The GPU Vendor Bias Admission Thread

[bystander36]

That's the thing.

Nvidia never had this market-share. It's a recent development. How do you grow revenue when you own the market? Even Intel has ARM to worry about. If AMD dies, Nvidia will have no competition.

Yes, they are expanding into other fields, where they might make tonnes of sales, but in the gaming market, to increase revenue, you raise ASP and/or encourage a more rapid turnover. Many businesses do this by having a sleeker, more capable replacement. Nvidia seems to be hastening this process more than normal obsolescence would indicate.

I dread to see what a 90%+ market-share would bring.

I don't believe they purposefully caused a fast turnover rate. They've never done it before, and it seems more likely the new direction of gaming and DX12 has more to do with them getting caught the wrong architecture choices. The slow down of process progression has also played a large role, as it has prolonged the value of the GCN architecture, which has aged better than it would have in the past.

 

[maddie]

The point being, a person may seem biased at one point, but they aren't. There are also plenty of people who probably don't think they are biased, yet clearly are when looked at by another unbiased person.

I'd like to think I'm unbiased, but I'm sure I'm not entirely unbiased.

I pretty much believe that close to no one or even none are unbiased. We all have preferences that admittedly might change over time, but at any point we have a certain preference that we sometimes try to rationalize. Once we try to be reasonable and not malicious, no problem.

There was one Nvidia poster here in the fora recently who is quite unique. Borderline lying and I never saw so many rapidly edited posts. Amazing.

 

[maddie]

I don't believe they purposefully caused a fast turnover rate. They've never done it before, and it seems more likely the new direction of gaming and DX12 has more to do with them getting caught the wrong architecture choices. The slow down of process progression has also played a large role, as it has prolonged the value of the GCN architecture, which has aged better than it would have in the past.

They could never do it before effectively. With an 80% market-share, the most you can increase unit sales is by 25%. What do you tell your shareholders, seeing that many stocks are stratospheric in value. Our upside is 25% until these new ventures mature [deep learning, etc]. look at the hit with ARM.

The problem with pushing too hard is that you can go too far. Look at the US political scene as an example.

 

[Arachnotronic]

The results are not surprising at all. People that take the time to read tech forums tend to get educated and see through the marketing smoke screens. But most people don't bother so the best marketing wins not necessarily the best hardware.

Pretty simple stuff.

That's not very nice, implying that NVIDIA buyers are uneducated

 

[bystander36]

They could never do it before effectively. With an 80% market-share, the most you can increase unit sales is by 25%. What do you tell your shareholders, seeing that many stocks are stratospheric in value. Our upside is 25% until these new ventures mature [deep learning, etc]. look at the hit with ARM.

Neither of us know for certain, but it seems the most logical reason is the one that has repeated over the years. Every generation, they bring a new architecture to the plate, and the direction of software determines which ones fairs best. AMD put all their eggs into compute those go around, which has clearly paid off. Previously Nvidia jumped all in with tessellation, which was great for them. You can continue to see this repeat over the years. Purposeful sabotage would be something new, but we don't need a new theory to explain what happened.

AMD clearly has influenced the past few years with their console win, Mantle and DX12. Doesn't it seem more likely that has more to do with Nvidia's short life span lately?

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

I'm not really surprised at the results (there are a lot of pro AMD posters around here) with that said, I am biased towards nVIDIA due to the fact I believe they offer me as an individual a superior product and package. Drivers and attention to card design/layout being the main reason.

Without nVIDIA Inspector I don't know what I would do. I can enable all sorts of AA (SGSSAA, OGSSAA, mixed mode AA), HBAO/SSAO, and frame limiting through manipulation of driver flags. nVIDIA is also usually first to release useful driver features such as TrSSAA, CSAA, FXAA, dynamic vsync, HBAO/SSAO, shader cache, MFAA, and DSR.

I do believe Radeon cards have Radeon Pro but it doesn't come close to the level of options that nVIDIA Inspector provides.

As far as the whole GameWorks thing is concerned, I could really care less. I don't play most triple A games as it is let alone the ones with GW. nVIDIA cards do however, perform better in niche/indie games that I tend to play.

I could also care less about things being closed vs open for the most part. nVIDIA is a business and as such if they believe in creating a closed platform for their cards that benefits and supports their cards so be it. As long as it benefits the consumer as well, which most of the time it seems to (Apple?). Things like PhysX are just added features to me that give me a little more incentive to buy their cards. This is just another way a company can separate itself from the competition and provide incentive to buy their product. Nobody has to buy into the ecosystem either so if you feel they are ruining PC gaming blame the devs and publishers because they ultimately decide what goes into a game or not (no matter how much cash is involved).

 

[MBrown]

I am agnostic however I've been getting nvidia cards because I have a gsync monitor. Is there a monitor that has both gsync and freesync?

 

[maddie]

Neither of us know for certain, but it seems the most logical reason is the one that has repeated over the years. Every generation, they bring a new architecture to the plate, and the direction of software determines which ones fairs best. AMD put all their eggs into compute those go around, which has clearly paid off. Previously Nvidia jumped all in with tessellation, which was great for them. You can continue to see this repeat over the years. Purposeful sabotage would be something new, but we don't need a new theory to explain what happened.

AMD clearly has influenced the past few years with their console win, Mantle and DX12. Doesn't it seem more likely that has more to do with Nvidia's short life span lately?

I could agree with you if Nvidia didn't have a history of lying. Way back, they were caught changing the rendering targets through the driver for bench-marking wins. The output was of lower quality that the competitor, even though the game quality settings were identical. Hyper sub-pixel tesselation as a winning gimmick. I haven't even mentioned their latest ones.

Need I go on? It's NOT a new theory.


edit: I buy low-mid range and have owned several Nvidia cards. Geforce 4, 9600GT, GTX 760 from Nvidia also Radeon 8500 4850, 6870. Sold GTX 760 to a flight sim friend and waiting for new gen Polaris.

 

[bystander36]

Need I go on? It's NOT a new theory.

When, other than this last couple years, have people claimed they've sabotaged their products to turn people to new ones?

 

[maddie]

When, other than this last couple years, have people claimed they've sabotaged their products to turn people to new ones?

Yes, the present claim is new, because of what I posted just a few posts ago. Their history is laced with unscrupulous acts. If you don't agree, no problem. We keep to our own beliefs.

"They could never do it before effectively. With an 80% market-share, the most you can increase unit sales is by 25%. What do you tell your shareholders, seeing that many stocks are stratospheric in value. Our upside is 25% until these new ventures mature [deep learning, etc]. look at the hit with ARM."

 

[boozzer]

One thing occurred to me...

If there is so many people biased towards AMD, and so many people saying that best hardware will win for them... why the market has 80/20% split for Nvidia?


Looks like its the mindshare. Because objectively if we factor performance, DX12, compute power and the hardware features - for this better solution is AMD.

If we factor GameWorks, DX11, Efficiency, CUDA - here is no brainer - Nvidia.

Why has it that Nvidia has such high marketshare with all things considered?

members(minus the hardcore of both colors) of this forum is waaaaay more informed and tech savy then the common buyers and other forums. that is 1 forum like this vs countless others who recommends NV without a thought. there are a few posters here who are just superb when it comes to tech analysis.

that is why.

 

[IEC]

When, other than this last couple years, have people claimed they've sabotaged their products to turn people to new ones?

Their shareholders (full disclosure: like me) demand performance. Where do you think that performance comes from when they own close to 80% of the discrete GPU market already? From fighting for an additional few % market share (difficult), or by locking in additional buyers a generation early through forced obsolescence?

My portfolio thanks all those who bought Kepler and then Maxwell. I, however, bought Hawaii.

So I am biased towards nVidia, but unlike other posters here I don't let it influence my personal choices or the advice I give to others. In the mid range all the way up to $500ish I will recommend AMD cards as the better value (with some exceptions). High end = 980 Ti, all the way.

We'll see with Pascal and Polaris.

 

[maddie]

Their shareholders (full disclosure: like me) demand performance. Where do you think that performance comes from when they own close to 80% of the discrete GPU market already? From fighting for an additional few % market share (difficult), or by locking in additional buyers a generation early through forced obsolescence?

My portfolio thanks all those who bought Kepler and then Maxwell. I, however, bought Hawaii.

So I am biased towards nVidia, but unlike other posters here I don't let it influence my personal choices or the advice I give to others. In the mid range all the way up to $500ish I will recommend AMD cards as the better value (with some exceptions). High end = 980 Ti, all the way.

We'll see with Pascal and Polaris.

As a one time detour from the thread.

AMD shares are potentially a very good buy now. At the present prices, the downside is very low relative to the upside.

 

[raghu78]

I am an AMD supporter as I like to root for the underdog. I also think AMD's push on open standards benefits the industry and consumers. btw I do not like Nvidia's business practices. But thats just my opinion.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Their shareholders (full disclosure: like me) demand performance. Where do you think that performance comes from when they own close to 80% of the discrete GPU market already? From fighting for an additional few % market share (difficult), or by locking in additional buyers a generation early through forced obsolescence?

My portfolio thanks all those who bought Kepler and then Maxwell. I, however, bought Hawaii.

So I am biased towards nVidia, but unlike other posters here I don't let it influence my personal choices or the advice I give to others. In the mid range all the way up to $500ish I will recommend AMD cards as the better value (with some exceptions). High end = 980 Ti, all the way.

We'll see with Pascal and Polaris.

Nice. I myself made a quite a lot of money off of NVIDIA stock a while ago, but I definitely got off the train far too early.

 

[sandorski]

I'm surprised by the Poll results too. Assuming they are accurate and haven't been skewed by double voting or dishonest voting, I think the Nvidia bias many feel is likely because a few zealots are much more vocal than their counterparts.

 

[3DVagabond]

I'm surprised by the Poll results too. Assuming they are accurate and haven't been skewed by double voting or dishonest voting, I think the Nvidia bias many feel is likely because a few zealots are much more vocal than their counterparts.

Maybe more of the nVidia proponents are in denial?

 

[YBS1]

The past few years I have been biased towards nVidia, though in a perfect world I would prefer AMD. Not to go into past driver issues, but I haven't went back to AMD since the GTX480 for a card. I would like to use AMD cards as I don't particularly care for some of nVidia's practices. However, as it currently stands I have to weigh AMD's superior Crossfire scaling against nVidia's consistency in providing a functioning SLI profile usually in step with a games release, sometimes long before a functioning Crossfire driver surfaces. As I'm typically a day one gamer, this is important to me. I don't even know which option to select in the poll, I have an emotional bias and a purchasing bias, they are opposed.

 

[sandorski]

Maybe more of the nVidia proponents are in denial?

Not sure about that, just very vocal.

 

[Silverforce11]

The past few years I have been biased towards nVidia, though in a perfect world I would prefer AMD. Not to go into past driver issues, but I haven't went back to AMD since the GTX480 for a card. I would like to use AMD cards as I don't particularly care for some of nVidia's practices. However, as it currently stands I have to weigh AMD's superior Crossfire scaling against nVidia's consistency in providing a functioning SLI profile usually in step with a games release, sometimes long before a functioning Crossfire driver surfaces. As I'm typically a day one gamer, this is important to me. I don't even know which option to select in the poll, I have an emotional bias and a purchasing bias, they are opposed.

To be fair, if you're a day 1 gamer and you use multi-GPU, NVIDIA is the better choice because they do have SLI profiles in more AAA titles from day 1. There's obvious reasons for why this is the case (GameWorks, exclusive access), but that's the reality.

Because my ethical stance is a strong one, it prevents me supporting them (NV & devs that use GW) knowing they play dirty to gain such an advantage (latest example, GoW devs did not even test AMD GPUs and didn't tell AMD about the release).

So games that are GW sponsored, I tend not to buy on day 1. I get them much later, on 50% or 75% off sales, once all the patches arrived and it's actually "Game Ready".

 

[VirtualLarry]

Where's the poll option for "Potato"? Or, "I like variety, so I buy GPUs from both vendors, just because"?

I like to experiment. So I buy a lot of different stuff. I also take advantage of a lot of various "hot deals", too, so I accumulate stuff.

I build PCs for people, in an attempt to make a buck, and also to get rid of my stuff.

 

[Azix]

I'd have to say I'm biased, but its really only because I can't trust nvidia. I had bought a 970 and got rid of it, seems the smart decision.

Maybe if their CEO is gone and they seem different.

Which technically is not really biased since its a decision based on what I expect of their products, but it kinda is bias. right?

 

[ozzy702]

Lets see... I've owned the following cards in the past six years:

HD4850
HD4870
HD4890

GTX 570

HD7870
HD7950
HD7970

GTX 780

I don't have any bias either way although I'd be lying to not say that I'm grateful for AMD for how well their cards mined back in the day. Technically I owned several dozen 7000 series GPUs for obvious reasons, but still rock a DualX 7970 and then the GTX 780 in my main rig.

Of all the cards I would say the GTX 780 is the only GPU purchase I regret. It simply hasn't aged well and I honestly think I'll go back to AMD if their next gen stuff is solid. It just seems like with GCN's track record you're going to get better long term performance out of an AMD card.

 

[MongGrel]

Best Product wins, at least here.

Have both flavors in a couple rigs, but I tend to think NVidia has better driver support over time.

 

[casiofx]

I was a huge nvidia's fan since I first owned a geforce 2. But since then every card i had bought is radeon since they offered more bang for the buck everytime when i need a new card. Nvidia had nice cards out too but too bad those times were when I didn't upgrade (I bought 9800pro 3 months before 6600GT release, skipped 8800GT and gtx 460)

Now with the recent nvidia scandals and old arch that can't keep up with competitors, I'll avoid nvidia atm.