Which GPU do you think have aged the worst in the last 3 years?

[Techhog]

where did I use AMD? I don't get it.

"Flagship cards"?

That post was so thinly-veiled that it was almost transparent. Half of it had nothing to do with the topic at all.

 

[happy medium]

That post was so thinly-veiled that it was almost transparent. Half of it had nothing to do with the topic at all.

OP said mainstream cards...
I would argue a flagship card is not a mainstream card.
ANd what I wrote had everything to do with the topic.

 

[RussianSensation]

R9 290/290X with reference cooler. Maybe not the worst case, but those deserves to be mentioned, just to balance this thread.

I am not sure how picking the two cards that aged extremely well and for some mined coins making them $0 to buy essentially are going to "balance this thread." Also, it's possible to upgrade them to AIO CLC / after-market cooler and at that point their performance overclocked is trading blows with a 390/390X.

I mean by relative comparison your pick makes no sense since 290X aged better than 780Ti while costing $150 less and having more VRAM, same for 290 vs. 780.

Sorry but this one NV takes the cake in this thread and that's not even taking into account the original Titan. It cost $1K at launch, and today that level of performance can be purchased in a $250 card. In the same time the 290 fell from $400 to $245 roughly (as of today's prices).

OP said mainstream cards...

By mainstream cards he meant reasonable consumer products, not prosumer branded Titan series or uber high-end R9 295X2/Titan Z.

From a financial stand-point, even if we assume 650/650Ti cards are worth $0 right now, that's a loss of value of just $150. That's nothing compared the examples used in this thread ($660 680 4GB -> $180 960 4GB today). From a performance point of view, both of those 650 cards cards were outdated on release so how can you say a card that was outdated on day 1 has aged the worst? Using your logic, might as well pick the worst gaming cards like GT610/620/630.

OTOH, when people bought a $650 780, they probably expected it to be pretty fast for years to come and yet it barely outperforms a 280X/7970Ghz today without overclocking. In the context of where the card was aimed price wise and what it was aimed to achieve, the 780 fails far harder in its respective market segment than a 650 level card did. No one expected anything out of the 650.

780 was 22% faster than 7970Ghz at high resolutions.

Today a 780 is just 10-11% faster than a 7970Ghz (280X):

And that 10-11% figure is probably optimistic in a review that gives 780 a huge boost due to Project CARS, WoW and the broken Wolfenstein benchmark that keeps being used at TPU. 780 was one of the worst buys at $650. Today it's possible to buy 2x 970 + GTX950 for the price of a single May 2013 780. I guess that makes the 780Ti almost worse since it's almost possible to buy 3X 970s for the price of a $700 780Ti.

I guess if someone bought a $450-500 HD7950, that sucks too because an R9 280 can be commonly found for $150. At least the 7950 OC could trade blows with a 7970Ghz/680 rather easily and it made up for its high price with 3GB of VRAM and bitcoin mining.

 

[Seba]

I am not sure how picking the two cards that aged extremely well and for some mined coins making them $0 to buy essentially are going to "balance this thread."

This thread is from a gamer's perspective (or at least I think it is).

Also, it's possible to upgrade them to AIO CLC / after-market cooler and at that point their performance overclocked is trading blows with a 390/390X.

Then deduct the cost of that cooler from the resale value.

 

[railven]

I don't get the topic, outside of it being an attempt to make AMD cards look better since they're getting a performance boost with DX12.

Top end cards are never going to win any "lasting power" since historically they get replaced by the mid-gen card of the following node. I mean:

That's a $230 GTX 460 1GB beating a $650 GTX 280 that came out just the 2-year before.

If you're buying a top end card and expecting it to hold it's value relatively well, you're going to have a bad time.

Here you got an $160 HD 5770 putting the squeeze on a just over a year old $300 HD 4870

And I agree, why are we excluding the Titan? If anything, the Titan X should be dominating this topic. It's a $1,000 "prosumer" card without the "pro" That card was made invalid the moment GTX 980 Ti came out. There is no DP to boast it's market worth.



EDIT:
Only focusing on the MSRP ignores that AMD cards ballooned in price in late 2013 and up to mid 2014. I remember when the Tahiti chips went on a roller coaster (I was watching them).
Launched at $550, dropped to $450 with games, then $400, then it was easy to find them for $250, then ballooned back to $300 with re-release as 280X, but then bitmining drove them well over $500 again only to fall back to <$200 when bubble burst.

The 290X sold for over $800 USD at it's peak. It was hard to support AMD cards during these times due to the gouging. A lot of AMD users were left in the cold or had to jump over to Nvidia.

 

[Zanovar]

Prosumer.wtf hahah

 

[RussianSensation]

Only focusing on the MSRP ignores that AMD cards ballooned in price in late 2013 and up to mid 2014. I remember when the Tahiti chips went on a roller coaster (I was watching them).
Launched at $550, dropped to $450 with games, then $400, then it was easy to find them for $250, then ballooned back to $300 with re-release as 280X, but then bitmining drove them well over $500 again only to fall back to <$200 when bubble burst.

The 290X sold for over $800 USD at it's peak. It was hard to support AMD cards during these times due to the gouging. A lot of AMD users were left in the cold or had to jump over to Nvidia.

You've been told many times already. The people who bought 290Xs for $700-800 did so for bitcoin mining. Can you name anyone on this forum who purchased an $800 290X for games only? Using inflated bitcoin mining prices to prove your point as to the card's value for gaming is misleading since gamers didn't buy those AMD cards at those inflated prices and you should know this. That means you are using a price of a card that made $ to penalize its ageing price/performance in games. For that reason it's also difficult to penalize the Titan in that sense since some people bought those for university research, to help them crunch their PhD thesis, etc. That's why it's more difficult to penalize the Titan / Titan X since it's probably possible to find legitimate use cases of people buying these cards for work/to make $/university research.

What kind of an excuse can be made for a $630-660 680 4GB, $650 780, $700 780Ti and $450 770 4GB? Pretty much nothing. They aren't suitable for prosumer work for the most part and were useless for mining for the most part. That's not the case at all for HD7970/R9 290X that had DP performance and bitcoin mining. As far as you always bringing up 290X early prices, heck the card might as well have cost $1000 and people who knew what they were doing would still purchase it. Same for 7970 and HD6990, 7990, etc. Do you think many of us wouldn't have bought a 7970 if it was $850 instead of $550? Its launch price was practically irrelevant because bitcoin mining was heating up like crazy, not to mention many people simply sold off some of their coins made from HD4000->6000 days to buy the 7970s for free. What difference does it make if I have to sell a bit more coints to buy an $850 card that mines even more coins or a $550 card? For me it's practically irrelevant as I am paying $0 out of my own pocket and making $ again....with a faster hash rate.

You shouldn't use prices of cards that made $$$, thousands of dollars over time, to reflect their poor depreciation/value for gaming. That makes no sense. On this very forum there were clear guides on how to set up mining and make it work and tens of not hundreds of members willing to help out. I don't know how many times I told gamers to buy AMD cards to mine and if they still wanted NV cards, no problem just buy those with the mining $ made from AMD. Some actually did exactly that.

Also, even if we use the $550 MSRP price for the 7970 straight up, it still aged better than a $630-660 GTX680 4GB so no matter how you slice it, NV cards aged worse in the last 3 years. The rest of your post I 100% agree with -- anyone buying flagship cards, whether from AMD or NV is going to see big depreciation unless he/she sells on time.

Prosumer.wtf hahah

I am sure some people do buy Titan series for prosumer applications but the recent Titan X was really a low blow - NV basically took a consumer GM200 and doubled its VRAM and we got a $550 GTX580 3GB successor for $1000. Rest assured there is a market of PC gamers who want to buy the best whether it's labelled the Titan or not. I am actually surprised NV hasn't raised the price of the Titan to $1300-1500. It seems that many Titan X owners like the idea of knowing their card costs the most and it's the fastest so I think NV still hasn't quite reached the peak of the Titan brand's potential. If next generation they add back DP and go 32GB of HBM2, I can see them going to $1300-1500. Wouldn't you if you knew that the TX customers would still buy them?

 

[happy medium]

I don't get the topic, outside of it being an attempt to make AMD cards look better since they're getting a performance boost with DX12.

Top end cards are never going to win any "lasting power" since historically they get replaced by the mid-gen card of the following node. I mean:

That's a $230 GTX 460 1GB beating a $650 GTX 280 that came out just the 2-year before.

If you're buying a top end card and expecting it to hold it's value relatively well, you're going to have a bad time.

Here you got an $160 HD 5770 putting the squeeze on a just over a year old $300 HD 4870

And I agree, why are we excluding the Titan? If anything, the Titan X should be dominating this topic. It's a $1,000 "prosumer" card without the "pro" That card was made invalid the moment GTX 980 Ti came out. There is no DP to boast it's market worth.



EDIT:
Only focusing on the MSRP ignores that AMD cards ballooned in price in late 2013 and up to mid 2014. I remember when the Tahiti chips went on a roller coaster (I was watching them).
Launched at $550, dropped to $450 with games, then $400, then it was easy to find them for $250, then ballooned back to $300 with re-release as 280X, but then bitmining drove them well over $500 again only to fall back to <$200 when bubble burst.

The 290X sold for over $800 USD at it's peak. It was hard to support AMD cards during these times due to the gouging. A lot of AMD users were left in the cold or had to jump over to Nvidia.

That's a good post, something tells me you wont get a honest answer though.

 

[Zanovar]

Certainly from you,Thats a given.





No insults please.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[happy medium]

By mainstream cards he meant reasonable consumer products, not prosumer branded Titan series or uber high-end R9 295X2/Titan Z.

I thought mainstream was 200$ to 380$ cards, ya know second tier like gtx260, gtx970, 7950, gtx770. Now mainstream means 600$ flagship cards that never give good value?

Why have a thread about flagship cards that never hold there value and are always bad price performance. The people who buy these cards have money and obviously don't care about what happens 3 years later , they are already moved onto the next best card.
am I right?

If I bought a 600$+ gtx780ti 2 years ago and had that kind of money , I would already have a 650$ gtx980ti in my rig. Next best card to upgrade to, correct?

edit: please make your response something I can finish reading before bedtime.

 

[railven]

You've been told many times already. The people who bought 290Xs for $700-800 did so for bitcoin mining. Can you name anyone on this forum who purchased an $800 290X for games only? Using inflated bitcoin mining prices to prove your point as to the card's value for gaming is misleading since gamers didn't buy those AMD cards at those inflated prices and you should know this. That means you are using a price of a card that made $ to penalize its ageing price/performance in games. For that reason it's also difficult to penalize the Titan in that sense since some people bought those for university research, to help them crunch their PhD thesis, etc. That's why it's more difficult to penalize the Titan / Titan X since it's probably possible to find legitimate use cases of people buying these cards for work/to make $/university research.

What kind of an excuse can be made for a $630-660 680 4GB, $650 780, $700 780Ti and $450 770 4GB? Pretty much nothing. They aren't suitable for prosumer work for the most part and were useless for mining for the most part. That's not the case at all for HD7970/R9 290X that had DP performance and bitcoin mining. As far as you always bringing up 290X early prices, heck the card might as well have cost $1000 and people who knew what they were doing would still purchase it. Same for 7970 and HD6990, 7990, etc. Do you think many of us wouldn't have bought a 7970 if it was $850 instead of $550? Its launch price was practically irrelevant because bitcoin mining was heating up like crazy, not to mention many people simply sold off some of their coins made from HD4000->6000 days to buy the 7970s for free. What difference does it make if I have to sell a bit more coints to buy an $850 card that mines even more coins or a $550 card? For me it's practically irrelevant as I am paying $0 out of my own pocket and making $ again....with a faster hash rate.

You shouldn't use prices of cards that made $$$, thousands of dollars over time, to reflect their poor depreciation/value for gaming. That makes no sense. Also, even if we use the $550 price for the 7970 straight up, it still aged better than a $630-660 GTX680 4GB so no matter how you slice it, NV cards aged worse in the last 3 years.

You think going prices didn't affect perception of cards on the market? Gamers weren't buying >$800 290X, they were buying the cheaper faster GTX 780 Ti.

People love to argue "Nvidia buyers are sheep, they enjoy buying NV cards regardless of the price" and throw around MSRP but forget:

GTX 680 cost less and was faster at launch.
GTX 780 launched with zero competition.
GTX 780 Ti launched to ballooned price AMD 290s.

For someone who is so smart and talks a lot about market value, you like to ignore these points but then slam your head on the table when people aren't scooping up <$300 290Xs after the bubble burst. Probable because some saw a $800+ card drop to <$500 in a week.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, OP "LOLz 780 went from $700 [which is wrong] to $500 in under a year. LOLZ"

A lot of this is about perception especially for those that don't follow bitmining, that don't follow forums or tech sites, who are the mainstream buyers at Microcenter looking at a $450+ R9 280X sitting next to a $400 GTX 770 and the sales clerk is going "this one is just as fast, and cheaper" throwing "2GB vs 3GB" completely out the window.

 

[DeathReborn]

To provide a little more balance I will say the 7850/70 (basically Pitcairn) but that's because they're STILL selling it and not for pure performance reasons but AMD's inability to make a new chip for that segment.

I expect a lot of people to disagree with me. Also, was the 780 mainstream, high end or flagship?

 

[happy medium]

was the 780 mainstream, high end or flagship?

649$ Flagship for about 7 months till the 699$780 ti was released.

Flagship cards gtx480/580/680/780/780ti/980/980ti
AMD : /6970/7970/290x/390x?/fury X

ALl were overpriced at time of release and bad price performance unless it was released after the competitions flagship.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Gtx 770.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Yes, my gaming card is a HD7700 1gb. I do play mostly older games. DA:I and even more so Witcher 3 really struggled, but they were playable at 1080p.

I got the card almost 3 years ago for 90.00, it is pretty efficient for its time and I have been very happy with it until recently. I dont feel it was a bad value at all.

Had me a 2gb 7850 some time back,it delivered pretty decent performance for 1080p.Was playing mostly BF3 on medium at 1080p and performance was awesome,vram really never exceeded 1gb with my games and settings i used for smooth gameplay so if the 7850 had been a 1gb card it wouldn't have been a issue till now maybe.

7850 failed on me,the gtx650 ended up being a cheap replacement.

 

[thesmokingman]

Gtx 680/770.

Fixed.

 

[Zodiark1593]

To provide a little more balance I will say the 7850/70 (basically Pitcairn) but that's because they're STILL selling it and not for pure performance reasons but AMD's inability to make a new chip for that segment.

I expect a lot of people to disagree with me. Also, was the 780 mainstream, high end or flagship?

To make that worse, Pitcairn is still AMD's flagship for the gaming laptop segment, not counting Tonga in the iMac.

Actually, I'm not really seeing any gaming laptop vendor offering AMD GPUs.

 

[railven]

I think we need to fix what "mainstream" means because I'd never consider a >$500 GPU mainstream.

649$ Flagship for about 7 months till the 699$780 ti was released.

Flagship cards gtx480/580/680/780/780ti/980/980ti
AMD : /6970/7970/290x/390x?/fury X

ALl were overpriced at time of release and bad price performance unless it was released after the competitions flagship.

I can agree with this post. Mostly because these cards were just that - halo cards for their generations.

What mainstream gamer would buy a GTX 680 for $500 over a GTX 670 for $400? What nerdy friend will let someone pay 25% more for ~8-10% gain.

Same HD 7950 vs 7970. The [majority] of people spending stupid money for small gains really didn't even care if the card would be obsolete by the following year. They most likely follow the trends and know the market better.

A GTX 680 4GB was nothing but epeen waiving. We all knew that, but we recommended to the guy who wanted to go SLI and was one of the first on the block with a 120hz monitor or 1600p monitor.

 

[Zodiark1593]

I think we need to fix what "mainstream" means because I'd never consider a >$500 GPU mainstream.

Well, in that case, I'd say the GTX 550 TI aged quite horribly.

I also predict the GTX 960 to follow that route at some point too. While it was never really competitive at original MSRP, DX12 prospects look especially bleak.

 

[railven]

Well, in that case, I'd say the GTX 550 TI aged quite horribly.

I also predict the GTX 960 to follow that route at some point too. While it was never really competitive at original MSRP, DX12 prospects look especially bleak.

Low end cards are generally only good for the year of purchase. Haha.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I nominate the gtx650, performance gap between it and the 750 is pretty out there and at nearly the same msrp its really the card that got dropped quickly.

Cards like the 670/760/960 really are in a odd spot when you pretty much need to buy a 970 to get anything upgrade worthy.The 770 i wanted to say was pretty bad off but given most games are still faster on the 770 then 960 well there is that.

 

[RussianSensation]

You think going prices didn't affect perception of cards on the market? Gamers weren't buying >$800 290X, they were buying the cheaper faster GTX 780 Ti.

People love to argue "Nvidia buyers are sheep, they enjoy buying NV cards regardless of the price" and throw around MSRP but forget:

GTX 680 cost less and was faster at launch.
GTX 780 launched with zero competition.
GTX 780 Ti launched to ballooned price AMD 290s.

For someone who is so smart and talks a lot about market value, you like to ignore these points but then slam your head on the table when people aren't scooping up <$300 290Xs after the bubble burst. Probable because some saw a $800+ card drop to <$500 in a week.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, OP "LOLz 780 went from $700 [which is wrong] to $500 in under a year. LOLZ"

A lot of this is about perception especially for those that don't follow bitmining, that don't follow forums or tech sites, who are the mainstream buyers at Microcenter looking at a $450+ R9 280X sitting next to a $400 GTX 770 and the sales clerk is going "this one is just as fast, and cheaper" throwing "2GB vs 3GB" completely out the window.

Are we discussing market share and perception though or relative value? Who cares what a sales rep recommended at MicroCenter or BestBuy? What's that have to do with the relative standing of GPUs over the last 3 years? We have access to data that includes online stores and retailers so no need to single out a specific store to prove your point. I might as well start quoting $600 CDN 390X at BestBuy on sale right now to prove some point, while knowing that it's possible to buy a 390X elsewhere for $400 CDN.

You always bringing up how at the time when you bought your 780 the 290/290X cost $200-300 above MSRP changes little because I don't know any gamer on AT who bought a $500-800 290/290X for games only during the period of inflated prices. Thus, I am going to assume that most gamers didn't buy $500-800 R9 290/290X during the inflated periods.

But even if we take a scenario of someone buying a $500 reference 290 at inflated price + after-market cooler, that still aged way better than a $500-650 780. So again your argument isn't strong enough either way.

Your point of cherry-picking $450 R9 280X is crazy because for most of its life-cycle the price of the 280X was well below 770 2-4GB. Your point on the 280X is even worse since for months HD7970/7970Ghz sold for well below 280X so how long exactly was 280X $450? 2 weeks maximum? Who was buying $450 280X when HD7970Ghz was $270-280? I even distinctly remember HD7970 1Ghz/Ghz MSI TwinFroz dropping to $270 when 280X already came out. I don't think your post is truly reflecting of the overall market price of 280X for 98% of their life-cycle.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/R9_280X_Gaming/
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/R9_280X_OC/

Funny enough even at $450 the 280X aged better than a $400 770 2GB.

Again, you are so quick to cherry-pick the time frame of inflated 290X prices and a very tiny window when 280X was high and ignore the vast majority of time when that wasn't the case. It's far more reasonable to believe that gamers who paid $500-800 for R9 290/290X reference cards were miners. That's the whole reason they bought those cards at inflated prices and put up with the blower noise levels.

What does that have to do with perception and sales volumes of AMD vs. NV? That's not what this thread is about when looking at the overall context in the last 3 years.

From a price/performance point of view, 290/290X aged way better than 780/780Ti did, the same for 280X/7970Ghz vs. 770/680.

Also, what kind of an excuse can be made for a $630-660 680 4GB July 2012 card.

A GTX 680 4GB was nothing but epeen waiving. We all knew that, but we recommended to the guy who wanted to go SLI and was one of the first on the block with a 120hz monitor or 1600p monitor.

I agree with you. Chances are a lot of gamers buying $630-660 680 4GB in pairs don't care about resale value or price/performance. However, in the context of this thread that does little to change the mathematics. Mathematics don't have emotions.

July 2012 EVGA Classified 680 4GB cost $659 and today that level of performance can be purchased in a $180 videocard. By that definition it aged way worse than any other card. Not only did it lose the most value on a percentage basis, but it performs poorly against cards it competed against such as the 7970/7970Ghz. What makes it even worse is that at the time when GTX680 4GB was selling for ~$580-600, it was possible to buy an HD7950V2 for $329.

There was no card out at the time of 650/650Ti/550Ti that cost half the price and was actually faster over time. I can't think of any such card, can you? The 680 4GB is bad from all angles and especially since it had flagship price but over time lost to a 7950 AMD card, well below the tier of a 680 4GB.

In the context of today, this would be similar if a $370 R9 390X started outperforming a $630 after-market 980Ti in games 2-3 years after 980Ti's launch. That's how horribly the 680 4GB aged.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Low end cards are generally only good for the year of purchase. Haha.

You said mainstream, though it seems your definition of mainstream is above the $200 mark.

Low end I consider quite low (barely above iGPU), meaning barely able to play games At All regardless of settings. The GT 730 fits the low-end definition perfectly. Only decent for MMOs and MOBAs, and even then, lower settings must be used.

The GTX 550 TI I call mainstream as it was able to play anything out there on Medium or better at launch, and will still steamroll many MMOs and MOBAs today.

The high end is anything you'd expect to max out current games at 1080P or better.

 

[railven]

You said mainstream, though it seems your definition of mainstream is above the $200 mark.

Low end I consider quite low (barely above iGPU), meaning barely able to play games At All regardless of settings. The GT 730 fits the low-end definition perfectly. Only decent for MMOs and MOBAs, and even then, lower settings must be used.

The GTX 550 TI I call mainstream as it was able to play anything out there on Medium or better at launch, and will still steamroll many MMOs and MOBAs today.

The high end is anything you'd expect to max out current games at 1080P or better.

Calling something "low-end" doesn't remove it from mainstream. I think that is why I asked for a definition. To me mainstream are the cards selling in high volume.

So if I had to give a monetary value, $150 to $250. Above that is performance and above that enthusiast. Below $150 you got what I'd call entry ($80-$125).

But that's my opinion of the terminology. I just disagree with arguing mainstream and lumping in halo cards into the discussion.

 

[crisium]

Most, if not all, Kepler cards. Perhaps 780 Ti and a 780 with a healthy OC are the exceptions. In all head-to-head comparisons where the cards used to be +/-5% equal like 680 vs 7970, 660 Ti vs 7870, the AMD cards have aged better without question in games released in the past 12 months.

On the AMD side, the 7850 1GB. Fine for users with 1680x1050 or so in 2012, but today 1GB of VRAM is no good at all.

Interestingly enough the 7850 still lives today in the 370, making it the only GPU available in 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB variants. I'd love to see a comparison of 7850 1GB, 7850/370 2GB, and 370 4GB with equalized clock speeds. Toms back in the day did a comparison with the only 512/1/2 card ever released (4870) so I'd like to see an encore with the next highest memory options.