Hypothetical questions involving AMD Rumors and Nvidia's featureset

[Nordic]

Rumors for RNDA4 show that AMD is not going to compete in the high end graphics space and instead focus on reducing costs. AMD is instead putting a heavier RnD effort into RNDA5. RNDA4 to have 7900xtx performance, less power consumption, and cost $400. Please keep in mind this is a rumor that leads to my hypothetical questions.

If AMD releases a 8800xt RNDA4 GPU that has

• More or less the same performance as the 7900xtx
• ~33% less power usage and
• The same feature set as RNDA3
• Costs $400 retail

What price premium do you think Nvidia would be able to charge for the RTX 4080/4080s?
Currently the 4080s is ~$100 or 11% more than the 7900xtx.
Would $40 more or $440 for a RTX4080/4080s be worth the cost for Nvidia's feature set?
The 4080s has ~20% more RT performance than the 7900xtx according to TechPowerUP reviews.
Would $80 more or $480 for a RTX4080/4080s be worth the cost for Nvidia's feature set?

EDIT: Yes I know $400 is a very low price for an 8800xt card. All of this is made up. I chose a low price to make it more attractive. Rumors are rumors. Hypothetical are hypothetical. $400 makes this question more interesting.

 

[dgianstefani]

$400 retail for a x800xt class?

That's uh... wishful thinking IMO.

 

[Nordic]

$400 retail for a x800xt class?

That's uh... wishful thinking IMO.

Almost certainly. Whether or not the rumor is accurate is not relevant to my HYPOTHETICAL questions. I am using a hypothetical next gen AMD product superior to their current products to compare against current gen Nvidia products. I can look at current prices to see how much of a price premium Nvidia is able to get for their products just by looking on newegg.

 

[Lew Zealand]

The absolute cheapest MSRP the next gen card with equiv XTX performance could be is $600 and more likely $700+.

My bar for paying for Nvidia features slides along with price. At the lower end, DLSS has much more value than in the "8" class GPUs and up so I'm willing to pay 15-20% more which makes the 4060 an easy choice over the 7600 as an example. While previous gen the 6600XT was wayyy cheaper than the 3060/3060 Ti over much/all of their availability thanks to crypto which made that the easy choice.

At the higher end, RT replaces DLSS to make the difference for some people though I still don't see the value when you look at the visual changes. IMO they're there but meh, I find way more value in the fps. DLSS is less useful in higher end GPUs but DLAA is great, I just wish more games supported it. And the raw price delta is kinda tough around the $700 mark and above, so 10% maybe 15% at the ~$4-500 price level you are targetting.

 

[gffermari]

You ask about the software only?
The RTXs are not better because the hardware or the software alone is better. The combination is better.

Hypothetically, how much more would you pay for a 6800XT if it could support DLSS?
Probably nothing more. Because ok, the DLSS is better but the gpu cannot perform anyway ( in RT for my standards) regardless of DLSS or FSR support.

 

[Lew Zealand]

You ask about the software only?
The RTXs are not better because the hardware or the software alone is better. The combination is better.

Hypothetically, how much more would you pay for a 6800XT if it could support DLSS?
Probably nothing more. Because ok, the DLSS is better but the gpu cannot perform anyway ( in RT for my standards) regardless of DLSS or FSR support.

This is great because if I could choose a single feature to add to the 6800 XT it would be DLSS/DLAA instead of RT parity. Everyone likes different stuff.

 

[Nordic]

The absolute cheapest MSRP the next gen card with equiv XTX performance could be is $600 and more likely $700+.

I hope future readers and posters realize that is not important to what I am asking here. I suggested the price as low to make it attractive more than anything else.

My bar for paying for Nvidia features slides along with price. At the lower end, DLSS has much more value than in the "8" class GPUs and up so I'm willing to pay 15-20% more which makes the 4060 an easy choice over the 7600 as an example. While previous gen the 6600XT was wayyy cheaper than the 3060/3060 Ti over much/all of their availability thanks to crypto which made that the easy choice.

At the higher end, RT replaces DLSS to make the difference for some people though I still don't see the value when you look at the visual changes. IMO they're there but meh, I find way more value in the fps. DLSS is less useful in higher end GPUs but DLAA is great, I just wish more games supported it. And the raw price delta is kinda tough around the $700 mark and above, so 10% maybe 15% at the ~$4-500 price level you are targetting.

Why did you buy AMD if you value Nvidia's featureset so highly? Was Nvidia's prices significantly higher at the time of purchase?
I bought my 6750xt because it was $330 and comparable performance with Nvidia was $550 at the time. Looking at prices today, I would probably buy the RTX 3080 if I were shopping.

NVIDIA seems to be targeting about 10%, at least with the 4080. I thought 20% seemed potentially reasonable given Nvidia's ray tracing advantage. Those voting more than 25% are interesting to me. Those people must think Nvidia's pricing is quite a bargain right now.

You ask about the software only?
The RTXs are not better because the hardware or the software alone is better. The combination is better.

That's fair. Ray Tracing is largely a hardware solution. I was thinking of all of Nvidia's superior software features like nvenc, DLSS, and driver stability. Ray tracing is relevant to the discussion too. That was poor wording on my part. Maybe a mod could help me edit. @freeagent could I get some edit help? I would like to remove "software" from the poll options.

 

[gffermari]

Now that is clarified.
I value nVidia's features a lot, not only because I like them (RT, DLSS, etc.) but also because I need them (CUDA).

Even if I remove the CUDA part from the equation, I'm still willing to pay more for the rest of the features.

I admit that the experience of using their hardware* for years without issues, affects my judgement.
*from laptops 1650 and A2000, A4000 to 4080, 4090 and RTX 5000 Ada.

 

[dgianstefani]

Rumors for RNDA4 show that AMD is not going to compete in the high end graphics space and instead focus on reducing costs. AMD is instead putting a heavier RnD effort into RNDA5. RNDA4 to have 7900xtx performance, less power consumption, and cost $400. Please keep in mind this is a rumor that leads to my hypothetical questions.

If AMD releases a 8800xt RNDA4 GPU that has

• More or less the same performance as the 7900xtx
• ~33% less power usage and
• The same feature set as RNDA3
• Costs $400 retail

What price premium do you think Nvidia would be able to charge for the RTX 4080/4080s?
Currently the 4080s is ~$100 or 11% more than the 7900xtx.
Would $40 more or $440 for a RTX4080/4080s be worth the cost for Nvidia's feature set?
The 4080s has ~20% more RT performance than the 7900xtx according to TechPowerUP reviews.
Would $80 more or $480 for a RTX4080/4080s be worth the cost for Nvidia's feature set?

EDIT: Yes I know $400 is a very low price for an 8800xt card. All of this is made up. I chose a low price to make it more attractive. Rumors are rumors. Hypothetical are hypothetical. $400 makes this question more interesting.

I'd like to point out that TPU tests with Ray Tracing - which means high settings, but not Path Tracing or "Full Ray Tracing" as NVIDIA calls it.

Graphs are pulled from:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Benchmark Performance Review - 25+ GPUs Tested

The Phantom Liberty expansion brings big improvements to Cyberpunk 2077 and adds an exciting new story line. The game also gets support for DLSS 3.5 and Path Tracing. In our performance review, we're taking a closer look at image quality, VRAM usage, and performance on a wide selection of modern...

www.techpowerup.com

and the latest GPU review

Galax GeForce RTX 4070 Super EX Review

The Galax GeForce RTX 4070 Super EX comes with a small price increase over the NVIDIA MSRP, yet gives you a premium cooler that's much stronger than what's offered on the baseline models. Both temperatures and noise levels are improved over the Founders Edition.

www.techpowerup.com

In this metric the difference between AMD and NVIDIA is even greater than the 31% faster at native 4K ray tracing the RTX 4080 is over the RX 7900XTX (average across tested games in ray tracing - ultra (but not path tracing)).

This is the averaged chart of native Ray Tracing game tests, without frame generation or upscaling.

For direct comparison of ray tracing vs path tracing/full ray tracing, here's the normal "ray tracing" native 4K results in a specific game, known for a high quality and intensive ray tracing implementation, that also supports both ray and path tracing.

Here, the RTX 4080 is 57.6% faster than the RX 7900XTX in minimum FPS, and 59.9% faster in average FPS. The 4090 is in another league, with 101.3% faster performance than the RX 7900XTX in minimum FPS, and 117.3% faster in average FPS, more than twice as fast.

Now here's the 4K "path tracing" or "full ray tracing" results, again without upscaling, frame generation or ray reconstruction, all of which add performance.

Here the RTX 4080 is 226.3% faster in min FPS than the RX 7900XTX, and 220.9% faster in average FPS. The RTX 4090 is again, in another class, being 365.7% faster in minimum FPS, and 353.4% faster in average FPS.

The point i'm trying to make here, is that as you increase the load on the ray tracing hardware of these cards, the NVIDIA cards become faster, relatively, to their AMD equivalents. This is important to understand, because some popular games include very lightweight or basic implementations of "ray tracing", such as global illumination only, for example. This skews the data slightly, because the "ray tracing" performance penalty is much smaller, than if the entire game's lighting was ray or path traced, instead of a hybrid design of rasterised lighting and ray/path traced lighting.

Obviously 4K path traced gaming isn't currently viable at native, without using some form of upscaling/tech to improve FPS, or any combination of performance/quality improving tech such as DLSS/DLAA, Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction. That's not the point here, I'm just trying to make it clear that most current games don't really push the envelope when it comes to "ray tracing" implementations, they're basically just features tacked on for the small percentage of PC's that can actually run RT/PT games with good FPS. It's simply not a developer priority when most gamers have hardware on the level of an RTX 2060, or use consoles. This will change though, as people naturally get faster hardware over time. So I find it interesting to compare what the difference is in actual performance potential between the two vendors, when these cards are actually stressed with intensive ray/path tracing implementations.

Here's what those path tracing/"full ray tracing" numbers look like when combined with some of the performance improving technologies currently available. Ray reconstruction is only available when used with both DLSS and path tracing/"full ray tracing", it doesn't work with standard "ray tracing". This is because it's a new way of denoising that does both the upscaling and the denoising at the same time, rather than as separate steps, improving both quality and performance. Note that while the graph is titled DLSS 3.5 Performance, this is indicating the performance comparison, the actual testing is done with the DLSS "Quality" preset.

NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction Review - Better Than Native

NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 launches today, supporting GeForce 20 and newer. The new algorithm improves the looks ray traced lighting, reflections, shadows and more. In our DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction review we test image quality, but also discovered that VRAM usage actually goes down and performance goes up.

www.techpowerup.com

I wanted to write this because I don't think people (especially people who don't own an RTX card, or even those who haven't tried a higher end Ada generation card) really understand the difference in performance between the two vendors, and just how far ahead NVIDIA is.

I think that this comparison, while not perfect, indicates the kind of performance differences people can expect as RT/PT implementations become more involved, rather than the weak smattering of RT effects sprinkled on top of games that we're used to seeing today, so that consoles (which currently use AMD GPUs) can run the game.

With the release of the PS5 Pro and the eventual Xbox Series refresh, the PS5 Pro is rumoured to have significantly faster ray tracing performance, meaning developers will probably start using heavier RT/PT implementations. But I doubt we'll see widespread path tracing until the next generation of consoles are released, e.g. PS6.

As developers start to actually make full use of the new lighting techniques of the latest game engines moving forward, I expect this trend will really start to show the differences in performance more completely, and game performance testing will show numbers skewing closer and closer to what's been shown here. Path traced lighting, e.g. no rasterized lighting at all, is the obvious end game.

Something interesting to note - look at the RTX 4070 Ti compared to the RX 7900XTX, in the "average FPS" chart it's slower for Ray Tracing. In the heavy RT or PT implementation of Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty, it's much faster.

This is what I'm getting at, most games today don't come close to fully using the ray tracing hardware on current generation cards, so even with "ray tracing" turned on, the FPS is still dictated by classic rasterization performance. This will change, as games use heavier and heavier RT, or full RT/PT implementations.

 

[Vya Domus]

Dude, this has to be a paid ad.

 

[dgianstefani]

Dude, this has to be a paid ad.

It's objective analysis of data generated by TPU's own testing.

But I'm not surprised the guy with a full AMD rig might think otherwise.

 

[ARF]

If AMD releases a Radeon RX 8700 XT RNDA4 GPU that has

• More or less the same performance as the Radeon RX 7800 XT | Radeon RX 7900 GRE
• ~33% less power usage and
• Improved feature set compared to RNDA3
• Costs $400-450 retail

I fixed ^^^^^^ the mistakes you've made.

Why didn't you include an answer:

Nvidia's feature set is worth 50% less

$400 retail for a x800xt class?

That's uh... wishful thinking IMO.

Even today the Radeon RX 7800 XT costs $499.99, so $399.99 is perfectly possible, I say 95% probability.

 

[dgianstefani]

Even today the Radeon RX 7800 XT costs $499.99, so $399.99 is perfectly possible, I say 95% probability.

I hope you're right. But I strongly suspect you're wrong, guess we'll find out. Doesn't really matter anyway, as the thread is a hypothetical "how much is NVIDIA's featureset worth to you".

 

[GodisanAtheist]

So the price/stack positioning angle is pretty big here. The lower you go in price, IMO, the less NV can reasonably mark-up for their features.

If I'm already paying $1000 for a GPU and $1200 gets me the same performance but a ton of potentially useful features then I'll pay the extra money even if its 20% more because I'm already spending a huge amount of money on my GPU, what's more at that point.

If I'm spending $400 on a GPU and NV is offering me the same performance for $480 (20% more), the additional funds become less palatable because I already have a relatively low price cap on what I'm willing to spend. However for $420 (5% more) I might see the value in stretching my budget a bit for the additional feature set.

Additionally, NV's extra 20% might start bumping into the $500 next tier up of AMD card etc.

 

[Nordic]

I fixed ^^^^^^ the mistakes you've made.

You fixed nothing. That is entirely contrary to the hypothetical question I am asking.

So the price/stack positioning angle is pretty big here. The lower you go in price, IMO, the less NV can reasonably mark-up for their features.

If I'm already paying $1000 for a GPU and $1200 gets me the same performance but a ton of potentially useful features then I'll pay the extra money even if its 20% more because I'm already spending a huge amount of money on my GPU, what's more at that point.

If I'm spending $400 on a GPU and NV is offering me the same performance for $480 (20% more), the additional funds become less palatable because I already have a relatively low price cap on what I'm willing to spend. However for $420 (5% more) I might see the value in stretching my budget a bit for the additional feature set.

Additionally, NV's extra 20% might start bumping into the $500 next tier up of AMD card etc.

This is the exactly the kind of response I am for. Thank you. I am curious where we hardware enthusiasts draw the line.

 

[dgianstefani]

You fixed nothing. That is entirely contrary to the hypothetical question I am asking.

This is the exactly the kind of response I am for. Thank you. I am curious where we hardware enthusiasts draw the line.

I guess it depends what you consider to be the "same" performance. If I can run DLSS "Balanced" and get a better IQ than FSR 2.2 "Quality" then that's a "feature" that crosses the line into performance. Same thing with if you do anything Ray Traced. The price performance charts are very different depending on what quality settings you play on.

FSR 3.1 looks like it will improve FSR image quality, so lets hope so. Would be great for console gamers and people with AMD cards who play games where XeSS isn't an option.

 

[Nordic]

I guess it depends what you consider to be the "same" performance. If I can run DLSS "Balanced" and get a better IQ than FSR 2.2 "Quality" then that's a "feature" that crosses the line into performance. Same thing with if you do anything Ray Traced. The price performance charts are very different depending on what quality settings you play on.

FSR 3.1 looks like it will improve FSR image quality, so lets hope so. Would be great for console gamers and people with AMD cards who play games where XeSS isn't an option.

I intend to respond to your previous longer post but that will have to wait until I get home. I need a keyboard for that.

I am asking people to compare a hypothetical AMD product with more or less the same performance as the 7900xtx, that uses ~33% less power, has the same feature set as RNDA3, and costs $400 retail against the existing 4080/4080s. As you are all aware the raster performance would similar but the path tracing performance would be incomparable.

I limited the question between this hypothetical 8800xt and the 4080/4080s to remove the entire product stack from the question. Nvidia 4000 has numerous superior features in comparison to AMD RDNA3. How much is that superior feature set worth to the average consumer? At what price point would someone who would buy this hypothetical 8800xt instead but the 4080/4080s?

For me personally a 5% price premium I would choose Nvidia without a doubt.
At a 10% price premium I would consider it. When I purchased my 6750xt, to get similar raster performance from NV I needed to pay 66% more.
At 15% I don't think I would consider Nvidia.

That is me and my choices though. Different people would have different thresholds. I don't value Nvidia's features highly while others do. I want to know where different people draw that line.

@dgianstefani do you understand what I am asking now?

 

[dgianstefani]

I intend to respond to your previous longer post but that will have to wait until I get home. I need a keyboard for that.

I am asking people to compare a hypothetical AMD product with more or less the same performance as the 7900xtx, that uses ~33% less power, has the same feature set as RNDA3, and costs $400 retail against the existing 4080/4080s. As you are all aware the raster performance would similar but the path tracing performance would be incomparable.

I limited the question between this hypothetical 8800xt and the 4080/4080s to remove the entire product stack from the question. Nvidia 4000 has numerous superior features in comparison to AMD RDNA3. How much is that superior feature set worth to the average consumer? At what price point would someone who would buy this hypothetical 8800xt instead but the 4080/4080s?

For me personally a 5% price premium I would choose Nvidia without a doubt.
At a 10% price premium I would consider it. When I purchased my 6750xt, to get similar raster performance from NV I needed to pay 66% more.
At 15% I don't think I would consider Nvidia.

That is me and my choices though. Different people would have different thresholds. I don't value Nvidia's features highly while others do. I want to know where different people draw that line.

@dgianstefani do you understand what I am asking now?

Yeah it's an interesting question and one to which there's no real right answer.

Looking at peoples opinions will be interesting though.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Why did you buy AMD if you value Nvidia's featureset so highly? Was Nvidia's prices significantly higher at the time of purchase?
I bought my 6750xt because it was $330 and comparable performance with Nvidia was $550 at the time. Looking at prices today, I would probably buy the RTX 3080 if I were shopping.

Yes, way higher prices for Nvidia when I bought my 6800 XT. $659 for a model with a very good cooler while the 3080 10GB (which is the GPU I planned for when it was released) was about $900 for the cheapest model which likely had an equally good cooler.

I also bought an RX 6700 XT for my kid's machine when his 1060 finally died (RIP you wonderful GPU) for the exact reasons you mention.

That said, the last 2 GPUs I bought were very affordable previous gen Nvidia ones because they fit my needs and DLSS is great for lower end.

 

[Nordic]

Yes, way higher prices for Nvidia when I bought my 6800 XT. $659 for a model with a very good cooler while the 3080 10GB (which is the GPU I planned for when it was released) was about $900 for the cheapest model which likely had an equally good cooler.

That said, the last 2 GPUs I bought were very affordable previous gen Nvidia ones because they fit my needs and DLSS is great for lower end.

In this example, you clearly did not think paying 36% more for the 3080 was worthwhile. I understand it isn't exactly that simple. There are other constraints.

When I purchased my 6750xt the 3070 was 66% more expensive while the 3060 was 36% more expensive. I personally don't understand why someone would pay that much more for Nvidia hardware, but other people have different priorities than I do.

 

[dgianstefani]

In this example, you clearly did not think paying 36% more for the 3080 was worthwhile. I understand it isn't exactly that simple. There are other constraints.

When I purchased my 6750xt the 3070 was 66% more expensive while the 3060 was 36% more expensive. I personally don't understand why someone would pay that much more for Nvidia hardware, but other people have different priorities than I do.

Was this when mining was a thing?

 

[Vya Domus]

I personally don't understand why someone would pay that much more for Nvidia hardware, but other people have different priorities than I do.

Same reason they buy Apple or Tesla or whatever other product with a better perceived brand recognition.

 

[Onasi]

Well, since the question has been elaborated on and specified - for PURE GAMING and in the CURRENT games that are available for evaluation today, that hypothetical card for 400 bucks would be a very attractive deal and I would go for it over the 4080 in the case of NV premium over… say, 10-15%. That is, if that was all there is to it.
That’s a very, very specific scenario though. In reality? Some of the software I use at work runs CUDA and I would like to switch to more working from home, so my aging 1070 in my personal rig would have to be replaced with an NV card. I also dabble in 3D art from time to time and, well, OptiX just slaughters whatever AMD had in Blender. And even in games, I don’t play latest AAA tripe and stopped caring about graphics long ago, but if I hypothetically did, as @dgianstefani noted, the more games go all in on RT, the bigger gulf there would be.
So holistically? I, personally, for various reasons would straight up not buy an AMD card as it currently stands since the overall package is not sufficient for my needs.

Edit: Note that I would still and had in the past RECOMMEND AMD cards to people who just need them to play games. The hardware itself is not poor in any way.

 

[Lew Zealand]

.

In this example, you clearly did not think paying 36% more for the 3080 was worthwhile. I understand it isn't exactly that simple. There are other constraints.

When I purchased my 6750xt the 3070 was 66% more expensive while the 3060 was 36% more expensive. I personally don't understand why someone would pay that much more for Nvidia hardware, but other people have different priorities than I do.

Huh I never did the % difference for the price but yes 36% is well outside my value proposition for this level of performance. The biggest compromise with the 6800 XT is RT but as mentioned, I don't find it to be compelling enough yet. It will be when game devs start designing lighting *specifically for RT*. Or path tracing. Right now lighting seems to be well positioned for raster because it's been that way for 2+ decades and it seems RT lighting is added afterwards, which is suboptimal for RT's potential. I felt I could wait at the price point I was willing to pay as $900 was right out and the 3070 (price match at the time) was simply not enough in raster.

Was this when mining was a thing?

I bought mine 2 months after ETH went POS or whatever the term is. AMD prices slid much more quickly to their MSRPs while Nvidia prices slid less, lingering well above MSRP for many months. That said, the 6700 XT and 6750 XT at $300-340 have been great values for raster for over a year now and I assume will soon sell out.

 

[Nordic]

Was this when mining was a thing?

Mining was already unprofitable at the time but prices had yet to go down significantly. Retailers and scalpers didn't want to give up the high prices too easily. I had wanted a 3070 but I wasn't willing to wait another 6 months or more for prices to come down. It ended up taking nearly a year for 3070 prices to become reasonable. I am glad I didn't wait.

Some of the software I use at work runs CUDA and I would like to switch to more working from home, so my aging 1070 in my personal rig would have to be replaced with an NV card. I also dabble in 3D art from time to time and, well, OptiX just slaughters whatever AMD had in Blender. And even in games, I don’t play latest AAA tripe and stopped caring about graphics long ago, but if I hypothetically did, as @dgianstefani noted, the more games go all in on RT, the bigger gulf there would be.
So holistically? I, personally, for various reasons would straight up not buy an AMD card as it currently stands since the overall package is not sufficient for my needs.

100% or more is a valid answer to my question even if I don't have a poll option that exactly says that. Those who need CUDA would value Nvidia exponentially more than whatever AMD offers.