket cards are around 440$, most of them are clocked 1050 to 1100....

Prices have to come down. I can't imagine AMD is going to let their partners charge more for a 7970 card than an 7970GE card. It messes up their product valuation strategy to have their GTX 680 combatant priced the same as their "slower" cards.