[TBG] Video Card Rankings - Winter 2014, Are NV and AMD ignoring the midrange market?

[wand3r3r]

The article brings a nice trip down memory lane, and an interesting point about the current pricing on the market.

We base our 1x Speed Rating on one of the most influential and game-changing video cards of all time, the Nvidia GeForce 8800GT, introduced in October 2007 at the $250 price point. In one fell swoop, it brought high-end graphics power to the masses, coming in at about half the price of the previous high-end card, the GeForce 8800 GTX, while offering almost the same processing power.

Nothing stands still in the technology world, though, and it took just a single year to drop the price of "1x Speed" from $250 to $130, with the introduction of the Radeon HD 4830. Today, this level of performance is below any mainstream gaming card, which we consider to start with the 1.5x Speed Rating. Ironically, the price has been going up for this level of performance, which serves as a reminder that prices only drop so low on gaming cards - as they trend towards $100, they often stall there, as the battle rages on in the price tiers above. In fact, as of our publication date, two older cards with essentially identical performance are less expensive than the R7 250, as shown below.

It's looking pretty bad for low end & entry level gamers. I can't believe they have been neglecting it so badly.

The most recent 2x Speed champ, the HD 7770, doesn't really get people too excited. In fact, it's just a bit slower than one of its predecessors, the HD 6850. Furthermore, like all of the HD 7000 series, it's on its way out. Truth be told, there likely won't be future video cards that truly replace the HD 6850 and GTX 460 - some are a bit faster, some are a bit slower.

The bang for the buck at that price range has been lost!

Believe it or not, AMD and Nvidia have essentially abandoned this Speed Rating, along with the $150 price point, perhaps because products in other performance classes offer better margins. Instead, they are back-filling the $140-$200 price segment with old cards that used to sell for less (the GTX 660, which is actually a bit faster than its earlier cousins pictured below), or new cards that are rehashes of cards that used to sell for less (the Radeon R7 260X, R9 270, and R9 270X).

It's odd that they are selling older cards for a little price drop in the 3x range.

I'm getting a funny sense that AMD and NV have almost abandoned low - mid range gamers, and jacked up the prices hardcore instead!

The 4x performance segment has seen some competition (finally!). Then again, the prices have been $300-450 so it's already pretty high end.

The 5x ranking gets interesting again.

This level of performance has been available for quite some time, dating all the way back to the hot-running HD 6990 released in March 2011. But it wasn't until AMD released the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition in June 2012 that you could finally get this kind of power in a single-GPU card. That card was a pumped up version of the original HD 7970, which offered much lower performance per dollar when it was released in January 2012 at $550.

Bowing to pressure, Nvidia introduced the GeForce GTX 770 in May of 2013 at $400, which was itself a hot-rodded version of the more expensive GTX 680. Most recently, AMD decided to play it safe with the introduction of the R9 280X that would replace the 7970 GHz Edition - AMD actually detuned it slightly from 7970 GHz levels, dropping the core clock 50MHz to keep power consumption under control. But it dropped the price a whole lot more, all the way down to $300.
...

The 6x, 7x, and 8x are the highly discussed cards currently.

Check it out, it's an interesting article with some historical trends which are pretty surprising in my opinion. Basically the $100-250 points seem pretty neglected and that's shocking to me as that seems to be the bulk of their sales. It's almost as if they have totally ignored and neglected the mid-range of old, and haven't even hardly improved.

Now that I think of it, does this correlate with the sales that are slumping? If you don't give people a reason to upgrade (more FPS) then why would they? Perhaps it's not that extreme, but it's pretty evident the low end is lacking in GPU strength.

Take a look and let me know what you think.
http://www.techbuyersguru.com/VideoCardRankings.php

I suspect they have tried to "shift" the mid range up a bit too (a lot actually, in price).

 

[ShintaiDK]

Lowend/Entry level is obviously being destroyed by IGPs. Either directly as a product entirely or the value/performance upgrade issue. The midrange is starting to suffer the same issue with value/performance.

 

[blastingcap]

Lowend/Entry level is obviously being destroyed by IGPs. Either directly as a product entirely or the value/performance upgrade issue. The midrange is starting to suffer the same issue with value/performance.

This. Also the margins are lower in the midrange, especially as VRAM quantities go up and because fixed costs of things like shipping eat up a larger fraction of the retail price. Node shrinks are also not what they used to be in terms of cost savings... price per transistor is going down a lot more slowly than in the past. http://www.extremetech.com/computin...y-with-tsmc-claims-22nm-essentially-worthless

 

[UaVaj]

for typical everyday typical usage. all you need is a nice tablet.

iGPU is more than plenty if you are using your desktop for typical task. no money there.

as for mid range. most just buy used last generation's top end. no money there either.

as for top end. some of us never seem to have enough fps. lot of money to be made.

 

[blastingcap]

for typical everyday typical usage. all you need is a nice tablet.

iGPU is more than plenty if you are using your desktop for typical task. no money there.

as for mid range. most just buy used last generation's top end. no money there either.

as for top end. some of us never seem to have enough fps. lot of money to be made.

Concise summation.

Haiku-like efficiency.

I'm impressed.

 

[pauldun170]

Concise summation.

Haiku-like efficiency.

I'm impressed.

Tablet is in hand
IGPU is better
old god card is best

 

[wand3r3r]

Tablet is in hand
IGPU is better
old new god card is best

I don't know how to do the strikethrough on here.

For those talking about the iGPUs, well there's still a huge (price and performance) gap between integrated and mid-range. iGPU = free, next performance increase in the past several years = $250? I'm still surprised they have completely neglected this market, maybe that's why nobody (it's shrinking if you go by general statistics) buys them.

 

[coffeejunkee]

Ironically, the price has been going up for this level of performance

They say that but it doesn´t show at all. R7 250 at 89 is cheaper than 6670 at 100. Their graph also shows all prices dropping over time (albeit slower than they used to) and bottoming out around 75, apparently the minimum you need to spend to be able to do any gaming at all.

Yes, things move relatively slow at the low end but progress at the high end is down too, both AMD and Nvidia last generation hasn´t been the huge step we´ve gotten used to (unless you take into account power efficiency as well, which has been vastly improved). Although R9 290/GTX 780 battle has made things more interesting at the high end and you can see that line drop sharply in the graph.

But you know the deal, we have to wait for new process at TSMC before we see any real progress, until then it´s a little tweaking, some rebranding and a couple price drops. Overall I don´t see any ignoring, in fact there are plenty of nice midrange cards available. Sure, they could be faster and they could be cheaper. I´d also like a hexacore cpu at $150.

as for mid range. most just buy used last generation's top end. no money there either.

Are you saying more people bought a used GTX580 than a new 7850? I don't have numbers but I sincerely doubt it.

 

[blastingcap]

But you know the deal, we have to wait for new process at TSMC before we see any real progress, until then it´s a little tweaking, some rebranding and a couple price drops.

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...y-with-tsmc-claims-22nm-essentially-worthless

 

[wand3r3r]

Is Nvidia about to release "something" in this low -mid range which has been neglected?

The 750 ti rumor thread indicates a possibility.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2364264

 

[coffeejunkee]

My Swedish is a bit rusty but I don't understand it anyway. Denver is an arm cpu, not a gpu.

But if Nvidia indeed releases a Maxwell 750Ti as the first card in a new lineup I will be highly surprised. If there's any ignoring of the lowend going on it's by Nvidia. Everything below GTX650Ti Boost is basically a horribad purchase (from a gaming perspective, some cards can be useful for cuda).

 

[shady28]

for typical everyday typical usage. all you need is a nice tablet.

iGPU is more than plenty if you are using your desktop for typical task. no money there.

as for mid range. most just buy used last generation's top end. no money there either.

as for top end. some of us never seem to have enough fps. lot of money to be made.

There's no money in top end, very few buyers there.

I picked up my 560 Ti in early 2013 for $99. I have yet to find anything that doesn't run just fine at 1920x1080, which is all my monitor will do.

dGPUs are going to slowly die off unless 1440p and up resolutions become the norm on 22" and up monitors. I suspect due to the 'cheaper is better' economy, that will be 3 or 4 more years out.