What does AMD have to fight the 780?

[omeds]

5-series was AMD's finest moment.

Certainly was. I remember my 5850 CF infested with microstutter, broken texture filtering, and lack of DX10/11 transparency AA & SSAA. Those were the days.

 

[Lepton87]

That Tahiti is more pro oriented is nothing I disagree with you about, and that Tahiti is more universal`in what it can do. But pretending nVidia hadn't planed on using gk104 as their top chip for gaming seems strange. And isn't it high end if it isn't their top chip?
I think nVidia with a few exceptions is very good at doing business, and found out that they wanted to do it like this quite early on, especially after gf100.

And the reason I argue about this is because people makes it seem like Tahiti should be that much better at gaming because it's supposed to be high-end when in reality it's not that much difference in the number of transistors they have to use on graphics.
Now of course it's different when they have made their refresh, gk110, that is their new high-end chip.

I wouldn't call GK110 a refresh it was always in the pipeline, it just wasn't economical to produce it until some time ago, to boot they probably had some unexpected problems with it so they released it so much later. GK 104 was always supposed to sit below GK110 in their line-up. Even if GK104 was their top chip that they could produce for revenue I still didn't consider it high-end because it was always supposed to sit behind GK110, stripping it of compute capabilities just made that point clearer. Also in the past they left a lot of OC headroom for their mid-range chips, GTX460 was an awesome overclocker, GK104 on the other hand was near maxed out in terms of operating frequency with its turbo boost. Well, it was a good marketing play, they even surpassed conservatively clocked tahiti for a while and it when GHZ edition and driver improvement for GCN came out it still wasn't as much slower as a mid-range card should be slower then a high-end card.

 

[Lepton87]

5-series was AMD's finest moment. That was when they overtook Nvidia on market share, eyefinity was the thing to have and Nvidia could only match the 5870 with the 560 Ti 15 months later (with similar die sizes/tdp).

It was indeed AMD's finest moment in Graphics cards, but when we consider ATI it certainly wasn't. Radeon 9700 just crashed everything nv had at the time and it still crashed the card they responded with, coincidentally FX series was their worst series ever and R300 was one of the best chips ATi released. Also 1900XT and then 1900XTX were a lot faster then what NV had at the time.

 

[Elfear]

If AMD is going to compete, they need to change their reputation, and that takes time. Their performance is fine right now, but they still have a bad reputation because of drivers. For most the life of the 7000 series, they have experience stuttering in single GPU setups, and still microstutter issues in multi-GPU,

Now you're blowing things way out of proportion. How many reviewers who gamed with Tahiti commented about stuttering with single GPUs? Don't you think that would have been very apparent when running through a myriad of benchmarks?

and until the end of 2012, they were slower.

Unless you're going on a different calendar than the rest of us, it was faster in June of 2012.

If you are buying a single Radeon now, it makes since, but if you bought it a year ago, you would have had an inferior experience. If you go crossfire, you'd still have an inferior experience. I imagine most people have purchased a least a couple AMD/ATI cards in the past, and also Nvidia products and have noticed the difference. I know I have. But after you've experience both sides, most people tend to prefer Nvidia, and then just stay with them.

I've bought GPUs from both sides over the years and I never had the inferior experience you're talking about with my Radeon cards. I bought a 7970 at launch and have loved it so far. In fact, no other card could have given me a similar Skyrim experience for about a year. It's only one game but Tahiti's overclocking headroom and 3GB of vram made it very enjoyable.

 

[Lepton87]

I've bought GPUs from both sides over the years and I never had the inferior experience you're talking about with my Radeon cards. I bought a 7970 at launch and have loved it so far. In fact, no other card could have given me a similar Skyrim experience for about a year. It's only one game but Tahiti's overclocking headroom and 3GB of vram made it very enjoyable.

I agree, Tahiti was an excellent buy when it launched, it stayed the fastest card or near fastest for nearly 1.5 year. That is impressive longevity for a graphics card. In contrast Titan's already poor performance per dollar was completely destroyed just after 2-3months. It still is a very good card for compute but we're talking about gaming here.

 

[bystander36]

Now you're blowing things way out of proportion. How many reviewers who gamed with Tahiti commented about stuttering with single GPUs? Don't you think that would have been very apparent when running through a myriad of benchmarks?

Reviewers try to be unbiased, so they only give what they can measure. Though some have occasionally interjected some personal experience, but that is rare. However, the end user does notice these things, and by the end of 2012, review sites, techreport in particular, exposed their stuttering issue on single cards.

Unless you're going on a different calendar than the rest of us, it was faster in June of 2012.

The Ghz edition may have been released in June, but it wasn't faster until driver improvements. At least that is what I saw. Using current charts doesn't show it though. It probably wasn't until at least September before they caught up.

I've bought GPUs from both sides over the years and I never had the inferior experience you're talking about with my Radeon cards. I bought a 7970 at launch and have loved it so far. In fact, no other card could have given me a similar Skyrim experience for about a year. It's only one game but Tahiti's overclocking headroom and 3GB of vram made it very enjoyable.

I said most users. Most users are either not as forgiving of shortcomings, or notice them more than you. I always get caught up in performance, purchase AMD/ATI, then go Nvidia the next round after getting annoyed by lots of little problems.

It seems pretty obvious, based on the market share, that others tend to agree.

 

[Lepton87]

It seems pretty obvious, based on the market share, that others tend to agree.

Market share is more dependent on marketing, brand recognition and so on rather then on merits of actual products. During Athlon X2 and P4 time people still bought the most expensive Extreme Edition P4s.

 

[Silverforce11]

Bought a 7950 near launch for $330, OC to 1.2ghz with lower vcore than default cards, getting OC 680 performance for cheap.. and started mining coins overnight past few months, now the card is FREE.

FREE OC 680. People want to argue about value??

 

[bystander36]

Market share is more dependent on marketing, brand recognition and so on rather then on merits of actual products. During Athlon X2 and P4 time people still bought the most expensive Extreme Edition P4s.

I'd argue that the P4 purchases were about reputation. Reputation isn't something you get on 1 great product. It is something you earn by repeatedly producing great products. If AMD could achieve great performance and experience (no stutter/microstutter issues), in a few years, people will then start to take notice.

 

[Granseth]

(...)


I said most users. Most users are either not as forgiving of shortcomings, or notice them more than you. I always get caught up in performance, purchase AMD/ATI, then go Nvidia the next round after getting annoyed by lots of little problems.

It seems pretty obvious, based on the market share, that others tend to agree.

I think most of us haven't seen much to these shortcomings. I know there has been a few problems, but to me it has been painless and I think it has been like that for a lot of users.

And when I bought it (at release) I red the reviews and knew what kind of performance I was getting, and driver improvement since then has been a well received bonus.

When it comes to CF I have the impression that there are far more to complain about, but don't have any experience myself.

And I am mostly like you that I see the grass as greener on the other side and seems to switch between AMD and nVidia every generation, but for me it swings both ways as I've had my share of problems with GeForce cards as well.

 

[Bateluer]

I plan to refresh my desktop with Haswell this summer, but I'll be holding off on a new graphics card until AMD launches their next gen parts. My 7950 3GB handles nearly everything I throw at it with 1440p resolutions, even with texture mods, so I really don't feel the need to drop 650 dollars on a GTX 780 only for it to be eclipsed in 5 months.

 

[Silverforce11]

I'd argue that the P4 purchases were about reputation. Reputation isn't something you get on 1 great product. It is something you earn by repeatedly producing great products. If AMD could achieve great performance and experience (no stutter/microstutter issues), in a few years, people will then start to take notice.

The times NV failed in the past, people didn't care and still bought them.

It's marketing and brand loyalty.

 

[bystander36]

I think most of us haven't seen much to these shortcomings. I know there has been a few problems, but to me it has been painless and I think it has been like that for a lot of users.

And when I bought it (at release) I red the reviews and knew what kind of performance I was getting, and driver improvement since then has been a well received bonus.

When it comes to CF I have the impression that there are far more to complain about, but don't have any experience myself.

And I am mostly like you that I see the grass as greener on the other side and seems to switch between AMD and nVidia every generation, but for me it swings both ways as I've had my share of problems with GeForce cards as well.

I always get AMD when I have seen them produce great performance in reviews, but always find myself regretting it eventually. That said, the worst Nvidia purchase I ever made was the 470 SLI setup. It was just too loud. My favorite AMD purchase was the ATI 9800 pro, but was relieved when I got my 6800gts (not sure on last letters), due to annoyances that I was having with the 9800 pro.

And one thing that was interesting is the single card stutter AMD had. I saw them, but ignored them for years (5870 and 6950 most recently), because I just assumed that was how games were. What I didn't know was that Nvidia had much less of it. It possibly is why I feel far more at ease on Nvidia setups. I may not have connected the dots, but noticed it and for me, these things cause me nausea.

 

[Lepton87]

The times NV failed in the past, people didn't care and still bought them.

It's marketing and brand loyalty.

Exactly, even Geforce FX was selling very well, hell even GTX285 was selling quite well after 5870' launch. GeForce FX was just atrocious, the first incarnation of GF FX5800 sounded like a yet engine and people still were buying it. It's the same with the price, when 7970 launched at 550$ there was an uproar, even though it was a much better buy then GTX580. When Titan launched people were justifying its price tag any way they could. And now that NV basically released a card equal in gaming performance to titan at 650$ titan's buyers are fine with it and it's been only 2-3 months. Titan was released first for one reason only, to get consumers who would spend 1000$ on a graphics card, when the people who were willing to spend that much already bought it, then they released 780, even though they could release them simultaneously as was the case with k20 and k20x. And that is all fine, cool and dandy.

 

[bystander36]

Exactly, even Geforce FX was selling very well, hell even GTX285 was selling quite well after 5870' launch. GeForce FX was just atrocious, the first incarnation GF FX5800 sounded like a yet engine and people still were buying it.

But how did that loyalty develop? People don't become loyal to a product unless they have a few great experiences. AMD needs to string together great products and drivers to match a few generations before people will switch loyalty. One bad line on a brand that has generally given you a great experience doesn't switch loyalty. 2 or 3 in a row might.

Anyways, I did buy a 5870.

 

[Lepton87]

But how did that loyalty develop? People don't become loyal to a product unless they have a few great experiences. AMD needs to string together great products and drivers to match a few generations before people will switch loyalty. One bad line on a brand that has generally given you a great experience doesn't switch loyalty. 2 or 3 in a row might.

Anyways, I did buy a 5870.

Ati/AMD never had 2 or 3 bad architectures in a row. It never has an architecture so bad as GF FX. I guess that loyalty was mostly the doing of marketing, such moves as inflating scores in benchmarks by changing shaders percision, in 3d mark 2003 they changed precision to 16bit even tough it should have been 24. They cheated in 3Dmark 2001, where loading screen was added to fps or they even went as far as removing a whole dragon from one test. Then they have a legion of viral marketeers roaming around the internet mostly badmouthing(rollo, keysla something etc.) AMD instead of praising NV. Deals with OEMs, promoting their brand with game developers, and a whole arsenal of other tricks that I don't know of, I'm not a marketing guy. That's not to say that their products were always inferior to ATi/AMD sometimes they had better cards, sometimes they had worse, I owned a lot of cards from both ATI/AMD and Nvidia.
UPDATE: They even intentionally made games to run bad on AMD's hardware even though they would also run worse on their hardware, but AMD took a much bigger hit in FPS. (for example tessellation in C2)
Locking Psyx to only their cards, and even forbiding using an nvidia card for psyx when your main card is a competitors card. That one is just mean. Some people that have AMD's cards would buy NV cards for psyx but if you want PsyX experience you have to go nvidia all the way. I personally had 8800GTX laying around that I used along with 5870 for PsyX, a shame that I had to crack their drivers.

 

[bystander36]

Do you really think most people base their purchases on 3dmark and it is not like AMD has never adjust quality settings down in order to get higher FPS.

Anyways, I'll throw some food for thought out there. Have you ever had a video card you were content with? A card you just plugged in and played games, never concerning yourself with tweaking anything.

I have had a few Nvidia cards that I was content with. I have never had an AMD/ATI card I was content with. I haven't liked all my Nvidia cards (I hated the 470's), but I have been content with a few of them. I'm not saying I hated my AMD/ATI cards, but every one of them had something I just didn't quite like.

EDIT: The only marketing I can really think of, that might have gotten some purchases, is PhysX and perhaps almost always making sure they have the fastest card out plays a part.

 

[Lepton87]

Do you really think most people base their purchases on 3dmark and it is not like AMD has never adjust quality settings down in order to get higher FPS.



EDIT: The only marketing I can really think of, that might have gotten some purchases, is PhysX and perhaps almost always making sure they have the fastest card out plays a part.

Inflating benchmarks scores was only a part of their broad marketing strategy, as was very obvious from my post.I changed the wording a bit so as to not confuse anyone else that I think that's the sole reason. And no, they didn't have the fastest card out there at least half of the time. It was pretty even. 8500 vs GF3, slight edge to 8500 but basically equal, GF4 was the best card for some time then 9700 came and it was the best card for a very long time, it just massacred GF4, it was more then 2x times faster and it took some time for nvidia to make a competing card, and it failed miserably at that, at the time ATI already had 9800pro, 6800GT/Ultra vs X800XT/XT PE, again radeon was the faster card, NV was touting their SM 3.0 support because they couldn't compete on performance.(it worked, a lot of people think that 6800 series was faster and better then X800, but it wasn't, SM3 was not useful back then). Then they had the performance crown for a few months with 7800GTX, only to be taken by X1800XT, then they released a card that was almost impossible to buy, 7800GTX 512MB which was the fastest but it was a phantom card.
Then 1900XT came and it was game over for nvidia until they released G80. From then on, NV had the fastest cards most of the time, but also not always. 5870 reigned supreme for 6 months with a gigantic performance advantage over GTX285, until Fermi came, it was fast but horribly power hungry. Then 7970 came and it stayed the fastest card for over a year, in the meantime GTX680 came and too was the fastest card, but only at stock, both cards overclocked and tahiti was faster. NV had the fastest card, but only by a very slight margin until 7970GHz edition came. Then we had a lot of waiting for GK110 to regain performance crown. So saying that NV always made sure they had the fastest card is just bullshit.

Also you don't think that the program "It was meant to be played" had no effect on NV recognition and brand loyalty? NV would disagree forcefully, they wouldn't spend millions of dollars for nothing. That was a HUGE part of their marketing. Probably the most significant. The lack of cooperation with developers was the biggest problem for AMD for a long time.

 

[gammaray]

i got my 7970 on black friday for 325$ after rebate, who says AMD doesn't offer great price and isn't competitive

Granted i never saw that price ever again, but still !

but to answer OP, you can crossfire 2 7970 or 7950...

 

[bystander36]

Ati/AMD never had 2 or 3 bad architectures in a row. It never has an architecture so bad as GF FX. I guess that loyalty was mostly the doing of marketing, such moves as inflating scores in benchmarks by changing shaders percision, in 3d mark 2003 they changed precision to 16bit even tough it should have been 24. They cheated in 3Dmark 2001, where loading screen was added to fps or they even went as far as removing a whole dragon from one test. Then they have a legion of viral marketeers roaming around the internet mostly badmouthing(rollo, keysla something etc.) AMD instead of praising NV. Deals with OEMs, promoting their brand with game developers, and a whole arsenal of other tricks that I don't know of, I'm not a marketing guy. That's not to say that their products were always inferior to ATi/AMD sometimes they had better cards, sometimes they had worse, I owned a lot of cards from both ATI/AMD and Nvidia.
UPDATE: They even intentionally made games to run bad on AMD's hardware even though they would also run worse on their hardware, but AMD took a much bigger hit in FPS. (for example tessellation in C2)
Locking Psyx to only their cards, and even forbiding using an nvidia card for psyx when your main card is a competitors card. That one is just mean. Some people that have AMD's cards would buy NV cards for psyx but if you want PsyX experience you have to go nvidia all the way. I personally had 8800GTX laying around that I used along with 5870 for PsyX, a shame that I had to crack their drivers.

You brought up something, something you continued to dismiss, but made me think of a very important rule in sales. Be different. Having SM3.0, PhysX, 3D Vision, CUDA and anything else I forgot, does give them something that is different that AMD does/did not have. That will get sales, I'm sure.

That said, getting a sale is not earning loyalty. Loyalty is getting a sale and impressing the person enough to get future sales.

Only one time have I ever purchased an AMD card, and wanted to buy one afterwards. I've only purchased one Nvidia card that gave me pause about purchasing another (470 noise issue. I just made sure that was fixed for future cards). I should be a loyal Nvidia user, though my purchases would say otherwise. I'm always rooting for the underdog (AMD), but unfortunately that has left me questioning past choices.

 

[Elfear]

Reviewers try to be unbiased, so they only give what they can measure. Though some have occasionally interjected some personal experience, but that is rare. However, the end user does notice these things, and by the end of 2012, review sites, techreport in particular, exposed their stuttering issue on single cards.

One website out of dozens shows Tahiti with more frame latency and all of a sudden that is gospel? Sorry but reviewers would mention stuttering exactly because they want to be unbiased. At least with Xfire you had 2-3 sites stating they felt or measured microstuttering when gaming. For single GPU's the only site I know of who claimed stuttering was Tech Report.

The Ghz edition may have been released in June, but it wasn't faster until driver improvements. At least that is what I saw. Using current charts doesn't show it though. It probably wasn't until at least September before they caught up.

The graph I posted was from June 2012...

 

[Final8ty]

Ati/AMD never had 2 or 3 bad architectures in a row. It never has an architecture so bad as GF FX. I guess that loyalty was mostly the doing of marketing, such moves as inflating scores in benchmarks by changing shaders percision, in 3d mark 2003 they changed precision to 16bit even tough it should have been 24. They cheated in 3Dmark 2001, where loading screen was added to fps or they even went as far as removing a whole dragon from one test. Then they have a legion of viral marketeers roaming around the internet mostly badmouthing(rollo, keysla something etc.) AMD instead of praising NV. Deals with OEMs, promoting their brand with game developers, and a whole arsenal of other tricks that I don't know of, I'm not a marketing guy. That's not to say that their products were always inferior to ATi/AMD sometimes they had better cards, sometimes they had worse, I owned a lot of cards from both ATI/AMD and Nvidia.
UPDATE: They even intentionally made games to run bad on AMD's hardware even though they would also run worse on their hardware, but AMD took a much bigger hit in FPS. (for example tessellation in C2)
Locking Psyx to only their cards, and even forbiding using an nvidia card for psyx when your main card is a competitors card. That one is just mean. Some people that have AMD's cards would buy NV cards for psyx but if you want PsyX experience you have to go nvidia all the way. I personally had 8800GTX laying around that I used along with 5870 for PsyX, a shame that I had to crack their drivers.

Inflating benchmarks scores was only a part of their broad marketing strategy, as was very obvious from my post.I changed the wording a bit so as to not confuse anyone else that I think that's the sole reason. And no, they didn't have the fastest card out there at least half of the time. It was pretty even. 8500 vs GF3, slight edge to 8500 but basically equal, GF4 was the best card for some time then 9700 came and it was the best card for a very long time, it just massacred GF4, it was more then 2x times faster and it took some time for nvidia to make a competing card, and it failed miserably at that, at the time ATI already had 9800pro, 6800GT/Ultra vs X800XT/XT PE, again radeon was the faster card, NV was touting their SM 3.0 support because they couldn't compete on performance.(it worked, a lot of people think that 6800 series was faster and better then X800, but it wasn't, SM3 was not useful back then). Then they had the performance crown for a few months with 7800GTX, only to be taken by X1800XT, then they released a card that was almost impossible to buy, 7800GTX 512MB which was the fastest but it was a phantom card.
Then 1900XT came and it was game over for nvidia until they released G80. From then on, NV had the fastest cards most of the time, but also not always. 5870 reigned supreme for 6 months with a gigantic performance advantage over GTX285, until Fermi came, it was fast but horribly power hungry. Then 7970 came and it stayed the fastest card for over a year, in the meantime GTX680 came and too was the fastest card, but only at stock, both cards overclocked and tahiti was faster. NV had the fastest card, but only by a very slight margin until 7970GHz edition came. Then we had a lot of waiting for GK110 to regain performance crown. So saying that NV always made sure they had the fastest card is just bullshit.

Also you don't think that the program "It was meant to be played" had no effect on NV recognition and brand loyalty? NV would disagree forcefully, they wouldn't spend millions of dollars for nothing. That was a HUGE part of their marketing. Probably the most significant. The lack of cooperation with developers was the biggest problem for AMD for a long time.

Awesome :thumbsup:

There is no denying that marketing can play a big part and once it done right with the right product that effect can stick for a long time even when the competition has equalled or bettered, just look at Apple had some great products first with good marketing and now its gravy, but most don't like to admit that they are a sucker for marketing so they inadvertently help the marketing by coming up with reasons why the high price is justified for a product that is worse value in price and performance, most people are a sucker for good marketing and hype and that's a fact.

 

[blastingcap]

I'm team green, but i rarely play games anymore and rather than having my gpu site idle, i mine litecoins. I just sold my 670 a few months back and going to build a nice haswell system with something nice, maybe the 780, but rather stick in something that could mine. How long will I have to wait for the new radeon?

I think you made a typo in this thread's title, OP. It should read: "Why does AMD have to fight the 780?" It's a niche market that AMD doesn't necessarily need to fight. AMD can still do okay, like back when it was GTX 280 vs HD 4870, or HD 5870 vs GTX 480, or GTX 580 vs HD 6970.

 

[blackened23]

I think you made a typo in this thread's title, OP. It should read: "Why does AMD have to fight the 780?" It's a niche market that AMD doesn't necessarily need to fight. AMD can still do okay, like back when it was GTX 280 vs HD 4870, or HD 5870 vs GTX 480, or GTX 580 vs HD 6970.

Well I skipped 3 pages of what I imagine was endless partisan fighting, but here's a correct answer. AMD doesn't necessarily need a head to head part since their existing parts are in a substantially lower price bracket. Their only immediate concern, i'm sure, is the incoming GTX 770 - depending on it's price and performance they need to make some adjustments to their pricing.

But they'll just compete on price and value. The market for sub-300$ cards (7950) is substantially larger than 650$ and up, although i'm sure AMD would like to have something there to go head to head with the 780.

 

[Erenhardt]

Well I skipped 3 pages of what I imagine was endless partisan fighting

You lost 3 pages of entertainment.

The market for sub-300$ cards (7950) is substantially larger than 650$ and up, although i'm sure AMD would like to have something there to go head to head with the 780.

I wish it never existed ($650 market)
AMD will most likely focus on CF which may be painful to 780 and titan.