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[slapnuts]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvV1KgGZtMo


I've been complaining about this for a long time but this guy is very eloquent at explaining it.
Having just spent an extortionate amount of money on a midrange gpu to upgrade my old rig I was painfully reminded of how prices have more than doubled with the scheme detailed in the video.

My old potato was a beast in 2009 and cost me 550 euros (for everything including case, hdd, psu etc)
Now an upgrade to a year old midrange Gpu and a year old midrange cpu cost me 850 euros.
Less relative performance and a full build would have cost me twice as much as in 2009.
It sucks, it's more expensive now than it was even in 2003 to get a decent gaming experience.

Try to resist derailing the thread because of the last 5 seconds of that video, thanks

Anything that becomes "mainstream" is automatically the green light for BigCorp to take advantage of the naive. This trend i saw birthed in the mid 2000s when PC gaming started becoming big...right around when Steam started really taking off...

None of this should surprise anyone here..but to the newer pc mainstream adapters they are still abit green and this is why we been seeing this sneaky subtle shake up of series of cards from AMD and Nvidia....it's business, its wise business but yet lacks good ethics...but good ethics don't do well in today's society, at least from a business standpoint.

 

[Hazaro]

The amount of performance you can get for $200 or $120 is staggering and will actually also last because we've been on 28nm for so long.

If you want lower power consumption and noise you can spend more.

It's just a reflection of how the state of the industry is. It's definitely not exciting on the CPU or GPU side, but HBM2 should be nice in a year. Other than that just buy a good value card.

 

[Walpurgis]

Excellent video. Thank you for posting this OP. I am looking to build my first PC pretty soon and was kind of confused by the series thing. I never would have thought that a 290 would be better than a 370. I guess I will look for the previous series when choosing a graphics card unless the price difference is too small.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

It's almost as if process nodes have been hitting a wall for years, the cost of R&D for increasingly diminishing returns is skyrocketing, the average baseline for a game is a console which has a fraction of a PC's power, and also inflation is a thing.

Nope! It's a CONSPIRACY!

 

[Crisium]

In September 2006 ATi charged $650 for the X1950XTX.

In May 2007 Nvidia charged $830 for the 8800 Ultra.

Both of these cards were the fastest at time of launch. Do the inflation math, and Titan X and 8800 Ultra are very close. But the Ultra had the $600 8800 GTX that was almost just as fast - such does the Titan X also have the 980 Ti at $650. With inflation, the 980 Ti today is a better value for the second fastest GPU. The Titan X barely costs more, but at least it has more shaders and VRAM to somewhat justify it.

Titan was obviously going to happen. This article is almost 8 and a half years old. Pretend it is 2013 with the Titan or 2015 with the Titan X and it's deja vu.

NVIDIA owns the high end graphics market. For the past six months, there has been no challenge to the performance leadership of the GeForce...

And now, before AMD has come to market with any competing solution whatsoever, NVIDIA is releasing a refresh of its top of the line part...

We do know NVIDIA has wanted to push up towards the $1000 graphics card segment for a while. Offering the top of the line for what almost amounts to a performance tax would give NVIDIA the ability to sell a card and treat it like a Ferrari. It would turn high end graphics into a status symbol rather than a commodity. That and having a huge margin part in the mix can easily generate additional profits.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2222

If you ignore the Titan X (when aftermarket 980 Ti's are so good, it's not hard to) prices are really not that bad right now. 780 and 780 Ti were terrible at launch though, but like an above post said, if you time your upgrade cycles you can skip the nonsense.

9 months after the $1000 Titan, AMD matched it's performance at $400.
10 months after the $700 780 Ti, Nvidia's own $550 980 is faster and $330 970 is 95% as fast.

28nm looks pretty bad overall compared to what we had with the 55nm and 40nm battles. But times have been just as bad before.

The best days though?

$300 Radeon 4870 June 2008. $260 Radeon 5850 September 2009. These were launch prices for the second fastest video cards at the time. Equivalent to the 980 Ti's of today. I admit it is sad that these days are gone and will never return. But hopefully we at least get $400 back for second fastest cards one day.

 

[bj00rn_]

Manufacturing processes get refined enough that each die spits out better chips. With higher quality chips you get more efficient power usage. In general, the higher your ASIC % is, the better power efficiency your chips have, and as a result, better overclocking. They didn't re-do the architecture, they just refined the manufacturing process.

Huh, that's actually quite interesting. Never crossed my mind that it was that "simple" and tdp can be reduced by manufacturing alone without even touching the architecture. But it makes sense now when thinking about it. And I guess variable ASIC quality in the same manufacturing process may lead to people with the same card having different overclocking abilities or issues.

 

[TyphoonStruggle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvV1KgGZtMo


I've been complaining about this for a long time but this guy is very eloquent at explaining it.
Having just spent an extortionate amount of money on a midrange gpu to upgrade my old rig I was painfully reminded of how prices have more than doubled with the scheme detailed in the video.

My old potato was a beast in 2009 and cost me 550 euros (for everything including case, hdd, psu etc)
Now an upgrade to a year old midrange Gpu and a year old midrange cpu cost me 850 euros.
Less relative performance and a full build would have cost me twice as much as in 2009.
It sucks, it's more expensive now than it was even in 2003 to get a decent gaming experience.

Try to resist derailing the thread because of the last 5 seconds of that video, thanks

He's not eloquent. Sounds like he's whining at GPU companies.

He should be whining at the semiconductor foundry industry. GPU companies have been stuck at 28nm for so long.

I think more than a few people in this thread understand this.

The GPU industry owes this guy nothing, yet he demands better performance for less cost. Here's a crazy idea, if there's no upgrade available then DON'T UPGRADE.

Oh yeah... he disabled comments. I guess he wants to continue to bask in his ignorance or looking for those youtube hits.