A $1000 Titan X is ultra high end, and the 1080 is high end. The 1060 is the mid to low range. And considering inflation, the prices are about the same.
This is absolutely false. The mistake you are making is you are assuming today's high-end is in any way representative of high-end of the past in terms of tier and market positioning. The "high-end" cards in the segment of GTX680/980/1080 are not high-end at all but mid-range cards with a marketing x80 series name and a corresponding price. Maybe you already forgot that a next generation mid-range
$200 card in the form of 6600GT was faster than the previous generation's flagship 5950 Ultra and 9800XT cards? There is nowhere to purchase a $299 2016 card today that beats last generation's 980Ti/Fury X or Titan X Maxwell in modern games. It's not as far as production positioning or pricing strategies are concerned. You just haven't traced the fact that GTX1070/1080 are predecessors to $199 GTX560 and $249 GTX560Ti.
GeForce x06/x116 series = Traditionally low-end segment
Fermi 2010
GF106 =
GTS450 $129
=> its 2011 refresh was GF116 =
GTX550Ti $149
Kepler 2012
GK106 =
GTX660 $229
Maxwell 2014
GM206 =
GTX960 $199 (But this is the worst x60 card made by NV since 8600GT/8600GTS. The pricing never truly reflected how awful this product was)
Pascal 2016 replacement is the GP106 GTX1060 6GB = $249-299 (reference card is $299).
GTS450->GTX550Ti->GTX660->GTX960*->GTX1060:
For this market segment, prices increased from $129-149 in 2010 to $249-299 in 2016. Realistically, we are looking at a price increase from $129 for GTS450 to $249 for the GTX1060, or a 93% price increase in 6 years.
*GTX760 is NOT a x06 series card.
GeForce x04/x114 series = Traditionaly mid-range and upper-mid-range segment
Fermi 2010
GF104 =
GTX460 1GB $229 & GTX460 768MB $199
=> 2011 refreshes were GF114 =
GTX560 1GB $199 and GTX560Ti 1GB $249
*As a point of reference, $229 GTX460
matched last gen's flagship GTX280, and the refreshed cut-down GTX275, and was just 10% slower than the GTX285. That would be the equivalent of a GTX1060 $249 card today with the performance of a GTX980Ti and only 10% slower than a Titan X. Today, the 1060 not only costs more, but it's nowhere close to a 980Ti or the Titan X.
We can even use another generation to show that x60 segment is getting worse and worse.
GTX680 was 41% faster than GTX660 was at 1440p/1600p (highest resolution tested by TPU at the time), while
GTX1080 is now a whopping 62% faster than the GTX1060 at 1440p and 67% at 4K (higher resolution tested by TPU today). Even though GTX1060 is praised as a 'good' $250 card, that's because of how awful the 960 was. If we look at history, GTX1060 isn't even a good $250 card, which by definition means RX 480 is even worse at $240.
Emphasis by AnandTech that x04 segment is a mid-range market segment -- this is key once we go down the list:
"With that said, this launch is going to be more chaotic than usual for an NVIDIA mid-range product launch. While NVIDIA and AMD both encourage their partners to differentiate their mid-range cards based on a number of factors including factory overclocks and the cooler used, these products are always launched alongside a reference card. However for the GTX 560 this is going to be a reference-less launch: NVIDIA is not doing a retail reference design for the GTX 560. This is a fairly common situation for the low-end, where we’ll often test a reference design that never is used for retail cards, but it’s quite unusual to not have a reference design for a mid-range card."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4344/nvidias-geforce-gtx-560-top-to-bottom-overclock
Kepler 2012
>3 GK104 SKUs.
GTX660Ti $299, GTX670 $399, GTX680 $499
=>
Refreshes $249 GTX760 = successor to the 660Ti, and GTX680 successor was the $399-449 GTX770 2-4GB.
Here, it's important to note that GTX680 (upper-mid-range) GK104 SKU was 9.2-9.3% faster than the $399 GTX670 was at 1920x1200 or 2560x1600. Compared to the GTX660Ti, GTX680 was 25.5% and 26.6% faster than GTX660Ti.
I'll explain later why this matters for pricing***.
Maxwell 2014
GM204 =
GTX970 $329 & GTX980 $549
Pascal 2016
GP104 = GTX1070
$399 & GTX1080
$619. Here I am actually extremely fair to NV as I am using the lowest non-promo 1070/1080 prices, despite most people paying more than $400 and $620 for those cards during the first 1-2 months of launch.
This segment is tricky to compare. Since I already showed that $650 GTX280 and $229 GTX460 1GB were tied at launch of GTX460, GTX560Ti beat GTX460 by
35%. Since Titan X Maxwell never had a refresh like GTX285 did over the 280,
if we straight up compare GTX1080 to the Titan X, we get a performance increase of 31.6%. Either way you slice it, the spiritual predecessor to GTX1080 are essentially GTX460/560Ti lineage cards that used to cost $229-$249. Then what is the GTX1070? Comparing to Fermi generation, it would be an even more cut-down $199 GTX460 768MB, GTX560 or a successor to the GTX660Ti.
*** It's not reasonable to compare the $399 GTX670 to the $399 GTX1070 because only 8-9% separated the 670 and 680 for a $100 price difference and GTX670 was
20% faster than last gen's NV flagship - the GTX580. In comparison, the
GTX1070 is only 7.5-10% faster than the Titan X but trails the 1080 by 21-22%, and by much more in modern titles (1080 leads 1070 by
33-34% in the Division and
30-35% in DE:MD). This means the GTX1070 is NOT a true x70 series card but rather a GTX1060Ti and/or it isn't a $399 tier card either. In other words, GTX1070 is a gimped x70 series card, the worst x70 series card since GTX470.
Another point of reference if you don't want to go back to Fermi generation is Kepler.
$299 GTX660Ti => $399 GTX1070 or a $100 / 33% price increase in just 4 years
$499 GTX680 => $619 GTX1080 or a 24% price increase. No way that's in-line with inflation. But again, it's impossible to ignore that GTX680 was a lineage successor to the $249 GTX560Ti.
GTX460 768MB -> GTX560 -> GTX660Ti -> GTX760 -> GTX970 -> GTX1070:
GTX460 1GB -> GTX560Ti -> GTX680 -> GTX770 -> GTX980 -> GTX1070:
For this market segment, prices increased from $199-229 in 2010 (460/560/660Ti) to $399 in 2016 for the GTX1070. Not only has NV articifically called GTX1070 a x70 series card, when it isn't even deserving of the name, but we are looking at a 74-100% price increase, and comparing reference GTX1070 to reference GTX460, a 96% increase in 6 years. This is remarkably consistent with NV's 93% price increase for the low-end tier. It's also evident that starting with Kepler generation, NV simply made up x70 and x80 marketing names for GTX670/680. Those were simply GTX660/660Ti cards moved up full tiers with a corresponding massive price increase.
GeForce x00/x102/x110 series = High-end market segment
Fermi 2010
GF100 =
GTX470 $349 & GTX480 $499
=> Refresh GF110 =
GTX570 $349 & GTX580 $499. NV also released a further cut-down GF110 in the form of a
GTX560Ti 448 Core $289.
Kepler 2013
GK110 =
GTX780 $649 (later dropped to $499) & GTX780Ti $699, and
$999 Titan Black. There was also the original Titan for $999 but that's not going to make a great case for NV in terms of reasonable price increases...
Bonus trivia: I actually never connected the dots back then with the $650 GTX780 vs. GTX560Ti 448 but now we can.
GTX560Ti 448 Core vs. GTX580:
87.5% CCs
87.5% TMUs
83.3% ROPs
89.8% memory bandwidth
GTX780 vs. GTX780Ti
80% CCs
80% TMUs
100% ROPs
85.7% memory bandwidth
In many ways, the $649 GTX780 was a spiritual successor to the $289 GTX560Ti 448 core, not even the GTX570. That's a
2.25X price increase.
Maxwell 2015
GM200 =
GTX980Ti $649 and Titan X $999
Here you can debate if you think GTX980Ti is a true successor to the GTX570 (NV offered GTX580 3GB and a cut-down flagship via GTX570 1.28GB. One can argue that GTX980Ti is similarly a cut-down Titan X 12GB with only half the VRAM and cut-down specs).
Pascal 2016
GP102 =
$1200 Titan X or as we call it Titan XP.
2nd tier flagship:
$350 GTX470/570 -> $650 GTX780 or $999 OG Titan Kepler -> $650 980Ti -> placeholder: $1200 Titan XP
I wouldn't even put GTX780 in there as I view it as a GTX560Ti 448 core successor and the more obvious comparison would be $350 GTX570->$650 GTX980Ti. Since GTX1080Ti has not released, I put the $1200 Titan XP as a placeholder because it is not even a true fully unlocked flagship Pascal chip either. But without competition from AMD, we might not even see one.
1st tier flagship:
$500 GTX480/580 -> $700 780Ti / $999 Titan Black -> $999 Titan X Maxwell -> we do not have a true successor yet. It may end up being $1200 Titan XP if NV never released a full fledged Pascal. For the time, I'll just assume Titan XP will be NV's flagship during the Pascal generation as we have no other data.
Then, 2nd flagship tier increased from $350 to $650 with 980Ti, or an 86% price increase. This excuses cut-down OG Titan and Titan XP but if we include them, it's akin to going from a $350 tier to a $1000-1200 one. One caveat is that if we go back to Tesla generation, the 2nd tier flagship could be views as the $400 GTX260 (but that dropped in price $100 to $299 once 4870 launched) or the 2nd tier flagship was a $250 GTX275.
The 1st tier flagship tier increased from $500 to $1000-1200, or a 100-140% price increase. Even if we assume Fermi was an outlier, the flagship GeForce 3 Ti 500 cost $349-399, GeForce 4 Ti 4600 cost $399, GeForce 5900 Ultra was $499, GeForce 6800 Ultra was $499 (6800 Ultra Extreme had a $540 market price), GeForce 7800GTX 256MB was $599, 7900GTX was $499. Some argue that GTX280 debuted at $649 but it only 2-3 weeks before it dropped to $499.
Many people present 8800GTX Ultra's price of $830 as a point of reference but it's an exception, not the rule. The regular 8800GTX could be overclocked easily to Ultra's speeds and it cost $600-650. The 8800GTX Ultra was just a marketing gimmick and one of the first ways NV tried to get free $ from enthusiasts. But, if someone uses $650-830 8800GTX/Ultra as proof that flagship cards always used to cost $700-800 (already proven false above), one MUST then mention that only 13 months later, 9800GTX+ was faster for only $229. Can I buy a $229 card today that's as fast or faster than the 980Ti/Titan X Maxwell? No, I thought so.
In conclusion, NV has increased prices for every tier. Inflation and more expensive manufacturing nodes CANNOT account for such dramatic price increases despite NV increasing profit margins from sub-30% to almost 60% in the a same period of time.
NVidia is now at nearly
60% gross margins.
Be careful here, the margin increase has a lot to do with the fact that inherently higher margin businesses have grown significantly while the company's lower margin businesses have fallen off a cliff (i.e. PC OEM).
Not a sufficient explanation. NV has increased prices almost 100% in the low and mid-tier segments and one can easily argue that they increased prices even more ($249 GTX560Ti -> $599-699 GTX1080). I have outlined a detailed history of NV GPUs since Fermi and thus far your position holds no water. NV is making more $ on every single tier from $150-1000 they make. They have also successfully rebranded certain cards to hide these facts (GTX660/660Ti became GTX670/680). Today, NV is arguably selling a
$375 GTX570 2.5GB level card for $1200 in the Titan XP. GTX1080 is now selling for $620-700, pricing tier reserved exclusively for flagship cards such as GTX780Ti (or cut-down GTX980Ti even). NV has not only raised prices tremendously from 2010-2014, but they increased prices a lot this generation too. Considering how much you have defended reference blower cards, then you should mention how GTX1080 now costs 27% more than the GTX980 and 40% more than the GTX680. To exacerbate the situation, the GTX1070 is not a true x70 series card, but rather more in-line with GTX660Ti linage given its performance delta with the 1080. The reality is that the 1080 is grossly overpriced and the 1070 is under-powered
and overpriced at the same time when we look at historical generations of NV cards.
I expect real rebuttal with facts, but I have a feeling all I am going to get is that "As long as customers keep paying, these prices are fair and reasonable," and "it's AMD's fault that I now have to pay $XXX." It doesn't matter whose fault it is, or if customers keep paying these prices. We are ONLY analyzing if prices increases have occurred or not and how much more expensive it is now to own similar tier cards.
==============
To answer the OP's question, both RX 480 and GTX1060 are nothing special video cards in a new era of GPU prices where $250-300 buys you a low-end tier card. Sorry, but these are just the facts. The main difference now is that these low-end tier cards can play many games well at 1080P 60Hz, which makes more expensive GPUs more of a luxury, rather than a necessity. In that past, one could launch Crysis 3 on $1600 8800GTX Ultra SLI and it would choke at 1280x1024 maxed out. Today, it's possible to play many games at 4K close to 60 fps on a $1200 cut-down high-end Pascal. What has happened is the high-end tier cards have become a lot
less relevant for a good gaming experience than in the past where you practically needed a new one or a powerful one just to play next gen titles. Today, we can play next gen titles with a few settings turned down even on an RX480 or the GTX1060. That's one reason why NV/AMD can price lower tiers so much higher now -- the user experience even on low end cards like RX 480 and 1060 is still very good. In the past, it wasn't possible to purchase a $250 GPU and play that gen's games at 1080p with a couple settings down. Also, PC gamers' budgets for GPUs have possibly increased since CPU/platforms from Intel now last 4-5, or even 6 years. There are still gamers contemplating buying an RX 480/1060 for Nehalem (2008), Lynnfield (2009) and Sandy Bridge platforms (2011). That's unheard of in the past to pair a $250-300 2016 GPU with a 5-8 year old CPU.
At least PC gaming saves you $ on the software side compared to consoles
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