High end video card competition over the past 6 years

[happy medium]

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/vega-navi-rumors.2486940/page-29#post-38628713
This is the post that was the reason for this thread.


1.)In your opinion what year(s), (not cards) was there no competition in the high end video card sector?
2.) In the year(s) you have chosen in #1, whats your opinion of why we paid more?

Remember not cards but "what years" ?

refresher of the high(er) end for the past 6 years.

gtx570/580/hd6950/6970/ released in 2010
gtx590/hd6990 released in 2011
gtx670/680/690/hd7950/hd7970 in 2012
gtx770/780(ti)/Titan/hd7990/290/290x in 2013
gtx970/980/295x2/290/290x in 2014
gtx980/980ti/TitanX/390x/Fury/FuryNano/FuryX in 2015
gtx1070/1080/TitanXP/ Fury/Furynano/FuryX/Pro duo in 2016

I think 2016 was the weakest year. AMD had no answer for the 1070/1080.

 

[crisium]

2013 was the year of trickery. Within a span of months:

$1000 Titan. Unprecedented price for a single GPU, but unprecedented performance. Ultimate 28nm flagship (tricked)
$650 GTX 780. 20% cut chip sold to us as a "bargain". Nearly $1000 performance! (mental trickery)
$700 GTX GTX 780 Ti. Even better performance than the other two! Ultimate flagship (the trick was built in obsolescence: Kepler would begin to tank in just 1 year, and the $400 290, released earlier with more VRAM, would begin to make serious gains)

I know 2012 is where trickery began, with GK104 and Tahiti being marketed as high end, but 2013 really looks like they pulled a fast one.

2016 is obviously where there is no high end competition.

 

[happy medium]

2013 was the year of trickery. Within a span of months:

$1000 Titan. Unprecedented price for a single GPU, but unprecedented performance. Ultimate 28nm flagship (tricked)
$650 GTX 780. 20% cut chip sold to us as a "bargain". Nearly $1000 performance! (mental trickery)
$700 GTX GTX 780 Ti. Even better performance than the other two! Ultimate flagship (the trick was built in obsolescent: Kepler would begin to tank in just 1 year, and the $400 290, released earlier with more VRAM, would begin to make serious gains)

I know 2012 is where trickery began, with GK104 and Tahiti being marketed as high end, but 2013 really looks like they pulled a fast one.

2016 is obviously where there is no high end competition.

So you say 2013? (See question #2) why was there no competition that year and why did we pay more? I thought the 290 series was ok competition that year.

Added pole, thanks for your response.

 

[mnewsham]

You left out Rx 460, 470, and 480/480x
Of these i'd minimally include the 480x as a high-end card, but the 480 could be considered there too.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

2015 started it. 2016 it got worse.

 

[crisium]

So you say 2013? (See question #2) why was there no competition that year and why did we pay more? I thought the 290 series was ok competition that year.

Added pole, thanks for your response.

290 was. But only came out in October, leaving months of Titan and 780 unchallenged.

As for after the 290 launched, you'll have to ask those that bought the 780 Ti. It was 15% more performance (at the time) for 75% more price. In an earlier era that never would have stood, but Titan set the standard. Noise and brand perceptions and idiotic mining prices probably kept people away from the 290, as far as I remember.

 

[happy medium]

2015 started it. 2016 it got worse.

really ?I thought 2015 was good......
gtx980/980ti/TitanX/390x/Fury/FuryNano/FuryX in 2015

 

[happy medium]

290 was. But only came out in October, leaving months of Titan and 780 unchallenged.

As for after the 290 launched, you'll have to ask those that bought the 780 Ti. It was 15% more performance (at the time) for 75% more price. In an earlier era that never would have stood, but Titan set the standard. Noise and brand perceptions and idiotic mining prices probably kept people away from the 290, as far as I remember.

did you vote 2013 in the pole? You can vote for 2.

 

[MrTeal]

A lot of these are very arbitrary around the year cutoff, I'm not sure it wouldn't be better to compare generations. For example, the GTX 580 was released Nov 9th 2010 and the HD6970 was released on December 15th, while the 7970 was released on Jan 9, 2012. The 580/6970 were effectively the 2011 cards, not the two dual GPU cards.

I'd have to say 2016, with an honorable mention to 2013. I'm not sure I'm ready to include the OG Titan in the high end bracket as it was almost a market unto itself, but there was a good 5 months where AMD didn't answer the 780 in the high end before the 290X shipped, and even then supply was so constrained that finding one was a monumental challenge. The 780 was only ~20% faster than the (much cheaper) 7970GE at launch though, so the disparity wasn't huge.

For the first half of this year things were pretty even between the Fury and 980Ti, but AMD obviously hasn't released a high end card since the 1080 launched. As far as I can recall there hasn't been a half year stretch with such a disparity between high end cards (Fury X vs 1080) since the GTX8800 was launched a decade ago.

 

[MrTeal]

You left out Rx 460, 470, and 480/480x
Of these i'd minimally include the 480x as a high-end card, but the 480 could be considered there too.

I'll admit I haven't been paying much attention lately, but what is this 480x that's high-end while the 480 is not?

 

[Ranulf]

2014 was the start, really from the $250 price level on upward and it has just gotten worse. The reasons being lack of competition and bitcoin mining influencing supply/demand along with nvidia being nvidia. I can't blame them completely but it stuck in my craw that they offered clearly underpowered overpriced stuff for most of 2014, that being why the 970 looked so good at $330-350. And then you have the 1070 less than two years later that is objectively $80-100 more.

 

[Mercennarius]

really ?I thought 2015 was good......
gtx980/980ti/TitanX/390x/Fury/FuryNano/FuryX in 2015

Yeah...i'd say in general 2015 was fairly evenly matched between the red and green team. Each having their strengths in different products and different games during 2015.

 

[happy medium]

As far as I can recall there hasn't been a half year stretch with such a disparity between high end cards (Fury X vs 1080) since the GTX8800 was launched a decade ago.

Very good point, and I believe your correct.

 

[happy medium]

2014 was the start

The start of what, If I may ask.

really from the $250 price level on upward and it has just gotten worse.

What has gotten worse? Lack of competition?

The reasons being lack of competition

2014 was the gtx980/970 vs the 290/290x. Are you saying that was no competition?

Competition:
the act or process of competing : rivalry: asa : the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favorable terms

 

[Elfear]

2013 was the year of trickery. Within a span of months:

$1000 Titan. Unprecedented price for a single GPU, but unprecedented performance. Ultimate 28nm flagship (tricked)
$650 GTX 780. 20% cut chip sold to us as a "bargain". Nearly $1000 performance! (mental trickery)
$700 GTX GTX 780 Ti. Even better performance than the other two! Ultimate flagship (the trick was built in obsolescence: Kepler would begin to tank in just 1 year, and the $400 290, released earlier with more VRAM, would begin to make serious gains)

I know 2012 is where trickery began, with GK104 and Tahiti being marketed as high end, but 2013 really looks like they pulled a fast one.

2016 is obviously where there is no high end competition.

Agreed. 2013 had a span of months where Nvidia had the high-end to themselves until Hawaii launched. In 2016 we've had 6+ months with the 1080 in it's own tier, let alone the Titan XP. Looks like we'll have to wait a few more months until Vega launches before we get some good competition again.

 

[Ghost of Cyrix]

I voted 2014, 2015, and 2016. I'd like to add 2013 as well though. Really, every year since GCN debuted has been gradually worse than the last.

2013 - GK110 alone on the market most of the year; Hawaii did launch months later, but mining prices made it an non-viable option.

2014 - Mining continued couple with Maxwell's debut. The architecture's efficiency and the 980's initial performance (GM204 being Nvidia's mid-range Maxwell 2 chip) superiority to Hawaii was bad. With the exception of mid-2014 when mining prices let up and GM204 hadn't launched, meh.

2015 - I can find no objective way to claim the Fury X was proper competition for GM200. Fiji had HBM, a monstrous 596mm^2 die size, a reference CLC, and several months after GM200's debut to get things right, but cut-down GM200s with less transistors, no HBM, and aftermarket air cooling slapped the crap out of the Fury X. 2015 was the year of Nvidia's reject high-end chips pummeling AMD's overpriced and overhyped HBM-based failure. Performance, VRAM, efficiency, and bang for buck were all squarely victories for the aftermarket 980 Ti that year.

2016 - A continuation of Maxwell vs GCN, except on 16/14nm and with AMD not even bothering to respond to Nvidia's new mid-range GP104 GPU, let alone GP102 which already launched months ago itself. AMD have fallen even further behind and the cut-down high-end now costs $1200 as we await a 2017 Vega that can barely rival GP104 it seems. Pitiful.

TLDR: why did we pay more? - because AMD's financial failures resulted in them being unable to fund properly competitive high-end GPUs. Their architecture is so outdated and inefficient regardless of whatever asynchronous nonsense mumbo-jumbo their marketing wants us to rally around and Nvidia's architecture effortlessly shames GCN. That's why and I'm so mad about it, I respectfully don't care if someone takes offense at that. It's the truth.

 

[tential]

2016 was a TERRIBLE year for high end gaming.
I blame AMD for the straight up weak competition. This was a pathetic showing for AMD this year.
Because of that, we have Nvidia having a longer time period to milk the Titan XP before relasing the 1080Ti, and STILL having awhile to sell a 1080Ti before AMD has competition. That's insane.
Edit: Just saw the above post. I agree. While 2016 was the worst, 2014 and 2015 still SUCKED.

I'm not happy with the current state of PC gaming at all really on the hardware side.

 

[happy medium]

Mabe being on the 28nm node so long made it worse?
I mean it didn't help that the gtx680/780/780ti/Titan/980/gtx980ti/TitanX were built on the same 28nm process. Same for AMD cards.
It was like 4 years, that's seems too much.

 

[Head1985]

Last good year was before kepler launch.After that its worse every year.

 

[Ghost of Cyrix]

Mabe being on the 28nm node so long made it worse?
I mean it didn't help that the gtx680/780/780ti/Titan/980/gtx980ti/TitanX were built on the same 28nm process. Same for AMD cards.
It was like 4 years, that's seems too much.

Well, it didn't help overall performance advancements. But, it doesn't really matter in the context of relative competition. Maxwell managed nothing short of an engineering marvel in being able to squeeze so much out of 28nm. As for AMD and GCN, eh... Maxwell is still (in the form of Pascal) slaughtering GCN with the updated nodes. A superior architecture is a superior architecture regardless of node.

Seriously, the 980 Ti is the only thing that made 2015 bearable imo. I give Nvidia a lot of crap for the stuff they do (namely pricing and product positioning), but bless Maxwell. Can only imagine that microarchitecture being the second coming of the 8800GTX if TSMC didn't screw up 20nm so badly.

 

[tential]

Well, it didn't help overall performance advancements. But, it doesn't really matter in the context of relative competition. Maxwell managed nothing short of an engineering marvel in being able to squeeze so much out of 28nm. As for AMD and GCN, eh... Maxwell is still (in the form of Pascal) slaughtering GCN with the updated nodes. A superior architecture is a superior architecture regardless of node.

Seriously, the 980 Ti is the only thing that made 2015 bearable imo. I give Nvidia a lot of crap for the stuff they do (namely pricing and product positioning), but bless Maxwell. Can only imagine that microarchitecture being the second coming of the 8800GTX if TSMC didn't screw up 20nm so badly.

The 980Ti is the only interesting high end card in the last 3 years. That sucks. I mean, Titan XP means the 1080Ti looks kind of interesting? But with how late it will release, it feels like it will be trumped by the 2070 soon enough....

 

[Ghost of Cyrix]

The 980Ti is the only interesting high end card in the last 3 years. That sucks. I mean, Titan XP means the 1080Ti looks kind of interesting? But with how late it will release, it feels like it will be trumped by the 2070 soon enough....

Yeah, it does suck I agree. But that goes back fo the thread's topic - lack of competition. I don't think the Fury X was really good competition for GM200, but it was at least enough to light a fire under Nvidia's butt and give us the 980 Ti.

This time around, Vega's just so late to compete with just the 1080 whereas the 980 at least had Hawaii creeping up on it to worry about. We don't know what GV104 (Volta) will bring or when, but if AMD were more competitive, it's obvious we could have had a GP102-based 1080 Ti already considering how long the Pascal Titan X has been out for. And I don't think GV104 would be a big improvement over a full GP102, but the heavily cut-down one that's been rumored (with Vega being such a non-threat)? No problem for GV104 to overtake that.

 

[Ranulf]

The start of what, If I may ask.

You may not. But to make it more clear, it was the start of bad times price and performance wise, like I stated up above. Toss in the bitcoin market and boom, nvidia has no reason to drop prices on kepler. I have a feeling I'll be keeping my 970 longer than I did my 560ti.

What has gotten worse? Lack of competition?

Yes.

2014 was the gtx980/970 vs the 290/290x. Are you saying that was no competition?

Pretty much yes. Due to hype for maxwell and bad rep for the early 290s. I bought 290s in late '14 and early '15 because of great deals. They've turned out to be far better cards in the long run at least. The 970 only beats them on nvidia favoring games, the free games it came with and the $30 lawsuit settlement (if it ever shows up next near).

 

[OatisCampbell]

You left out Rx 460, 470, and 480/480x
Of these i'd minimally include the 480x as a high-end card, but the 480 could be considered there too.

Why would they be included?

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/RX_480/24.html

RX480 trailing 2013 290X at 1440p and 4K? When a card trails the high end of 3 years ago it's not "high end".

(and AMD never positioned it as such- Vega will be their next high end card, and my next purchase hopefully)

 

[happy medium]

Pretty much yes. Due to hype for maxwell and bad rep for the early 290s. I bought 290s in late '14 and early '15 because of great deals. .

Compared to the Fury cards vs the 1070/1080/TitanXP in 2016, I would say the 290/290x compete much better.