Why is it that Nvidia holds value more over AMD?

[3DVagabond]

Sounds like you're trying to make excuses for AMD, but that's all they are, excuses. I guess people are willing to wait for availability for a product that's faster and cheaper. I know I am. I'm not going to pay more for less just because I have to shop for stock. I also have the benefit of not having my judgement clouded by brand loyalty. Also, I didn't have a problem getting my 680 a few days after launch when I walked into Frys and they had several in stock.

At least if you are going to respond try and address the points of the post. Not just try and discredit the poster and ignore the substance of the post.

 

[2is]

At least if you are going to respond try and address the points of the post. Not just try and discredit the poster and ignore the substance of the post.

You ignoring everything I said in that post except for the first sentance as well as everything else in previous posts does not equate to my being the one ignoring points. Look in the mirror. All your points have been addressed.

 

[Jaydip]

Value is perceived based on personal preferences. I use CUDA professionally so I need a card at home where I can do some poc stuff, so NV offers more value to me.I also enjoy Physx when it is properly done so it is an added bonus.Just being faster isn't enough to entice some users.

 

[PPB]

Because for the misinformed people AMD is seen as a budget brand, even in areas where it doesnt really apply.

I had a friend tell me once that he didn't buy AMD because as a budget brand they are, they would most surely cheap out in component quality of their cards (!). No matter how much I explained that wasn't the case at all, he wasn't even going to listen to the reasoning behind my statement. The saddest part of it is that there is surely a good bunch of people with that (flawed) perception.

Also the misinformed people tend to fall for the gimmickery too easily. Another one once told me he chose NV cards because AMD couldn't run at all games that had any form of PhysX in them (!!). Hopefully this one quickly understood that AMD cards, even tho they wouldn't be able to display the physx content, they would still be able to play the game just alright.

And lastly but not less important, the halo product thing definitely plays a big role. If NV, the makers of the fastest single GPU of the last bunch of gens, decide to make a SoC (Tegra), it surely must be good, even tho if it really falls behind compared with Qualcomm/Samsung's/etc. This obviously also applies to lesser dGPUs in the desktop space when compared to AMD's.

 

[SiliconWars]

Because for the misinformed people AMD is seen as a budget brand, even in areas where it doesnt really apply.

I had a friend tell me once that he didn't buy AMD because as a budget brand they are, they would most surely cheap out in component quality of their cards (!). No matter how much I explained that wasn't the case at all, he wasn't even going to listen to the reasoning behind my statement. The saddest part of it is that there is surely a good bunch of people with that (flawed) perception.

Also the misinformed people tend to fall for the gimmickery too easily. Another one once told me he chose NV cards because AMD couldn't run at all games that had any form of PhysX in them (!!). Hopefully this one quickly understood that AMD cards, even tho they wouldn't be able to display the physx content, they would still be able to play the game just alright.

And lastly but not less important, the halo product thing definitely plays a big role. If NV, the makers of the fastest single GPU of the last bunch of gens, decide to make a SoC (Tegra), it surely must be good, even tho if it really falls behind compared with Qualcomm/Samsung's/etc. This obviously also applies to lesser dGPUs in the desktop space when compared to AMD's.

You're basically saying what all of us know, even the Nvidia guys. The people who tend to buy Nvidia are, to put it nicely, "uninformed". That doesn't have to mean they are a bit thick btw - I also bought Nvidia exclusively for a few years early 2000's simply because they were the brand and I didn't think about what I was buying.

Anyone who looks at the value proposition or even from a tech perspective can hardly see past AMD though. Aside from one or two cards, in over a decade of buying graphics cards, AMD's have always made much more sense when I knew exactly what I was buying, which is normally a midrange card interspersed with the odd higher-end one, like a 5850 or 4870 etc. You just cannot get good value from Nvidia often enough.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I don't think it's fair to call Nvidia users uninformed.

It simply seems like a cop out for people who don't want to admit what Nvidia does better.

 

[SiliconWars]

I don't think it's fair to call Nvidia users uninformed.

It simply seems like a cop out for people who don't want to admit what Nvidia does better.

Depends on what you mean by better. If you mean better advertising then sure. The problem with advertising is what it is.

When you see two cards of similar performance and want one of them more even though it's more expensive (sometimes a lot more), you've fallen for advertising. I consider that to be uninformed in it's purest sense. Sure the Nvidia guys will claim PhysX is the reason (yeah right, how many games?), or CUDA (even more of a yeah right). Fact is we're mostly buying cards for gaming, and even right now if you look through the product stack it's clear who is the value perspective.

One or two mess-ups by AMD (Tahiti being the most clear recent one) does not change the fact that their cards are far, far better value almost 100% of the time. Even when they are "bad" value, ie Tahiti, you still found Nvidia charging about the same for the ancient 580. They can only do that because their buyers are uninformed - nobody with a brain would buy the 580 at that price after the 7970 was released.

 

[Keysplayr]

Word games. Heh. Gotta luv em.
"Depends on what you mean" is indeed a cop out. It leaves everything completely open for "your" interpretation, which hasn't been very realistic.
Nvidia buyers are "uninformed". I'm so glad I was not drinking anything when I read that.

 

[raghu78]

The problem with AMD is they have not matched Nvidia on driver software quality. this is due to AMD's own mistake. AMD's notebook drivers and Enduro have been the laughing stock in this generation especially with stability and performance issues. Even in desktop framepacing issues hurt their image. single GPU is on par but CF is still not as robust as SLI. so AMD is responsible for a lower perceived brand value.

In 2010 AMD held 60% of notebook discrete GPU market share.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/amd-comments-q3-2010_2.html

today its the other way around with Nvidia dominating with 70%. AMD has paid a heavy price in terms of lost market share for not being able to match Nvidia Optimus in stability and robustness.

Nvidia's exclusives like PhysX are also one of the factors in a stronger brand appeal.

 

[exar333]

Since launch the HD 7xxx series have been halved in price, this hasn't happened to the GTX 6xx even though there is the GTX 7xx. Is it just that Nvidia don't drop prices quite so often?

I think the fact prices dropped was more that whoever releases the new gen of cards (AMD in this case) has more ability to charge a premium. When the competitor responds with a lower-priced product (like the 670/680) with similar performance, they respond with lowering prices. Same happened to NV when they dropped their GTX 280 price a TON after AMD released their 4xxx cards years ago.

I find both companies hold value well on the mid-high range of cards. I remember owning my 5870 for almost 3 years and selling it for like $40 less than I bought it for, partially thanks to BC demand.

Very high-end and low-end cards don't hold value well, but most cards purchased for ~$300-400 generally are still worth a decent amount 1-2 years later.

 

[KingFatty]

What are some ballpark numbers to illustrate and put this into perspective?

It would be cool to see both the retail trends and the used/ebay trends. There is that website, something with camel in the name, that shows you prices over time for retail, so is there a similar thing that shows for ebay/craigslist prices?

But I tend to think that AMD was artificially propped up by bitcoin. I mean, if you take away bitcoin price boost from AMD prices, I think the trends would be even more in favor of Nvidia holding its value better?

 

[Deders]

It's not that I think AMD is budget, it's just that they still don't have very good filtering quality. However, nvidia sucks because they won't allow you to enable the best filtering if the game engine doesn't do it. I don't get why so many people love anisotropic filtering when compressed textures look like crap anyway and when there is still texture aliasing to be done away with; AMD at the hardware level, nvidia at the driver level.

Both companies' products are for noobs, there isn't any company out there that makes drivers for the true enthusiast.

Long story short: Nvidia and AMD almost treat their customers like console gamers.

What nvidia should do is make an extreme compatibility/accuracy/IQ driver (even if only for the titan and GTX 780) and then an extreme performance driver and quit trying to balance everything. But they won't do that because they think they know better than the end user.

Just wondering what you think is missing from the image quality? The only games i've seen that Anisotropic filtering don't work with are Crysis because the parallax mapping they use on a lot of textures isn't compatible with Anisotropic Filtering, and Rome 2 but I think that has more to do with the game itself. Every other game I've seen will happily use AF, sometimes you have to force it in the control panel as not all games have the option for it in game.

@OP I do find it strange that the 6xx series hasn't come down in price in America like it has in Britain. You can pick up a 670 for £170.

 

[SirPauly]

nVidia to me is trying to market the GeForce Experience -- trying to create differentiation to showcase why their hardware and software offer compelling experiences. Spending resources for their customers so the market may reward them with more of a premium!

 

[JBT]

Honestly its just a brand thing I think. I've talked to many folks over the years that it was NV or nothing. They never even looked at AMD as an option. This has changed a bit as lot of these people are now using AMD. I have gone back and forth over the years my self, just choosing what I thought was the best at that time.

 

[Elfear]

Sounds like you're trying to make excuses for AMD, but that's all they are, excuses. I guess people are willing to wait for availability for a product that's faster and cheaper. I know I am.

Like the 7970Ghz. :hmm:

 

[Rvenger]

Like the 7970Ghz. :hmm:

Over on [H] they have a GTX 680 2gb for like $355 in the hot deals section. Why would I pay that much when I can get a 3gb Radeon 7970 for under $300?

 

[exar333]

Over on [H] they have a GTX 680 2gb for like $355 in the hot deals section. Why would I pay that much when I can get a 3gb Radeon 7970 for under $300?

Agreed, but I would rather pay 2x $355 vs. 2x $300 for a much better multi-GPU option. I would choose a single 7970 over a 680 any day, but not 2 or 3...

 

[AnitaPeterson]

It seems to me that nVidia is also reaping some handsome benefits from brand recognition alone. Let's not forget that they have secured a good chunk of the mobile (smartphone/tablet) market with their ARM chips...

 

[ams23]

Over on [H] they have a GTX 680 2gb for like $355 in the hot deals section. Why would I pay that much when I can get a 3gb Radeon 7970 for under $300?

Maybe because certain games that one plays tend to favor NVIDIA's GPU architecture? Maybe because one has had good experiences with NVIDIA in the past? Maybe because one already has one GTX 680 and wants to add another? There are many plausible reasons.

 

[spat55]

could care less if red or green. it is all about best value - performance/cost.

single gpu - definitely amd (7950 is the sweet spot)
multi gpu - NVidia all the way (due to cross still broke - 13.8b)

I do not understand why people think crossfire is broken, I haven't had hardly any issues yet, this is a month down the line and playing over 15+ titles. It isn't as good as single GPU but then what is?

 

[2is]

I do not understand why people think crossfire is broken, I haven't had hardly any issues yet, this is a month down the line and playing over 15+ titles. It isn't as good as single GPU but then what is?

It's not a myth, it's a verifiable fact. AMD has only recently begun addressing the problem but it's still not as seamless as SLI

 

[Anarchist420]

ust wondering what you think is missing from the image quality?

AMD's filtering is horrible and nvidia doesn't allow the end user to force trilinear mipmaps anymore. They both use optimizations that reduce image quality (most people don't notice it, but nvidia has seriously optimized how they do their depth buffer calculations so they don't look much better than AMD now). nvidia took away the option to clamp negative LOD bias in all games. the fact that they don't allow the end user to force any texture format and frame buffer modes since many older games don't require a certain format. the fact that some things aren't replicated via shaders like Splinter Cell's shadow buffers and lighting, as well as w-buffering and that the end user can't select any 100% accurate fog type they want to.

then there are non-IQ related things like them not allowing to force zero frames to render ahead.

There are some things that nvidia does very well like SGSSAA bits and the control over the display and override of application scaling, but all in all their drivers suck.

 

[el etro]

Nvidia does better... drivers only, but by far, i have to admit.

 

[2is]

Agreed, but I would rather pay 2x $355 vs. 2x $300 for a much better multi-GPU option. I would choose a single 7970 over a 680 any day, but not 2 or 3...

Yep, which was exactly my situation. When I bought my first 680 it was faster and cheaper than a 7970. A year later I bought a 2nd hand one for SLI.

 

[Rvenger]

Nvidia does better... drivers only, but by far, i have to admit.

??? Nvidia's drivers have been really bad lately. One of the reasons why I sold my GTX 780.