Friday, February 22nd 2019
AMD Partners Cut Pricing of Radeon RX Vega 56 to Preempt GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
AMD cut pricing of the Radeon RX Vega 56 in select markets to preempt the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, and help the market digest inventory. The card can be had for as little as €269 (including VAT) for an MSI RX Vega 56 Air Boost, which is a close-to-reference product. The GTX 1660 Ti reportedly has a starting price of $279.99 (excluding taxes). This development is significant given that the GTX 1660 Ti is rumored to perform on-par with the GTX 1070, which the RX Vega 56 outperforms. The RX Vega series is still very much a part of AMD's product stack, and AMD continues to release new game optimizations for the card. NVIDIA is expected to launch the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti within February. Although based on the "Turing" architecture, it lacks real-time raytracing and AI acceleration features, yet retains the increased IPC of CUDA cores from the new generation.
120 Comments on AMD Partners Cut Pricing of Radeon RX Vega 56 to Preempt GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
So had Huang named that 2050 it would be even cooler, right? I mean greater upgrade and all.
Or, perhaps, he could have named it 1550, just for lols ya know.
Now on the front that actually matters (unlike name that change nothing), the price:
1060 MSRP => $249, 2060 MSRP => $349, 40% higher price 1070 ($379) => 2070 ($499) 31% higher price 1080 ($599) => 2080 ($699) 17% higher price (how generous of them, eh?) 1080Ti($699) => 2080Ti ($999) wow, only 43% more expensive, for 33% higher performance, that's what one calls progress As in "I can kinda sorta find some niche where obnoxious pricing doesn't look all that terrible", yay.
In the mid-range, we only have the 1660Ti so far to compare. Which is both too low a sample and too early to tell where it will settle.
The only semi-notable bump on perf/buck was 1080=>2080 "transition", where things got "only" 17% more expensive.
The rest was 30-40% bump on price.
Welcome back to planet Earth.
Edit: I realize it's hard to think of 2060 as high end when there are 3 more cards slotted above it. But if you move the 2080Ti in the Titan lineup (where it really belongs), I believe things start falling into place.
Probably with the same "logic".
And for "successors". Something beyond obvious is going on, but your eyes are so wide shut, you manage not to see it.
So let me spell it with big fat letters: "successor" cards used to show major perf/$ progress. This is gone now. Perf is bumped and so is price. Upfront with Pascal we got 330mm2 chip selling at 500mm chips price point. This trend continued with Tesla cards.
Prices have varied a lot.
So much for how things "used to be".
It isn't the fact "why this is happening", for god's sake, of course because they can.
But people here try to deny "it" is happening at all.
Heck, even 16xx is "clear" naming. There are at least two things allowing nvidia to set high prices (which, I swear to god, I'd love to see even higher, much much higher), customers actually voting with their pockets. Happened just recently with NV missing revenue targets by 25%. Criticizing money starved underdog for not performing comeback on two fronts, that is what would be idiotic.
It's a miracle they managed to get back to "competitive with Intel" given resources they had.
On GPU front, with 7nm product consuming 25% more than competitor's 14nm (yeah, most "review" games are green yadayada, but that's the playing field we have for years to come), despite using less power hungry (and more expensive) RAM, uh, I don't see major comeback any time soon, there was that elusive 7nm Navi, which, if it even is released by the end of Summer, will be at least half a year too late, given 7nm from greedy green is not far away.
The cards are faster than the previous generation. The prices are over the top (depending on how you look at them, but let's go for worst case scenario for now). Even at those price perf/$ is still a little better than before. That's all there is to it.
And great job derailing conversation into "progress" semantics.
Turing is progress. There are high-priced models, but everything else is better than Pascal. End of story.
www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GeForce_GTX_1660_Ti_Gaming_X/28.html
www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GeForce_GTX_1660_Ti_Gaming_X/33.html
TPU was unable to test the Vega 56 OC but THG did and obtained 8%
At 1080p, the Vega 56 edges MSI 1660 Ti tested here by 1%, Doing the math ....
MSI 1660 Ti = 100 x 99.0 / 90.3 = 109.63
Vega 56 = 101 x 1.08 = 109.08
So that's pretty much a wash at 1080p... at 1440p ...
Vega 56 = 103 x 1.08 = 111.24 so Vega 56 gets the edge (1.61%) here.
Looking at ancilliary data...
Peak Power: Vega 56 (237 watts) / 1660 Ti (141) ... $76 in extra electric costs at 30 hours per week over 4 years (@$0.11 pr kwhr), + $20 on PSU purchase, $10 for extra case fan
Load Temps: Vega 56 (75C) / 1660 Ti (67)
Noise: Vega 56 (42 dbA) / 1660 Ti (32 dbA)
The 1660 Ti can be had for $279 on new egg today....lowest price for vega 56 is $369... $90 more. Given the ancilliary numbers, Im thinking the Vega is now**at best** a a $259 option.
From a personal PoV, the noise is a deal killer; I've looked at the AIB versions and noise is still waaay high by comparison. But it would cost me $165.80 in extra power costs (more with AIB) over 4 years plus a more expensive PSU and an extra fan (one 140mm fan per 75 - 100 watts) I would call it the highest performance card in the "mid range" overall but certainly "high end of what 1080p users will have under consideration"and that comprises 60.48% of gamers. It is still the most popular card in use today with 14.87 % market share ... can't blame all that on "uneducated users". That's 18 times that of the 580 (AMDs best seller) which has 0.82%. And while, the 580 / 590 are faster "outta the box", considering their limited OC ability (4-5%), power heat and noise, I don't see a place for the 570 / 580 / 590 at current pricing.
All, but the top Turing card offers performance that was already available at roughly the same price.
Correct analogy would be someone building "even cooler" rocket, that would do exactly the same as older, non cool one and for the same price.
But let's dance with "progress" semantics, shall we.
Nothing can stop you from avoiding to hear it, certainly not some post on some random forum out there somewhere.
1660Ti card, bar the confusing naming, actually IS progress in perf/$ terms, thanks for consumers voting with their wallets against ngreedy policies. Arguable at best.
@John Naylor
If you go that far in details, then please include 2 games bundled with V56, as well as 2Gb of RAM.
Price difference in Germany is 30 Euros, and I don't mean blower card. It wasn't AMD at all. It was people not buying GPUs any more (40% drop vs last year).
AMD is pretty much non-existent as far as setting green price goes at this point.