Why is it that Nvidia holds value more over AMD?

[Elfear]

My old 6800 Ultra cost $499. Nvidia cards right now part per part have had more performance and as a result of some goof ups by AMD the last few years AMD's top cards did not line up with Nvidias...so Nvidia cards have risen $50 to $100 dollars more than they used to on the high end due to market positioning. Right around the x60 line you can get some good price/performance ratios.

Also, AMD gets throttled by Intel and by name association anything AMD is viewed 'budget' conscious.

So, if AMD could get back on a part per part performance basis....and resist the urge to jack prices up above the old price points...Nvidia will have to come down in price. People will pay a premium for performance, but mass sells to OEM's come down to profit maximization. Businesses always charge as much as they can get away with.

I don't think the part per part parity really matters that much. Brand loyalty/value has a lot more to do with it than how the product lines stack up against each other from the top down. That's why you saw consumers continue to buy GTX 285s for 8 months when the 5870 was clearly faster.

 

[cmdrdredd]

$100 is a big price difference IMO, especially for a unit that had a 3 year serialized warranty.

That warranty is no good if previous owner fried it by overvolting and not getting the result he wanted. High end brand new release hardware for sale on forums I don't touch. I imagine I am not alone.

 

[3DVagabond]

It's strange that the people who buy nVidia, and therefore should care that nVidia is gouging, tend to defend it because nVidia is just sooo good. AMD is better perf/$ because they are bargain basement. If AMD would come out with something that was as fast and cheaper then nVidia would have to lower prices.

I'll give everyone a hint, stop paying their overpriced prices. In a few days, weeks at most, their prices would drop. Look at what they did to their customers with Titan. They were probably sitting around after work on a Friday knocking back a few and someone said, "I'll bet we could charge $1000 for a card and people would pay it." Had a good laugh, thought about it some more, and decided to go with it. If it didn't work, no biggie, they still had the 780 to fall back on. People lapped it up though. Blame everyone who has an overpriced card in their setup for current pricing. Because I sure as hell am not going to blame a company for taking your money.

 

[NIGELG]

The market decides.However the market is full of idiots as well as other types of buyers.

Nvidia is like Apple and Justin Bieber....mass marketing to the lowest common denominator type of consumer.

Warning issued for inflammatory language.
-- stahlhart

 

[cmdrdredd]

It's strange that the people who buy nVidia, and therefore should care that nVidia is gouging, tend to defend it because nVidia is just sooo good. AMD is better perf/$ because they are bargain basement. If AMD would come out with something that was as fast and cheaper then nVidia would have to lower prices.

I'll give everyone a hint, stop paying their overpriced prices. In a few days, weeks at most, their prices would drop. Look at what they did to their customers with Titan. They were probably sitting around after work on a Friday knocking back a few and someone said, "I'll bet we could charge $1000 for a card and people would pay it." Had a good laugh, thought about it some more, and decided to go with it. If it didn't work, no biggie, they still had the 780 to fall back on. People lapped it up though. Blame everyone who has an overpriced card in their setup for current pricing. Because I sure as hell am not going to blame a company for taking your money.

Overpriced? Yeah...maybe AMD should actually compete on performance out of the gate next time. Taking 6 months to be on par with your competition is not a good business practice. Nvidia has cards at every budget level and at every level are competitive with the competitor's cards with arguably better driver support and multi-GPU solutions that work better. So there is a reason people may buy Nvidia products, a very good one in fact. A single card may not be enough and they require two GPUs in order to get the performance they desire. Many people buy one higher end card with the idea to add a second one later at reduced prices.

I wonder why people blame Nvidia when it was them who forced AMD to lower the prices of their cards.

 

[Mastercommander]

MLAA never use it.

MLAA? Don't hate, it is godly. You probably use it nowadays in the form called SMAA

For a while SMAA existed primarily as an injector and was my go to AA for BF3 until I got a powerful card (and Windows 8, which the injector doesn't work in ). It's vastly superior to FXAA and even has some image quality superiority to MSAA. It's been incorporated into Crysis etc iirc

 

[Mastercommander]

Btw I did have a modern Radeon card last year and it still seems Nvidia has the edge on driver stability. Catalyst could also use a new interface if they have not improved it recently

 

[bystander36]

MLAA? Don't hate, it is godly. You probably use it nowadays in the form called SMAA

For a while SMAA existed primarily as an injector and was my go to AA for BF3 until I got a powerful card (and Windows 8, which the injector doesn't work in ). It's vastly superior to FXAA and even has some image quality superiority to MSAA. It's been incorporated into Crysis etc iirc

SMAA is not the same as MLAA. It does MLAA and more.

By itself, MLAA kind of sucks, but so does FXAA.

 

[Teizo]

The market decides.However the market is full of idiots as well as other types of buyers.

Nvidia is like Apple and Justin Bieber....mass marketing to the lowest common denominator type of consumer.

Warning issued for inflammatory language.
-- stahlhart

Don't kid yourself. If AMD could do it and get away with it...they would. People always have, and always will pay a premium to have to have the fastest available. Call them idiots if you want. Some just call them enthusiasts

 

[AnandThenMan]

Overpriced? Yeah...maybe AMD should actually compete on performance out of the gate next time. Taking 6 months to be on par with your competition is not a good business practice.

It's the cyclical nature of the business. Nvidia has been behind in performance for longer, way way behind in fact. And even behind in DirectX feature set no less.

Also, there is no "out of the gate", the respective companies don't have their new product offerings ready and waiting on a starting line. Again, the business is cyclical, product generations don't always line up.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Don't kid yourself. If AMD could do it and get away with it...they would. People always have, and always will pay a premium to have to have the fastest available. Call them idiots if you want. Some just call them enthusiasts

No matter how expensive you think it is or useless as it may seem from your standpoint, someone will likely want it because it's there and they perceive it as being better than the alternatives. In terms of PC components, the most expensive parts are ultimately the highest performing out of the box.

It's the cyclical nature of the business. Nvidia has been behind in performance for longer, way way behind in fact. And even behind in DirectX feature set no less.

Also, there is no "out of the gate", the respective companies don't have their new product offerings ready and waiting on a starting line. Again, the business is cyclical, product generations don't always line up.

So you are allowed to release a product with poor drivers and then take 6 months to catch up when your competition releases a product that is cheaper and bests yours?

So yeah, they have to compete on performance out of the gate by having good drivers ready. Performance isn't hardware alone. You can install 4 titans in a PC and it won't do anything without drivers.

 

[blackened23]

MLAA? Don't hate, it is godly. You probably use it nowadays in the form called SMAA

For a while SMAA existed primarily as an injector and was my go to AA for BF3 until I got a powerful card (and Windows 8, which the injector doesn't work in ). It's vastly superior to FXAA and even has some image quality superiority to MSAA. It's been incorporated into Crysis etc iirc

I dunno. MLAA was okay-ish in 2010 but there's no denying the fact that it is ugly and very blurry - in fact, it is much more blurry than nvidia's post process FXAA solution. The advantage was that MLAA came first and was a decent post process, but it is not as good. Performance wise it's the same, but FXAA has better over-all quality.

As far as SMAA goes, it's pretty good but it was also created independent of AMD. AMD had no hand in terms of the creation of SMAA. If I remember correctly SMAA was researched and created by university students somewhere in Europe. It's been a while since I read about it, though.

 

[Teizo]

No matter how expensive you think it is or useless as it may seem from your standpoint, someone will likely want it because it's there and they perceive it as being better than the alternatives. In terms of PC components, the most expensive parts are ultimately the highest performing out of the box.

I wasn't calling them idiots or saying the tech is useless. I was just responding to him and the way he referred to Nvidia being like Apple and Justin Beiber...(a premium just for name recognition). Actually, that is a rather stupid thing to say, but he's entitled to his own opinion. Maybe AMD is the Walmart of GPU land and Nvidia is more like Target

I don't think the part per part parity really matters that much. Brand loyalty/value has a lot more to do with it than how the product lines stack up against each other from the top down. That's why you saw consumers continue to buy GTX 285s for 8 months when the 5870 was clearly faster.

That's true. One other thing to consider along those lines is just because one card is a bit faster than another doesn't mean the 'slower' of the two cards can't render pixels properly and at a good enough frame rate to be playable.

So, like you say...while some just want the fastest no matter what...some will look at the charts and say...'Well, the AMD card is 5 frames faster, but the Nvidia card is still delivering good frame rates and I've always gone with Nvidia so I know what I am getting..."

Can't really blame people for being that way really. Just how things are. So, while being the fastest is great for marketing...delivering reliable products that are competitive is just as important. Now...10-15 fps difference between top tier cards...and that is another story.

 

[Xarick]

It amazes me the 7950 lost over $100 in value in just a couple of months. Now you can get a 7950 for less than $200

 

[Mastercommander]

As far as SMAA goes, it's pretty good but it was also created independent of AMD. AMD had no hand in terms of the creation of SMAA. If I remember correctly SMAA was researched and created by university students somewhere in Europe. It's been a while since I read about it, though.

The injector is created by just one such student.

It is a tribute to the quality of SMAA rather than AMD fanboyism that I am boosting it. I actually run a Geforce card.

And of course we get to AMD's problem. Despite having competitive hardware their driver team consistently seems to be in the dumps. They are fortunate to have users create tools like RadeonPro and SMAA injector

 

[blackened23]

Their driver team isn't in the "dumps". They just have fewer people devoted to driver development, and there is a reason for this. The fact of the matter is that driver development is very tough, COSTLY and complex, far more complex than coding other types of software - not everyone can do it, it is highly specialized. With specialization comes cost. So the problem here is that AMD has less money for software development than nvidia or intel, so the problem is that. Nvidia and Intel can simply throw money at the problem (intel more so than nvidia).

But they are trying to rectify this issue and have made strides in recent months. That said, nvidia still has a leg up on them in terms of software development at this time. Nvidia can throw more money at the problem. Software development costs a lot of money, this is not a hard problem to solve for corporations that have tons of it floating around. Obviously, AMD does not have a lot of this to throw around.

Like I said, though, AMD has made a lot of strides in that respect over the past year. They just can't repeat 7970s dismal launch software situation again with Hawaii, I don't think that will happen. I'm certain they learned their lesson from 7970s launch.

 

[Dribble]

So the problem here is that AMD has less money for software development than nvidia or intel, so the problem is that. Nvidia and Intel can simply throw money at the problem (intel more so than nvidia).

It's not so much throwing money as how you set your company up. Traditional AMD simply doesn't really do software - AMD cpu's are x86. They rely on MS and Intel to write most of the software and because they support exactly the same features as Intel cpu's can piggy back off that support. Buying Ati and having to actually write drivers was probably a bit of a foreign idea to AMD. They never really embraced it.

Nvidia many years ago worked out that no one was going to buy the hardware no matter how innovative it was unless the software was up to scratch. The only way you can be a leader is if you can provide the software support for your new innovations, and it has to be good. The whole company switched from being a hardware company that writes some drivers too, to a hardware and software company where the number of software devs outnumbers the hardware ones. That's why their drivers are better, that's why they own nearly all the professional and gpu compute market, that's why nearly all laptops are optimus not enduro, that's why tegra has had a lot of the success it's had, it's why most game devs use nvidia, and that's why when some new tech comes it tends to work best on nvidia.

AMD still produce decent hardware, but too infrequently do they provide the rock solid stable software to make it all work.

 

[Elfear]

So you are allowed to release a product with poor drivers and then take 6 months to catch up when your competition releases a product that is cheaper and bests yours?

The GTX 680 was faster for 3 months (Mar 22 to June 22). For 10 of the 13 months from the 7970 launch to the 780 GTX launch, the 7970/7970Ghz was faster.

I don't think you're making the point you thought you were.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The GTX 680 was faster for 3 months (Mar 22 to June 22). For 10 of the 13 months from the 7970 launch to the 780 GTX launch, the 7970/7970Ghz was faster.

I don't think you're making the point you thought you were.

It took them about 6 months since launch to get proper drivers out. How is that not clear?

If you really wanna nitpick the 7970 released nov 2011 and they didn't get drivers that made it competitive with the 680 directly until the 680 had been out 3 months. That would be 7 months.

 

[Jaydip]

The GTX 680 was faster for 3 months (Mar 22 to June 22). For 10 of the 13 months from the 7970 launch to the 780 GTX launch, the 7970/7970Ghz was faster.

I don't think you're making the point you thought you were.

Not to nitpick Elfear but without taking oc into account 680 has been faster than 7970. If we consider different skus than MSI lightning 680 was the fastest card according to [H]. It is with the introduction of Never settle drivers 7970 GHz took the definite lead.

 

[railven]

It took them about 6 months since launch to get proper drivers out. How is that not clear?

If you really wanna nitpick the 7970 released nov 2012 and they didn't get drivers that made it competitive with the 680 directly until the 680 had been out 3 months. That would be 7 months.

TIL Radeon HD 7970 competed with GTX 680 starting from NOV '11.

Interesting logic there.

 

[Elfear]

It took them about 6 months since launch to get proper drivers out. How is that not clear?

If you really wanna nitpick the 7970 released nov 2012 and they didn't get drivers that made it competitive with the 680 directly until the 680 had been out 3 months. That would be 7 months.

It sounded like you were saying immature drivers made Tahiti slower for 6 months after the 680 launched which wasn't the case. I see what you're saying now (although Tahiti paper launched in Dec with availability in Jan).

Not to nitpick Elfear but without taking oc into account 680 has been faster than 7970. If we consider different skus than MSI lightning 680 was the fastest card according to [H]. It is with the introduction of Never settle drivers 7970 GHz took the definite lead.

True, the 680 has been faster than the vanilla 7970 since it launched although that lead has diminished to 3-5% since sometime around Dec or Jan.

The 680 Lightning was a very fast card if you used the LN2 bios and bought one before MSI gimped it. Stock for stock I think the 7970 Matrix Platinum probably would have beat it though.

The Never Settle drivers did increase the lead but the Ghz model was still faster from the get go. It had about the same lead over the 680 as the 680 did over the vanilla 7970.

Like you said though, it's really nitpicking as the difference isn't huge between all three of the cards.

 

[ocre]

Not to nitpick Elfear but without taking oc into account 680 has been faster than 7970. If we consider different skus than MSI lightning 680 was the fastest card according to [H]. It is with the introduction of Never settle drivers 7970 GHz took the definite lead.

absolutely, your correct. I see this confused version a lot lately but i am like, "why bother" cause i dont want to derail or make things messy. But i am glad you took time to clear it up.

 

[SiliconWars]

Comparing overclocked cards vs non overclocked is just the biggest fail ever. If that was the case, even the 7950 would be blowing away the 680.

 

[tigersty1e]

It amazes me the 7950 lost over $100 in value in just a couple of months. Now you can get a 7950 for less than $200

the equivalent nvidia card also dropped $100.

the nvidia cards were always more expensive so it just seems like the value holds.

wait 1-2 more years when the market evaluates the 7950 and gtx 670 on performance (another way to say no fan boy goggles) and the price will be more similar.


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