Originally posted by: akugami
I'm well aware of the fact that the high end is out of whack. High end cards are all about performance first and are usually a bad deal in the bang for the buck department, power draw, and heat output. Power consumption is still in line with previous high end video cards, whether it be from nVidia or ATI. Both companies have developed their cards within certain parameters and time and again we see that for the most part, new cards draw power in roughly the same scale as their high end predecessors.
The danger is with cards like the 3870X2. It wasn't faster than the 8800GTX, and then nVidia came up with the 8800GT and 8800GTS512. Cards with about the same performance as the 8800GTX, but with much lower power consumption and WAY lower prices.
Suddenly the 3870X2 wasn't high-end anymore. It was pushed into the mainstream because the 8800s dictated the prices into the sub-$200 range. And there AMD was caught out with an underperforming mega-expensive powerhungry solution.
The small GPU strategy doesn't always work.
Originally posted by: akugami
You're trying to tell me that the G92 at 754m transistors and the GT200 at 1.4b transistors has very little difference?
Well obviously, if you take the full specs of both chips, you'll see that the GT200 has much more of everything, 240 stream processors instead of 128, 512 bit memory interface instead of 256 bit, etc.
So it's nearly two G92's on a single chip. Which makes perfect sense looking at the transistor count.
Aside from that, the G92 and GT200 are virtually identical feature-wise.
So in essence the GT200 is a 'blown up' version o the G92, which is why there is no actual 'scaled down' GT200 on the market, the G92 is already that chip, the same technology in a smaller package (I don't see why you start on transistorcount in the first place, when you asked for 'trickled down' technology. You forgot your own line of argument?).
Originally posted by: akugami
The Radeon 3xx0 GPU's were really process shrunk Radeon 2xx0 GPU's and were mostly a cost cutting measure. The 4xx0 series GPU's was where they really put the "small, sleek, but still good performer" into play.
Not at all. The 2000-series was a big, bloated GPU with 512 bit memory interface and all.
The 3000-series was where they trimmed the fat, went down to 256 bit, and improved the GPU in general to be more efficient (better AA, added full DX10.1 support etc).
The 3870 is a VERY small and sleek GPU compared to the monster that is the 2900, and that can't be done with just a simple die-shrink.
This cut the production costs for AMD, the only problem they had left was the lack of performance. With the 4000-series they revamped the design again, added features for OpenCL/DX11 Compute at last, and finally got the performance where it should be.
Originally posted by: akugami
The G80 and G92 were price gouging GPU's. In their respective performance tiers, the G80 and G92 GPU's were overpriced compared to previous generations. I owned a 8800 GTS and that sucker cost me $400 at the time and was only considered upper mid-end. That was horrible in terms of pricing in each tier. This is as opposed to when ATI was competitive (especially the Radeon 9x00's) when we had great value. I don't blame nVidia for overpricing their GPU's. From a business perspective I applaud them. But don't try to feed me that line about what great values the G80 and G92 based video cards.
Obviously new products are always expensive, but prices drop.
The thing with the G92 is that it dropped prices at an amazing rate. When the 8800GT came along, you could get 8800GTX-like performance for less than half the price.
G92 was all about value.
I'm amazed, actually pissed off, that people don't remember this.
You get all this talk about "AMD revolutionized value with the 4000-series", when the 8800GT did at least as much a generation earlier.
Let me refresh your collective memories:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3140&p=14
The title alone says enough: "The only card that matters"
"It's really not often that we have the pleasure to review a product so impressively positioned. The 8800 GT is a terrific part, and it is hitting the street at a terrific price (provided NVIDIA's history of properly projecting street prices continues). The performance advantage and price utterly destroyed our perception of the GPU landscape. We liked the value of the 8800 GTS 320, and we were impressed when NVIDIA decided to go that route, providing such a high performance card for so little money. Upping the ante even more this time around really caught us off guard.
This launch really has the potential to introduce a card that could leave the same lasting impression on the computer industry that the Ti4200 left all those years ago. This kind of inflection point doesn't come along every year, or even every generation."
That level of performance (touching the high-end 8800GTX) at a price-point of $200-$250 was unheard of.
So yes, Derek Wilson is telling you that G92 was great value.
