[SA] News of Nvidia’s Pascal tapeout and silicon is important

[railven]

It's up to the customers to reward being customer friendly. For example, I may not have bought a Fury but it will be a long time before I buy an NV card after the 970 I got at launch, I've already bought 2 290s for a friend and I, and that Fury I didn't buy is very likely to be Polaris cards I do buy.

If the market is an indication of anything, people aren't being very receptive to AMD's friendly offers.

I only switched because of the difference at my price point. However, I have no love/loyalty to NV and won't even hesitate to switch back if AMD does me right.

 

[xthetenth]

If the market is an indication of anything, people aren't being very receptive to AMD's friendly offers.

Yeah, as a means of creating a perception of value goes, creating long term value is a really inefficient way of going about it. Much better to do some slick marketing and frontload value even though especially in this market performance at the end of the lifetime is when it's most desperately needed.

 

[moonbogg]

If the market is an indication of anything, people aren't being very receptive to AMD's friendly offers.

I only switched because of the difference at my price point. However, I have no love/loyalty to NV and won't even hesitate to switch back if AMD does me right.

I have no issue admitting to be quite bias toward Nvidia products being better, at least in the short term. But I would buy AMD products instead if I felt they were better. People tend to look down on others for buying based on their bias and preferences and not using logic all the time. Its not the buyer's fault.
A large number of decision making switches were flipped in my head a long time ago, and they all point toward green. I didn't choose for that to happen. It was caused by external influences, most likely Nvidia's better engineered products, great marketing, eco system and overall cohesive user experience tying many exciting features and technologies all into one, and doing it for many years.
That's what causes me to be bias. Its caused by external influences. I can't choose to like Nvidia any more than I can choose to like chocolate over vanilla. Chocolate is simply better than vanilla and everyone knows that unless something is wrong with them.

 

[provost]

We all pay for marketing and that's what creates this perception of chocolate vs vanilla type of analogies. Are Nvidia cards handcrafted? No. Does Nvidia use some special silicon? No. Do Nvidia cards last longer in performance vs AMD, absolutely not. Sure, Nvidia might have had a driver advantage at point in time, but the relatively short driver optimization period for Nvdia cards vs AMD cards, makes this a moot point based on a ROES (return on entertainment spend... Lol). I have a 690, 780 Ti and four Titans, and didn't feel the need to "refresh" to yet another 28nm because TSMC told Nvidia to go pound sand while it services it's priority Customer; Apple. I also have a 7950, and quite frankly, I didn't have any problems with it while I was still utilizing it for a specific use. I do not believe that Nvidia delivers any better experience than AMD, on the contrary, AMD cards are the gift that keep on giving while Nvidia cards keep getting slower in newer games. Yeah, I have heard the argument about " may be Kepler can't be further optimized", and I don't buy it, because that is exactly what I would say if I were Nvidia and trying to do another sales cycle out of 28nm (sure with a new arch. etc, etc). I wanted to get a Fury/FuryX, but with six 28nm cards, I again didn't feel compelled to buy a seventh card just for the heck of it. But, I am looking forward to Polaris, and couldn't care less about Pascal. I am also not a big fan of ecosystems that primarily work to the benefit of the vendor, and not so much for the consumer ( no never looked at gsync; why pay a premium to get locked into an ecosystem? Seems counterintuitive. And don't care much for gameworks, as it stands now as a middling middleware full of performance issues)From a business perspective, I get what Nvidia is trying to do while being pulled in a dozen different directions to appeal to the investment community, however, as a consumer, Nvidia is not the "game" for me, no pun intended.... lol

 

[raghu78]

We all pay for marketing and that's what creates this perception of chocolate vs vanilla type of analogies. Are Nvidia cards handcrafted? No. Does Nvidia use some special silicon? No. Do Nvidia cards last longer in performance vs AMD, absolutely not. Sure, Nvidia might have had a driver advantage at point in time, but the relatively short driver optimization period for Nvdia cards vs AMD cards, makes this a moot point based on a ROES (return on entertainment spend... Lol). I have a 690, 780 Ti and four Titans, and didn't feel the need to "refresh" to yet another 28nm because TSMC told Nvidia to go pound sand while it services it's priority Customer; Apple. I also have a 7950, and quite frankly, I didn't have any problems with it while I was still utilizing it for a specific use. I do not believe that Nvidia delivers any better experience than AMD, on the contrary, AMD cards are the gift that keep on giving while Nvidia cards keep getting slower in newer games. Yeah, I have heard the argument about " may be Kepler can't be further optimized", and I don't buy it, because that is exactly what I would say if I were Nvidia and trying to do another sales cycle out of 28nm (sure with a new arch. etc, etc). I wanted to get a Fury/FuryX, but with six 28nm cards, I again didn't feel compelled to buy a seventh card just for the heck of it. But, I am looking forward to Polaris, and couldn't care less about Pascal. I am also not a big fan of ecosystems that primarily work to the benefit of the vendor, and not so much for the consumer ( no never looked at gsync; why pay a premium to get locked into an ecosystem? Seems counterintuitive. And don't care much for gameworks, as it stands now as a middling middleware full of performance issues)From a business perspective, I get what Nvidia is trying to do while being pulled in a dozen different directions to appeal to the investment community, however, as a consumer, Nvidia is not the "game" for me, no pun intended.... lol

excellent post. Any person should look at the value of his buy over the entire duration of ownership of the product. If you are a person who will buy a new card with every new gen Nvidia might be ok for you but that's not the majority audience. Lots of people keep their GPUs for 2 generations. With Nvidia's shenanigans of crippling Kepler through driver support the average buyer / gamer should reconsider his buying process. I am sure Nvidia will continue with the strategy of crippling last gen as soon as the latest gen launches. Moreover GCN is looking better equipped for DX12 / Vulcan games. We will see how the next 2 years play out for Maxwell owners.

 

[Headfoot]

Buying a slower video card for the same $ figure due to marketing is like buying a worse tasting hamburger because they had funny ads. It's dumb. But so goes buyer behavior

 

[Goatsecks]

With Nvidia's shenanigans of crippling Kepler through driver support the average buyer / gamer should reconsider his buying process.

They have not been 'crippling' kepler:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3ikn7c/all_gtx_670_drivers_compared_2012_2015/

 

[Silverforce11]

They have not been 'crippling' kepler:

ABT is not a reliable source of any hardware benches given the owner of that site got perma banned from here for being a shill & troll.

If you want to believe his results, go to ABT to discuss it.

Other benchmark site that test modern games have shown a clear degradation of Kepler performance.

Let me remind you again:

This is what it looked like when the 980 launched.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_980/26.html

970 = 87%
780Ti = 95%
980 = 100%

This is what it looked recently, note this chart includes a lot of older games and few of the newer titles where Kepler is gimped worse.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/R9_390_Nitro/23.html

970 = 89%
780Ti = 92%
980 = 103%

With more recent titles (the ones I linked earlier with charts), the 780Ti is often under the 970.

As an eye opener, an example of NV's sponsored game, how can you say Kepler is not being gimped here?

http://www.techspot.com/review/1000-project-cars-benchmarks/page2.html

 

[Silverforce11]

And people might wonder why NV is setting revenue records while AMD is trying to make a buck. One is just a better run business (I want you to note I'm looking at this from the perspective of the business).

While NV gets their users to upgrade - what was the term coined here, forced obsoletion? - AMD users will hold on to their cards longer possibly skipping a gen.

This is correct. I held onto my R290s and even bought a R290X recently.

I didn't think the 980Ti nor Fury X was a major upgrade. My upgrade cycle is typically 3 years. I don't know what the average gamer's cycle is, but I doubt it's yearly.

 

[Arachnotronic]

This is correct. I held onto my R290s and even bought a R290X recently.

I didn't think the 980Ti nor Fury X was a major upgrade. My upgrade cycle is typically 3 years. I don't know what the average gamer's cycle is, but I doubt it's yearly.

2-3 years is typical, according to NVIDIA.

 

[Arachnotronic]

They have not been 'crippling' kepler:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3ikn7c/all_gtx_670_drivers_compared_2012_2015/

Yep, this is just BS that the AMD fans keep spreading to try to dissuade people from purchasing NVIDIA GPUs. Hope not too many people are suckered in by this FUD.

 

[railven]

Other benchmark site that test modern games have shown a clear degradation of Kepler performance.

You're being a little disingenuous here. I'm not saying NV is lavishing Kepler with optimizations, but the hardware is not degrading. It isn't getting slower.

You can't use an overall summary with different games. You even acknowledge the differences. Look at the same game on both review sets.

Crysis 3 @ 1440

There is no degradation in performance for 780 Ti.

And seriously, it's okay for AMD to get optimizations but not Nvidia?

2015

2016

780 Ti went from slower than GTX 970 to faster.

NV most definitely slowed down on the optimizations for Kepler, but they are not regressing it. No game I own runs worse on my 780 Lightning then it did when it first came out.

AMD should obviously be praised for bring out more performance on their cards. But don't act it's because NV is dropping performance on their older cards.

 

[railven]

This is correct. I held onto my R290s and even bought a R290X recently.

I didn't think the 980Ti nor Fury X was a major upgrade. My upgrade cycle is typically 3 years. I don't know what the average gamer's cycle is, but I doubt it's yearly.

I've always upgraded annually. So I don't even think much about it when a new wave of cards come around. I would always get a top tier AMD card. So I'm sure they didn't mind my buying habits

And both Fury X and 980 Ti were a huge upgrade for me. Because of some stupid decisions in the time frame of a year and a half I went from:
7970 CFX > 660 Ti > 660 Ti SLI > 780 Lightning > 680 > 980 Ti

AMD got my money for both the 7970s, but NV only saw my money for the 980 Ti (other cards were exchanges or bought used).

 

[Silverforce11]

NV most definitely slowed down on the optimizations for Kepler, but they are not regressing it. No game I own runs worse on my 780 Lightning then it did when it first came out.

That's the point. If they actually caused regression on already existing titles, it would cause an uproar.

Simply dropping optimization (because as we know, DX11 relies heavily on driver optimizations) on new games or delaying it, would exaggerate the performance difference between Kepler v Maxwell.

When I first noticed this was in FC4, at release benchmarks.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/01/07/far_cry_4_video_card_performance_review/6#.VrUyC_l96Uk

The GTX 780 just can't keep up in this game. It is very outdated for this game.

The similar thing can be seen for many GameWorks titles after that and all the recent titles I linked show that behavior.

 

[happy medium]

abt is not a reliable source of any hardware benches given the owner of that site got perma banned from here for being a shill & troll.

this is total bs.

 

[happy medium]

While NV gets their users to upgrade

Bad bad Nvidia,,,,,making money!, what do you think you are a profitable company, bad Nvidia

 

[Arachnotronic]

Bad bad Nvidia,,,,,making money!, what do you think you are a profitable company, bad Nvidia

Making money is evil, duh. Everybody here should be ashamed of collecting paychecks from their place of employment and should be actively encouraging said employers to find cheaper ways to get whatever job they do done.

 

[Azix]

780 Ti went from slower than GTX 970 to faster.

NV most definitely slowed down on the optimizations for Kepler, but they are not regressing it. No game I own runs worse on my 780 Lightning then it did when it first came out.

AMD should obviously be praised for bring out more performance on their cards. But don't act it's because NV is dropping performance on their older cards.

old games don't matter. They arent going to go waste resources removing optimizations. For newer games though, that's probably the issue.

I wouldn't keep a kepler card till pascal pops up next year.

 

[Arachnotronic]

excellent post. Any person should look at the value of his buy over the entire duration of ownership of the product. If you are a person who will buy a new card with every new gen Nvidia might be ok for you but that's not the majority audience. Lots of people keep their GPUs for 2 generations. With Nvidia's shenanigans of crippling Kepler through driver support the average buyer / gamer should reconsider his buying process. I am sure Nvidia will continue with the strategy of crippling last gen as soon as the latest gen launches. Moreover GCN is looking better equipped for DX12 / Vulcan games. We will see how the next 2 years play out for Maxwell owners.

Really working overtime to try to get people to buy AMD products by spreading FUD about NVIDIA spending actual engineering man-hours to cripple prior generation GPUs

 

[stahlhart]

Thread closed.
-- stahlhart