price/performance - where is the increase?

[VirtualLarry]

2.5 years ago, I purchased a few Gigabyte WindForce GTX460 1GB cards, for $180 ea from Newegg.

Fast-forward to today. In order to purchase a faster card (a 660), I would be paying the same amount of money.

Is video-card performance stagnating in the mid-range market?

 

[Ken g6]

Well, I'd say the price range of "mid-range" has moved. If high-end is $1000, mid-range must be more than $180. But, yeah, video cards haven't been a real bargain lately.

 

[f1sherman]

Here, cca 40% faster, 20% cheaper, $75 value in-game coupon WOOHOO :thumbsup:

 

[Arkadrel]

2.5 years ago, I purchased a few Gigabyte WindForce GTX460 1GB cards, for $180 ea from Newegg.

Fast-forward to today. In order to purchase a faster card (a 660), I would be paying the same amount of money.

Is video-card performance stagnating in the mid-range market?

BULLSHYT

Today you can buy a 7850, for around 180$ on newegg.

That ll be TWICE as fast (or more) than your GTX460. (and have 2GB vram)

Basically your wrong about what your saying.
A 7850 should be really close to a GTX 480 / GTX 570, in performance.

Once you overclock it, it ll match a 580.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Eh, maybe not at least twice as fast. Between 1.5 and 2x as fast, according to Anandtech Bench.

Still, paying the same amount (not even adjusted for inflation) for 1.5-2x the performance doesn't sound too bad. Better than anything on the CPU side within the last 2-3 years.

 

[Cerb]

In that time, nVidia and AMD have only really had one new generation each, and TSMC has had only one new process. Fermi to Kepler, and VLIW4 to GCN, were fair improvements, along with a minor improvement from 40nm to 28nm. There's only so much they can get do within $200 MSRP and <200W TDP. As such, they are trailing what Moore's Law should simplistically give you for performance improvements (which actually works out pretty well for things like GPUs).

Like Intel with their CPUs, one of the changes of the last several years has been that they try to game their production numbers perfectly, so when new chips come out, they don't have too many old ones hanging around. So, the old chips don't go down much in price, but simply go away. Instead of old tech being cheaper, and having a 1-2 year tail, they just offer new cheaper tech (the shrink&rename cycle), so the last gen can get one short sale period to clear out inventory, if it's being replaced. They can't always do it, but that's what they are going for.

Well, I'd say the price range of "mid-range" has moved. If high-end is $1000, mid-range must be more than $180. But, yeah, video cards haven't been a real bargain lately.

Midrange video cards have been around $200+50 since the Voodoo days.

 

[notty22]

I replaced 2- 220$ 1gb gtx 460 cards (07/2010)with a 200$ gtx 6602gb. If you want to get bottom line pricing, the 1gb gtx 650ti boost is comparable to those 2 gtx 460's@675mhz. And can be bought for. $150.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&amp;SID=u00000687

The 2gb gtx 6602gb card I bought at Best Buy for 200$ is comparable to the SLI performance of those 2 past cards, and now I don't have texture/ AA limitations from framebuffer.

It would have been nice to have this in 2011 or 2012, but we do have it now. And I'm happy

 

[toyota]

BULLSHYT

Today you can buy a 7850, for around 180$ on newegg.

That ll be TWICE as fast (or more) than your GTX460. (and have 2GB vram)

Basically your wrong about what your saying.
A 7850 should be really close to a GTX 480 / GTX 570, in performance.

Once you overclock it, it ll match a 580.

nice try but you are WAY off. overall a stock 7850 is not even 50% faster than a stock gtx460 according to techpowerup. the 460 launched nearly 3 years ago at 200 bucks and quickly dropped to well below that. in fact I saw deals for not too much over 100 bucks here and there after the 460 had been out as long as the 7850 has been now. and the 7850 launched at 250 bucks so yes progress and bang for buck has been piss poor overall for over 2 years.

 

[raghu78]

the usual close to doubling of performance at the same price points has not happened this generation. This is reflected from the top where Titan is twice the cost of the last gen GTX 580 down to the USD 200 price point where GTX 660 is nowhere close to doubling GTX 560 perf. the worst is the USD 100 - 110 price point where the GTX 650 has not moved performance a bit over the GTX 550 Ti almost 2 years after the latter launched. AMD also has not moved performance much over the HD 5770 with the HD 7750 at USD 100.

normally a GTX 680 at USD 300 and a Titan at USD 600 would have been the norm but since AMD products are not really competing with Nvidia at the high end , Nvidia is comfortable pushing its entire stack one step higher in pricing. to worsen things AMD has no plan to update Tahiti till Q4 2013 giving Nvidia GK110 based products no competition for another 6 months . disappointing generation.

 

[blastingcap]

New fabrication processes are what really drive price/perf, and without them you get just architectural advancements, which aren't usually enough to do anything dramatic by themselves, maybe 10-30% depending on the severity of the improvements.

 

[Haserath]

 

[blastingcap]

And that chart was from BEFORE Apple switched to TSMC 20nm. The price of the leftover 20nm wafers after Apple takes the lion's share, is probably even higher than anticipated.

 

[KingFatty]

I guess nobody mentioned it yet, but what about the distortion in sales caused by bitcoin mining?

I could imagine an AMD executive sitting at a huge desk with his hands steepled together like Mr. Burns in the Simpsons, looking at all the sales from video cards due to people buying AMD just for mining purposes. Why bother improving the video/gaming performance if you already get huge sales from miners that don't care how the card performs in gaming?

 

[blastingcap]

I guess nobody mentioned it yet, but what about the distortion in sales caused by bitcoin mining?

I could imagine an AMD executive sitting at a huge desk with his hands steepled together like Mr. Burns in the Simpsons, looking at all the sales from video cards due to people buying AMD just for mining purposes. Why bother improving the video/gaming performance if you already get huge sales from miners that don't care how the card performs in gaming?

Bitcoin isn't more than a small fraction of what drives AMD sales, and if it were, you wouldn't see them drop the prices multiple times and spend money with so many games promos. Remember, the 7970 launched at $550 without any games. The 7870 was $350 and now it's dipped under $190 at time, with THREE free AAA games.

In any case, Apple is so much bigger than everyone else, it doesn't even matter. Supposedly Apple is something like 3/4 of Samsung's entire fabrication capacity at the leading-edge node. When Apples eats into TSMC's 20nm wafers, THAT is what I'd call a distortion. Qualcomm is a big-ass customer too.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I replaced 2- 220$ 1gb gtx 460 cards (07/2010)with a 200$ gtx 6602gb. If you want to get bottom line pricing, the 1gb gtx 650ti boost is comparable to those 2 gtx 460's@675mhz. And can be bought for. $150.00

The 2gb gtx 6602gb card I bought at Best Buy for 200$ is comparable to the SLI performance of those 2 past cards, and now I don't have texture/ AA limitations from framebuffer.

What do I have to pay, today, to get 2x the CUDA (F@H, PrimeGrid) performance of an 820Mhz GTX460 1GB? In a single card?

 

[sontin]

What do I have to pay, today, to get 2x the CUDA (F@H, PrimeGrid) performance of an 820Mhz GTX460 1GB? In a single card?

GTX670 should be 2x faster.

 

[Cerb]

What do I have to pay, today, to get 2x the CUDA (F@H, PrimeGrid) performance of an 820Mhz GTX460 1GB? In a single card?

CUDA performance? Well, that's something else entirely. Multiple GPUs, maybe?

Doubling your compute performance outside of CUDA can be done for $200-300, with Radeons, where they perform comparably. For CUDA, it's going to be $400-600 (GTX 580 and 680), because Kepler very much sacrificed compute improvements for gaming improvements. Fermi was many good things, but lean and efficient it wasn't.

 

[Attic]

Since the GTX460 days I've not been impressed with midrange cards.

Remember back to the GeForce 3 days. The Geforce 3 launched at 299 I believe, and then there was the eventual release of the Geforce 3 Ti500 and Ti200. Ti200 being ~$200 but providing within ~25% performance of the highest end offereings. The landscape has of course changed drastically since that time and these days you have to pay a lot more than 200 bucks to get within 25% of the top end. Though the 7950 and 7850 once overclocked are outstanding values for performance relative to their peers.

The HD5770 was released Mid 2009 for 160 bucks. Now almost 4 years later! we have the 7790 and GTX 650Ti which are close in price but offer only roughly a 50% performance increase and 0% VRAM increase. What has happened is the midrange as we came to know it 3-5 years ago (Read Sub $200) has been cleverly bumped up to the $300 dollar mark. Of course during this time most folks aren't earning any more money, in many cases less, than 4 years ago and they have LESS disposable income due to rising costs of food and energy.


I've been razor thin close to pulling the trigger on a 7850, but i'll be waiting till next generation or the following and i'll get whatever is within 25% of the top end available at that time.

 

[zaydq]

the usual close to doubling of performance at the same price points has not happened this generation. This is reflected from the top where Titan is twice the cost of the last gen GTX 580 down to the USD 200 price point where GTX 660 is nowhere close to doubling GTX 560 perf. the worst is the USD 100 - 110 price point where the GTX 650 has not moved performance a bit over the GTX 550 Ti almost 2 years after the latter launched. AMD also has not moved performance much over the HD 5770 with the HD 7750 at USD 100.

normally a GTX 680 at USD 300 and a Titan at USD 600 would have been the norm but since AMD products are not really competing with Nvidia at the high end , Nvidia is comfortable pushing its entire stack one step higher in pricing. to worsen things AMD has no plan to update Tahiti till Q4 2013 giving Nvidia GK110 based products no competition for another 6 months . disappointing generation.

Just FYI, the gtx 680 loses out to the 7970ghz on average... So i wouldn't go as far as saying that nvidia has no competition at the high end.

 

[Enigmoid]

Since the GTX460 days I've not been impressed with midrange cards.

Remember back to the GeForce 3 days. The Geforce 3 launched at 299 I believe, and then there was the eventual release of the Geforce 3 Ti500 and Ti200. Ti200 being ~$200 but providing within ~25% performance of the highest end offereings. The landscape has of course changed drastically since that time and these days you have to pay a lot more than 200 bucks to get within 25% of the top end. Though the 7950 and 7850 once overclocked are outstanding values for performance relative to their peers.

The HD5770 was released Mid 2009 for 160 bucks. Now almost 4 years later! we have the 7790 and GTX 650Ti which are close in price but offer only roughly a 50% performance increase and 0% VRAM increase. What has happened is the midrange as we came to know it 3-5 years ago (Read Sub $200) has been cleverly bumped up to the $300 dollar mark. Of course during this time most folks aren't earning any more money, in many cases less, than 4 years ago and they have LESS disposable income due to rising costs of food and energy.


I've been razor thin close to pulling the trigger on a 7850, but i'll be waiting till next generation or the following and i'll get whatever is within 25% of the top end available at that time.

Here you are

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...D=3938566&amp;SID=

$175 for a 7850 2GB (there is a $20 rebate so actually its $155). You also get two free games.

Non reference design will cost about $180 for 2 GB with the two (actually its three free games).

You can overclock that sucker to the max (the non reference design) too.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Just FYI, the gtx 680 loses out to the 7970ghz on average... So i wouldn't go as far as saying that nvidia has no competition at the high end.

Wouldn't Titan be the new high end? I dunno anymore

 

[blastingcap]

Wouldn't Titan be the new high end? I dunno anymore

Technically either that or GTX690 is.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Technically either that or GTX690 is.

Pretty much, typical mid-range got pushed to $500 for Nvidia, ignoring AMD for a second.. High end is a dual mid-range card or a single high end gpu, the dual mid-range as expected is slightly faster but also as expected consumes more power and has the inherited shortcomings of being two cards instead of one.

What nvidia is passing for $200 cards is a bit redic, but they also gained more performance this generation than AMD was able to and they were able to hone cards directly for their bracket without much in the way of overclocking headroom. This is because even though they entered the race later on 28nm this generation, they didn't try to push a problematic monster die first like they did with Fermi