Does Nvidia choose not to compete on price?

[cmdrdredd]

I'll tell you one thing...Nvidia does dual GPU better than AMD. Works in more titles and has less micro stutter. That is enough for some. Also, AMD has been struggling. Despite what you might think about them as a company or their GPUs specifically, AMD is not doing the greatest as a whole. They've lost significant ground to Intel and as you already know Nvidia is a more represented brand for video card purchases. I think some people wonder if it's even a good idea to buy AMD considering their financials. If the outlook of a company is bad maybe they won't be around to support my new GPU in a few years?

Perhaps a stretch but I can see someone looking at AMD CPUs and drawing the conclusion that they also fair the same against Nvidia. Plus Nvidia has killer marketing. I imagine a lot more people have heard of Nvidia than AMD if you asked someone randomly about video cards.

 

[MrK6]

Because they don't need to.

Look at the top left graph here.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

If anything I'd say that graph goes against your intended purpose. While I don't place much faith in the Steam Hardware Survey, there's at least a trend there from Feb 2011 to July 2012 that can be followed. It looks like AMD might have lost a few percentage points (from 38-39% to 35-36%) due to the increase in Intel and other GPU products (and is that better detection or an actual market shift?). However, NVIDIA seems to have gone from a 58-60% share down to 46%.

In general I think the market is getting more dynamic due to the increased competition, so things are bound to get shaken up.

 

[Red Hawk]

Some of us just want the highest performing GPU at the time, period. That, historically has been Nvidia the last few years.

Not when the Radeon HD 7000 series was first released. Not when the Radeon HD 5000 series was first released. And even now Nvidia does not firmly hold the single-GPU performance crown thanks to the 7970 GHz Edition. It didn't firmly hold the dual GPU performance crown last year with the 590 and the 6990.

The historical precedent, if there is any, is that AMD is the first to release a full product lineup supporting a new node (such as 28 nm) or a new API (such as DirectX 11). They firmly hold the performance crown until a few months later when Nvidia releases their product lineup, which may or may not take back the performance crown from AMD.

But do these fine details matter to the average PC gamer? Probably not. What matters to them is that a lot of their games flash "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" logo in their faces with a cool voice saying "Nvidia". TWIMTBP and the image it created in the minds of most PC gamers probably helped elevate Nvidia over AMD in the minds of average gamers. AMD has tried retaliating in recent years with the "Gaming Evolved" brand, but that just doesn't have the same ring to it as TWIMTBP.

Because of this, the simple answer for "Does Nvidia choose not to compete on price" is yes. They don't have to. Gamers who don't agonize over benchmarks and review articles will pay more for Nvidia because they think they'll get a better experience. And honestly, at the $300+ level, they probably won't be able to tell the difference. If they are unsatisfied with a ~$100 Nvidia card (ie the subpar Geforce GT 640) they'll probably just buy a more expensive Nvidia card rather than switch to AMD. It's unfortunate, but that's just the power of marketing, and it's up to AMD's marketing department to find a way to boost their image in return.

 

[sze5003]

Why doesn't apple drop their prices except once in a blue moon?

 

[3DVagabond]

Price is dictated by supply and demand. Reduce the first or increase the 2nd and price goes up. nVidia states that they are and will be supply constrained on 28nm. While I'm pretty sure nVidia is selling plenty of cards, I'm not so sure that they have enough cards to compete with AMD at lower prices and keep the supply up.

 

[lambchops511]

I wonder why it seems for every Nvidia card that comes out, the release seems to be unspectacular - there is either an AMD card that outperforms it for less money, or one is soon on the way.

Is Nvidia simply selling enough cards that they don't need to compete on the price/performance ratio?

Or are they unable too/margins are too slim/business is struggling?

I care about features. Even if the NV cards were x2 the price, I would buy NV for CUDA. For those of you who cry OpenCL, you don't know anything about GPGPU programming. I really wish OpenCL would be more mature to give me options tho...

 

[Silverforce11]

NV doesn't need to do squat as long as their products sell. The reasons why it sells often inferior products for higher prices much better than AMD are simple: Brand loyalty and lazy consumers who don't research or care.

Truth hurts, AMD will have a very tough time clawing back NV loyalists, even through debacles such as the FX series, late Fermi, dead GPUs etc, NV is still in a leading position. AMD only hurts itself when it tries too hard to compete on price, since it doesn't have 4000% margin HPC market command like NV has to subsidize price wars.

 

[raghu78]

Enough fanboys and strong enough brand, and you dont need to care about price
(they ll still buy it, so why not milk them?).

Same thing is true for Apple, nvidia has a bit of that as well.

this is true. yeah Nvidia being the dominant company has a much stronger brand recognition. just like Intel has a much stronger brand than AMD in CPUs.

 

[Arzachel]

NV doesn't need to do squat as long as their products sell.

That's not quite true, they have to release them first which seems to be an issue lately

(Just kidding)

 

[sze5003]

Its a marketing thing. Why reduce prices now that another competitor reduced theirs at the same time? They will drop price later months down the line, not by much either. They sold enough to the point that reducing price wouldn't bring in additional revenue.

 

[3DVagabond]

Its a marketing thing. Why reduce prices now that another competitor reduced theirs at the same time? They will drop price later months down the line, not by much either. They sold enough to the point that reducing price wouldn't bring in additional revenue.

I'm failing to see your reasoning?

 

[sze5003]

There isn't much to my reasoning. Nvidia is not known to be one for reducing prices drastically..same as Apple. Hell the 560Ti is still going brand new for $220-240. I bought mine last year for maybe $260 or 280 I don't remember.

What would be the point of reducing the price of the 6 series? Maybe reduce the 660ti but no way they would reduce the 680 or 670 much.

 

[3DVagabond]

nVidia has dropped prices in the past because of competition (GTX-260).

I said before that a good reason not to drop pricing is if they couldn't supply enough cards at the lower price. This is entirely possible with them claiming supply constrained. If this is true though it could mean that, purely because they don't have enough to sell, they could sacrifice market share. That is incredibly frustrating when you have to leave money on the table just because of a lack of supply.

I'm curious to see what happens.

 

[sze5003]

Yeh it's only been not even a week since the price drop. I've held off from purchasing a card completely lol just to see if anything happens.

 

[krumme]

For the OP question. The answer is a clear YES. They sell on brand, because that is where the money is.

As it stands today the nv cards is very low value, but if AMD is taking share at the moment greater than what NV wants, it will just lower prices. They have plenty of room left on the high end.

I am going to have a new gfx card now, and the nv670 is the perfect candidate because of efficiency and lenght. But for the last months we have seen the cgn driver improving steadily to an degree, that even an oc 7950 can compete with an oc 670 in BF3 for high res 25x14 that is the target for theese cards. For the rest of the games, its more like oc 680 performance from an oc 7950. At the same time AMD have been lowering there prices. In DK the 660ti cost the same as an 7950 !

I think we will soon see some major NV price ajustments especially on 660 and 670. NV have been controlling the market completely for the last 4 months, and i think they want to defend share, because they got the shortterm profit unlike amd.

 

[tviceman]

Do we have to have threads like this every time either company has an obvious edge value wise? Nvidia's gtx460 had much better value than anything AMD had around it price wise when it was released, and Nvidia's gtx680 AND gtx670 had much better value than anything AMD had around it price was when they released.

It took AMD eight weeks to respond to gtx680 (and gtx670's) launch, and while they are historically slow to react (and were again), they probably wanted to wait out consumer reaction before adjusting prices. Since then they have been aggressively adjusting prices, but again it's probably in the face of slowing sales vs. Nvidia's lineup. JHH has said in their last two conference calls 28nm wafers continue to be supply constrained. If they're supply constrained, why in the world would they lower prices?

Prices will come down when supply exceeds sales.

 

[tviceman]

Graphics share

AMD - 22.7%
Nvidia - 14.8%

Nvidia's discrete shipments decreased 10.4% quarter over quarter.

In a thread about discrete GPUs, citing combined iGPU numbers tells me that you're either daft or a troll. I'm not sure either one is a good thing, so you may want to stop before you dig yourself in to a hole
-ViRGE

Nvidia's consumer desktop revenue was up 15% quarter over quarter while AMD's was flat. Those hd7970's were sitting on shelves collecting dust apparently. Weird how it all works out, isn't it?

 

[blackened23]

Nvidia's consumer desktop revenue was up 15% quarter over quarter while AMD's was flat. Those hd7970's were sitting on shelves collecting dust apparently. Weird how it all works out, isn't it?

You really are no better than the scores of trolls in the GW2 thread with responses like this. Is this really necessary? C'mon man.

Anyway, I agree that nvidia doesn't need to compete on price for the time being - they have no issues selling because they have great mindshare among customers. Secondly, consumers tend to read reviews selectively ; It is human nature to read an introduction and conclusion only (and perhaps a few charts) while skimming an entire article. Anyone doing that would get the overwhelming sense that the 680 is the card to get as most reviews compare the vanilla 680 to the vanilla 7970. However, it is great that AMD provides such close performance at a great price. Its a win whichever side you go with - the 680 is a great card, and i've always felt the 7970 is a great card as well.....especially since it can be had for 370-420$.

 

[Silverforce11]

Nvidia's consumer desktop revenue was up 15% quarter over quarter while AMD's was flat. Those hd7970's were sitting on shelves collecting dust apparently. Weird how it all works out, isn't it?

But we've already established that its not weird.

Nv will sell well regardless of competition because the vast majority of consumers don't even read reviews, or ask forums on perf/$ or perf/w metrics before buying. Brand loyalty is strong for NV, just like Apple.

 

[Crap Daddy]

Does Nvidia choose not to compete on price?

Apart from Nvidia nobody knows. Until these last official AMD price cuts NV considered it is not an option. Why? The obvious answer is because they are satisfied with how the products sell.

What will happen in the following weeks it's again NV's option based on what the market will tell them.

It's same with AMD. The market told them at some point that they can't sell their 7970/7950/7850 anymore at launch prices, then at spring MSRP and then at first summer MSRP so we have now the second summer AMD MSRP.

It's that simple really.

 

[tviceman]

But we've already established that its not weird.

Nv will sell well regardless of competition because the vast majority of consumers don't even read reviews, or ask forums on perf/$ or perf/w metrics before buying. Brand loyalty is strong for NV, just like Apple.

It is weird based solely on anandtheman's attemped trolling comment. That one flew over your head.

 

[tviceman]

You really are no better than the scores of trolls in the GW2 thread with responses like this. Is this really necessary? C'mon man.

I think he clearly knew he was trolling, and I was clearly calling him out on it.

 

[Wall Street]

NVidia only has two pieces of Silicon to work with now at 28 nm. They have the GK107 which is in the 640 GT and is slower than the HD 7770. Their only other chip is the GK104. It is hard for them to be happy selling a chip that could be a potential $500 GTX 680 for $300 or less. That is a big part of why they don't compete on price. If they make a GK104 card too cheap than the GTX 680 looks unattractive. And while the chip does have a smaller die than the AMD competition, they are already giving away a lot of silicon for not a lot of money with the GTX 660 Ti. nVidia may compete on price if they ever get a GK106 chip out.

 

[Olikan]

Nvidia's consumer desktop revenue was up 15% quarter over quarter while AMD's was flat. Those hd7970's were sitting on shelves collecting dust apparently. Weird how it all works out, isn't it?

yes, but it was just at kepler lunch...in Q2....Nvidia's desktop discrete shipments dropped 10.4% from last quarter;

http://www.techpowerup.com/170575/G...Over-Last-Quarter-and-5.5-Over-Last-Year.html

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Some of us just want the highest performing GPU at the time, period. That, historically has been Nvidia the last few years.

The HD 7970GE is faster than the GTX 680...