well,in principle yes,in practice no.
outside great value mid-range cards amd has been offering same performance as nvidia a year before,and even then nvidia adjusted prices (e,g, 1070ti) to one up them.
their launch schedule is set up so that they sell as many as they possibly can,including new skus at new price points.
there's always something new coming.all that matters is value at the point when you buy it.
In principle = in practice, there is no distinction. So what if Nvidia undercuts the competition a little bit, that was not the point. The point is, you are at their mercy for a much greater degree than you should want, because any purchase of a GPU also affects your experience with other components (that you also paid a fat Gsync tax for, btw).
Consider RTX. If you want a high end card, but really don't support the whole RTRT push, what choice do you have? You can pick up a Navi, and you're out of RTRT (good) but you're also losing already paid for Gsync. The end result is that you lost an important part of your influence as a consumer. And that influence, the power to buy what we want free of 'side effects', is what you lose with a vendor lock-in. You're becoming a slave to the brand with every bit you add within the same ecosystem. Is that worth saving a few bucks here and there that you already paid ten times over with the Gsync purchase?
Its just simply never good to limit your freedom like that. The current cloud gaming push is another one just like it. You get tied to a subscription that 'increases in value over time', at least in your mind, but the moment you stop paying, all is lost. End result: you are more likely to remain subbed, even if the service has very little to offer at a certain point in time. Gaming is going to be an investment of time and you create save games tied to a service. You will not want to lose the investment... even though it has running costs. Its okay if that's about
one isolated game. But the moment you build a service that puts (access to) a lot of games together, there is a problem.
Its all more of the same and despite how good the deal might look initially, at one point you will bump into the company's long term strategy and for many, that is when the penny finally drops. See the post I initially responded to.
My advice is: just do not start, because by doing that you force companies to find a different model. This whole Gsync / FreeSync affair is the perfect example. Why do you think Nvidia started testing on FreeSync monitors? Because people ain't buying that overpriced crap. Whether the end goal is 're-promoting' Gsync as the ultimate solution or just damage control for the GPUs, the point stands: if Gsync sold fantastically, we would not be seeing this.
that's why I always smirk when ppl use the term "price gouging" in relation to gpus.sounds silly when applied by grown men on an internet forum complaining about toys.
With all luxury items really, 'price gouging' translates perfectly to 'I cannot control my urge to buy, even though the deal is obviously shit'