GPU launches no longer exciting.

[evernessince]

To be honest I've been feeling this for awhile but would like to see what other people think on the topic.

For me, GPU launches are no longer exciting and there are multiple reasons for that.

First is the price of cards at initial launch of a new series. With the 4090 at $1,600 and the 7900 XTX at $1,000 these cards are not really appealing. AMD's option is just barely within what I'd consider but then I look over at my 1080 Ti and consider if this card provides $300 more worth of value now then compared to my 1080 Ti when I first purchased it. The answer is definitely no. It doesn't just extend to the 1080 Ti though, most of my prior GPUs provided more at the time I got them. 7970 Ghz, 4850, 980 Ti. Money is not the issue, just on principle I feel these prices are too much. The 7900 XT is also an initial launch card but with the amount of resources that got cut the $900 price tag is quite clearly designed to upsell people.

Which moves me onto my 2nd gripe: GPUs, their prices, and their launch dates are now all precisely engineered to extract maximum value from customers (not that this didn't happen before but not to the current extent). No longer are we getting good value cards that push your dollar as far as possible. Instead we get GPU's priced to provide just enough performance to justify the cost and of course only released after Nvidia / AMD are sure they'd pushed as many people as possible to buy a more expensive GPU. I remember when the 970 was launched with the 980 when the 900 series was released. GPU tiers are priced to encourage upselling, which has seen the price of many of the lower tier SKUs increase and some higher tier cards be more expensive then they should. The 4080 (both 16 and 12GB variants) and the 7900 XT are perfect examples of this. The price of the 4080 (both variants) is appalling and the 7900 XT should be $799 to $850 at the absolute most. We might as well only be getting flagship parts because that's what these prices are designed to sell.

Last, the lack care for customers. Both these companies tout being pro-gamer and pro-consumer but their actions are almost always in opposition to their words. AMD and Nvidia are competing on architecture but when it comes to pricing they act more like a cartel, carefully crafting prices so as to not ruin GPU 64% margins or maintain the status quo set by the other. When was the last time the GPU market had a good value GPU? The 10000 series, which was a long time ago and that's considering the caveat that the 10000 series too was a price increase. Nvidia attempted to appeal to gamers during the pandemic by creating LHR cards (which it ruined by "accidentally" releasing drivers that got around that) or making dedicated mining cards which were supposed to relieve the pressure on gaming cards. It did not of course, it just gave miners dedicated supply while ensuring those cards cannot be resold to gamers, thus increasing future revenue. Instead of the market catering to customers, it has become a set of mind games to manipulate customers.

That all leads me to question how much customers are willing to sacrifice for the latest and greatest. I ask myself how much graphics power do I really need when it comes at the cost of something greater then just money.


As a side point, IMO this is bad for the PC platform in general. Having accessibly priced computers is absolutely essential to maintain the platform's numbers and highly priced GPUs do not help.

 

[cvaldes]

It really depends on the individual's usage case. There's nothing wrong with spending money on the best graphics card just to have the best graphics card (knowing that there's something better around the corner).

I think that high end PC gaming is going to end up being a niche hobby just like full frame dSLRs in digital photography. There will always be a small contingent of diehard PC gamers as long as gaming titles are developed on PCs.

Today's video game consoles are pretty capable and game developers will be targeting their efforts for the next five years at the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S machine capabilities. Even the underpowered Switch demonstrates that story and gameplay are more important than pixel fillrate of the GPU.

PC gamers with high-end GPUs enjoy some nice graphical benefits and amenities but ultimately the games are the same.

Clearly there is a group of people online who can't have fun unless the fps counter on their PC monitor stays above a certain threshold but that's really their choice. Or bitching that some wire or rock in the background isn't crystal clear in a still screenshot.

 

[evernessince]

It really depends on the individual's usage case. There's nothing wrong with spending money on the best graphics card just to have the best graphics card (knowing that there's something better around the corner).

I think that high end PC gaming is going to end up being a niche hobby just like full frame dSLRs in digital photography. There will always be a small contingent of diehard PC gamers as long as gaming titles are developed on PCs.

Today's video game consoles are pretty capable and game developers will be targeting their efforts for the next five years at the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S machine capabilities. Even the underpowered Switch demonstrates that story and gameplay are more important than pixel fillrate of the GPU.

PC gamers with high-end GPUs enjoy some nice graphical benefits and amenities but ultimately the games are the same.

Clearly there is a group of people online who can't have fun unless the fps counter on their PC monitor stays above a certain threshold but that's really their choice. Or bitching that some wire or rock in the background isn't crystal clear in a still screenshot.

That's a bit of what I'm afraid of. I remember the xbox 360 era of PC gaming consisting of a lot of ports and I hope that we are not coming upon a repeat.

 

[cvaldes]

Unfortunately recent price trajectories of PC hardware market has pretty much destroyed the concept of the budget PC gaming. You can get a better performing gaming device from console hardware. Microsoft themselves have stated that they are examining cloud streaming as an eventual console replacement.

Remember that most gaming is done on phones and that's where the most gaming revenue is generated. If anything game developers will focus on optimizing their code for hundreds of millions of smartphones rather than the handful of people who own high-end PC graphics cards. You can't stick an RTX 4090 or RX 7900 XTX in your pocket.

 

[Hofnaerrchen]

I totally agree on pricing of RTX 4000 GPUs - nVIDIA is completely nuts but... people are still buying it. They might already have sold 100k units of the 4090. The problem here I think is customer made. During the pandemic people were willing to pay insane prices when MSRP was actually quite good. The 3080's performance for 599 bucks was quite compelling but people also had no problem paying more than twice that price. If I was a company I would take my lessons from that and... voila nVIDIA did exactly that. No surprise to me.

On the other hand we have AMD. Looks like RDNA3 is not ment to be a 4090 competitor - at least not with 7900XTX - so their pricing is more aggressive. Compared to the RX 6000 launch it actually got reduced. Initial pricing for the 6900 XT was 999$, the 7900 XT is 899$ while offering approx. 54% more performance per watt.

You are saying owning a 1080ti yourself, so it looks like you were fine buying HALO products - which 4090/7900 class cards can be compared to - at some point. In 2018 that card's MSRP was about 700$ but since then there was inflation. Something you have to take into account and if we look at this year alone you'll have to adjust that price by 10%. Adding the missing 3 years will probably not get you to 1650$ the 4090's MSRP is now (nVIDIA got greedy because of said special factors) but it's in the range of AMD's pricing.

This all is about psychological effects... I do them get myself not only when watching GPU launches. There are much more concerning issues: Energy pricing - 100% price increase this year, food: at least 50% increase this year. I could continue this with even more product categories. Computer hardware on the other hand - while we are no longer used to massive price markups - are luxury products and high prices for luxury products are quite normal - just not in the Western world, so we are no longer used to it. Maybe we have to get used to it again. If you compare computer prices today and back in the 1980s I see parallels and this is also quite common in economics. While everyone is telling you growth is normal this actually isn't the case. At some point the whole system collapses. So not spending massive amounts of money on new GPUs might be a good idea out of other reasons and maybe it is also a good idea to get used to using existing hardware (not just computer hardware) much longer than just a generation again. Something you aready do when still using a 1080 ti.

EDIT/PS: From a technological point of view GPU launches still are very interesting, even if you are not willing (or in many cases not capable of) paying the asked price of such products - another psychological thing many of us are no longer used to: We "only" have to take the point of view most people on this planet need to have - I doubt that a majority of the approx. 8 billion people on Earth will be able to even buy the most entry level GPU. Most have much more dire problems than "high" GPU prices.

 

[Frick]

A few points here. For one, ports isn't as big a thing as multi platform. Many, many, many games are released on multiple platforms and the tools for that are better now, so less problems.

Second, the high end models (the 3090ti for instance) has basically taken the place of the Titan cards, and generally the performance of the different tiers has shifted, as has the prices (the GTX760 for instance was not the same tier as the RTX 3060). The latest mining craze and the pandemic really made things crazy, the MSRP of the RTX 3xxx cards were ok, but the actual prices were not.

Thirdly, higher resolutions really pushes things. If one is fine with 1080p 60Hz a whole lot of cheaper cards are just fine, especially if you tinker with the settings.

 

[64K]

A few points here. For one, ports isn't as big a thing as multi platform. Many, many, many games are released on multiple platforms and the tools for that are better now, so less problems.

Second, the high end models (the 3090ti for instance) has basically taken the place of the Titan cards, and generally the performance of the different tiers has shifted, as has the prices (the GTX760 for instance was not the same tier as the RTX 3060). The latest mining craze and the pandemic really made things crazy, the MSRP of the RTX 3xxx cards were ok, but the actual prices were not.

Thirdly, higher resolutions really pushes things. If one is fine with 1080p 60Hz a whole lot of cheaper cards are just fine, especially if you tinker with the settings.

Apparently many people are fine with 1080p according to the Steam Hardware Survey. 65% report using 1080p. 13.5% are gaming on 1440p and as usual almost no one is on 4K at 2.3%

Despite the claims that 4K has gone mainstream, it hasn't in all the years that 4K monitors have been around. It's not so much the cost of a 4K monitor because prices have come down a lot. It's the cost of the GPU needed to game at 4K. People are even now talking about 8K but that is a joke. Not going to happen for a long, long time. Maybe never. An 8K monitor has as many pixels as 16 1080p monitors.

 

[gffermari]

The problem is that 3 gens of gpus in a row have been ridiculously priced either by the manufacturer(Turing, Ada and Ampere) or by certain conditions (mining).
The last time we had normal priced gpus was 2016, with the Pascals....
Since then, regardless the reasons, all the xx80 series never targeted the normal gamer.

 

[cvaldes]

Apparently many people are fine with 1080p according to the Steam Hardware Survey. 65% report using 1080p. 13.5% are gaming on 1440p and as usual almost no one is on 4K at 2.3%.

Steam Hardware Surveys always have entry level hardware at the top. In the same way, there are more Toyota Celicas and Honda Civics on the roads than Ferraris and Lamborghinis. This isn't going to change.

It's also worth nothing that for a lot of online fps games, high framerate 1080p provides a competitive edge over lower framerates at higher resolution. All of the competitive gamers are basically using 1080p at 360Hz or higher.

Having a 4K monitor/TV at 42" or bigger doesn't provide a gaming advantage from a competitive standpoint.

 

[Readlight]

Not interested in cards using more than 200W. Good enough for HD TV

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

You are saying owning a 1080ti yourself, so it looks like you were fine buying HALO products - which 4090/7900 class cards can be compared to - at some point. In 2018 that card's MSRP was about 700$ but since then there was inflation. Something you have to take into account and if we look at this year alone you'll have to adjust that price by 10%. Adding the missing 3 years will probably not get you to 1650$ the 4090's MSRP is now (nVIDIA got greedy because of said special factors) but it's in the range of AMD's pricing.

I want know what happened to AMD going to compete against Nvidia in the highend like they said they were playing to do after RDNA2 ?
This RX 7900 XTX & 7900 XT card should be label as RX 7800 XT RX & 7800 it isn't good enough for those 900 numbers at all. It isn't highend like they claimed they could do by their third RDNA genertation either.
Nvidia's Mid range cards are now $1,000-$1,200. Which isn't a good thing & it's not because of Inflation. I mean the RTX 3080 10gb had a MSRP of $699
it's almost twice as much for an 80 series card. Why because Look at what AMD has it's only priced in the Nvidia's Mid-range. There is no Compition at the highend for Nvidia so they can manuver prices for theirs teirs however they want.

 

[N/A]

I'm very much excited. My limit is 699 incl. taxes though for 2X performance compared to 2018 cards, so until they make an offer we are not having a deal.

 

[evernessince]

A few points here. For one, ports isn't as big a thing as multi platform. Many, many, many games are released on multiple platforms and the tools for that are better now, so less problems.

Second, the high end models (the 3090ti for instance) has basically taken the place of the Titan cards, and generally the performance of the different tiers has shifted, as has the prices (the GTX760 for instance was not the same tier as the RTX 3060). The latest mining craze and the pandemic really made things crazy, the MSRP of the RTX 3xxx cards were ok, but the actual prices were not.

Thirdly, higher resolutions really pushes things. If one is fine with 1080p 60Hz a whole lot of cheaper cards are just fine, especially if you tinker with the settings.

Excluding the flagship, you are still looking at $1,200 for the 4080 16GB or $900 for the 7900 XT. Skipping the 3000 series (as you couldn't find those at MSRP for most of their life), the 2080 came in at the same price as the 1080 Ti and had identical performance at launch (performance got a better over time) with lower VRAM.

I'd be fine if one model were overpriced as a halo product so long as other cards are made available within a reasonable amount of time and the performance isn't that far behind those halo products. Unfortunately we are seeing halo products with a significant performance advantage and the 2nd best cards priced high and close enough to the halo to push people to buy up.

EDIT/PS: From a technological point of view GPU launches still are very interesting, even if you are not willing (or in many cases not capable of) paying the asked price of such products - another psychological thing many of us are no longer used to: We "only" have to take the point of view most people on this planet need to have - I doubt that a majority of the approx. 8 billion people on Earth will be able to even buy the most entry level GPU. Most have much more dire problems than "high" GPU prices.

Agreed, I still love reading the deep dives into the uArch.

Not interested in cards using more than 200W. Good enough for HD TV

That's very respectable. I myself limit it to 300w. On that note I very much wish Nvidia included a built in power limiter in their driver so users can tailor power consumption to their desire. Of course there is MSI afterburner but it's vastly preferable that it is done through the driver. I don't install GeForce experience being a minimalist either (although IMO it'd be better if they removed the login and combined the control panel and GFE so users don't have to sacrifice features).

 

[Sithaer]

As mentioned above, I still find new GPU relases interesting from a tech view but in reality I don't care much about the actual product.
I'm not a high end/halo hardware user and not from a wealthy country and nowadays even the damn ~60 tier cards are so expensive I can barely afford them and they are a luxury in the current world situation.

Personally not interested in using/owning anything higher than a 200-230W GPU either. 'I picked a 1x8 pin 3060 Ti for this very reason + undervolted it, power draw does matter for me and my family/household'

 

[cvaldes]

I want know what happened to AMD going to compete against Nvidia in the highend like they said they were playing to do after RDNA2 ?

AMD is closing the gap on the high end. They never claimed that they would dethrone NVIDIA as the performance king with RDNA3.

This is the best they have right now. And especially in terms of performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar metrics, AMD is heavily competing against NVIDIA.

 

[Lei]

Or bitching that some wire or rock in the background isn't crystal clear in a still screenshot.

I liked this part. It was like listening to Quentin Tarantino reviewing a movie.

 

[Ruru]

Back in the day we used to laugh at paper launches. These days those are the thing; announching about a month before the launch - what the hell?

I may just stick with my 1080 Ti for a while. Nobody is forcing me to play at max settings, especially as I'm thinking of a 4K monitor.

 

[BSim500]

To be honest I've been feeling this for awhile but would like to see what other people think on the topic.

That all leads me to question how much customers are willing to sacrifice for the latest and greatest. I ask myself how much graphics power do I really need when it comes at the cost of something greater then just money.

As a side point, IMO this is bad for the PC platform in general. Having accessibly priced computers is absolutely essential to maintain the platform's numbers and highly priced GPUs do not help.

I'm long done with flagships all round (CPU, GPU and smartphone). The sanest thing I did was learning to grow out of FOMO, and have grown immune to "must have" manufactured hype / "Keeping up with the Joneses" purchasing decisions in general. Pick a screen size you are comfortable with for the games you enjoy playing (not someone else's), then pick a resolution that gives a decent balance between quality and performance then switch off to the wall of unending marketing BS from those "upselling" price-inflated space-heaters as 'must-have' progress is the only sane thing to do in the current market.

As for the industry, the biggest problem though is not the 1% who will always pay $1k, $2k, $3k, $100k, for flagship GPU's purely as 'status symbols', but rather the fact nVidia (and AMD to some extent) all but abandoned the larger budget gaming market altogether. Going all the way back to my first 1980's 286 with 1MB RAM + 40MB HDD, I cannot for the life of me remember any period of time where after 3 years of "progress", budget graphics cards were replaced by something slower, yet that's what happened in the $150 segment with GTX 1650 Super (2019) -> GTX 1630 (2022), plus the $300 segment with RTX 2060 (2019) -> RTX 3050 (2022). (No-one in the budget sector is falling for the "you should compare tiers based on 30/50/60/70/80 model number not actual price" BS anymore). The reason GTX 1050Ti / 1060 / 1650 / 1660 are in the top 10 owned GPU's is there's still no actual price replacement in the tier that's most price sensitive. AMD aren't that much better constantly withholding budget APU's like 5300G or using stupidly crippled 4x bus speeds on the 6500XT (reality check to those who thinks it 'saves money' = even the $99 2GB GTX 1050 had a 16x bus...)

And the problem is budget gamers aren't paying more. Out of the 11 PC gamers I know in person, 7 switched to consoles during the recent shortages and haven't looked back, 2 are like me (prefer older games on lower end hardware + modding, can easily make do with a GTX 1660 and are just 'bunkering down' until sanity returns / the inevitable alternative market crash). That leaves just 2/11 in our local 'group' who are still buying any new GPU's for PC gaming. One who bought a Steam Deck is playing more and more on that and less on his desktop and is starting to "ask himself questions". I've read countless more online who bought an Xbox as a "stopgap" during the GPU drought only for it to end up more than that. If they're not careful, and if they keep shovelling sh*t in low-end tier, nVidia's real unintended long-term competition in the low-mid tier may well end up being Sony, Microsoft & Valve. I seriously miss the days when we had about half a dozen GPU manufacturers (Cirrus Logic, Matrox, S3, Tseng Labs, etc) competing in addition to the Array Technology Inc / 3DFX of the day, whose duopoly offpsring is all we're stuck with today.

 

[Sithaer]

I'm long done with flagships all round (CPU, GPU and smartphone). The sanest thing I did was learning to grow out of FOMO, and have grown immune to "must have" manufactured hype / "Keeping up with the Joneses" purchasing decisions in general. Pick a screen size you are comfortable with for the games you enjoy playing (not someone else's), then pick a resolution that gives a decent balance between quality and performance then switch off to the wall of unending marketing BS from those "upselling" price-inflated space-heaters as 'must-have' progress is the only sane thing to do in the current market.

As for the industry, the biggest problem though is not the 1% who will always pay $1k, $2k, $3k, $100k, for flagship GPU's purely as 'status symbols', but rather the fact nVidia (and AMD to some extent) all but abandoned the larger budget gaming market altogether. Going all the way back to my first 1980's 286 with 1MB RAM + 40MB HDD, I cannot for the life of me remember any period of time where after 3 years of "progress", budget graphics cards were replaced by something slower, yet that's what happened in the $150 segment with GTX 1650 Super (2019) -> GTX 1630 (2022), plus the $300 segment with RTX 2060 (2019) -> RTX 3050 (2022). (No-one in the budget sector is falling for the "you should compare tiers based on 30/50/60/70/80 model number not actual price" BS anymore). The reason GTX 1050Ti / 1060 / 1650 / 1660 are in the top 10 owned GPU's is there's still no actual price replacement in the tier that's most price sensitive. AMD aren't that much better constantly withholding budget APU's like 5300G or using stupidly crippled 4x bus speeds on the 6500XT (reality check to those who thinks it 'saves money' = even the $99 2GB GTX 1050 had a 16x bus...)

And the problem is budget gamers aren't paying more. Out of the 11 PC gamers I know in person, 7 switched to consoles during the recent shortages and haven't looked back, 2 are like me (prefer older games on lower end hardware + modding, can easily make do with a GTX 1660 and are just 'bunkering down' until sanity returns / the inevitable alternative market crash). That leaves just 2/11 in our local 'group' who are still buying any new GPU's for PC gaming. One who bought a Steam Deck is playing more and more on that and less on his desktop and is starting to "ask himself questions". I've read countless more online who bought an Xbox as a "stopgap" during the GPU drought only for it to end up more than that. If they're not careful, and if they keep shovelling sh*t in low-end tier, nVidia's real unintended long-term competition in the low-mid tier may well end up being Sony, Microsoft & Valve. I seriously miss the days when we had about half a dozen GPU manufacturers (Cirrus Logic, Matrox, S3, Tseng Labs, etc) competing in addition to the Array Technology Inc / 3DFX of the day, whose duopoly offpsring is all we're stuck with today.

Yup, thats also my main issue is that the budget segment is either gone or can't be called budget anymore with such prices or simply not worthy performance uplift vs older gen.
I've always used such hardware and I was fine, managed to play everything I wanted and then upgrade in a few years to a new gen budget hardware and keep going.

Can't really do that anymore when even a so called budget RTX 3050 or a RX 6600 cost ~360 $ brand new where I live while making ~500 $/month from most full time jobs around here..

What I did instead is to switch to the second hand market, we might have stupid prices here in my country but at least we have a solid second hand market forum/site where I can buy/sell hardware w/o having to worry much. 'so far problem free for years, knocks on wood..'

I'm just glad that at least we have the likes of budget Intel CPUs that can still game decently, AMD has like nothing to offer in my budget range for years now and thats why I switched back earlier this year.
GPUs are the same tho, both overpriced and even this second hand 3060 Ti cost me more than what I'm comfortable with but hopefully with my use case I wont have to upgrade for years now.

I also have a friend who sold his PC instead and switched to console gaming and has no plans on coming back.

 

[shovenose]

A few points here. For one, ports isn't as big a thing as multi platform. Many, many, many games are released on multiple platforms and the tools for that are better now, so less problems.

Second, the high end models (the 3090ti for instance) has basically taken the place of the Titan cards, and generally the performance of the different tiers has shifted, as has the prices (the GTX760 for instance was not the same tier as the RTX 3060). The latest mining craze and the pandemic really made things crazy, the MSRP of the RTX 3xxx cards were ok, but the actual prices were not.

Thirdly, higher resolutions really pushes things. If one is fine with 1080p 60Hz a whole lot of cheaper cards are just fine, especially if you tinker with the settings.

Yeah my primary pc with the rx6600 is great for 1080/60 and my secondary pc with gtx970 is honestly fine for 1080/60 as well I’m most games except for new aaa titles.

but now that I got a 4k monitor I need to save up for a top end card. Because it’s hard to push 4x the pixels at 60+ fps.

 

[Hofnaerrchen]

I want know what happened to AMD going to compete against Nvidia in the highend like they said they were playing to do after RDNA2 ?
This RX 7900 XTX & 7900 XT card should be label as RX 7800 XT RX & 7800 it isn't good enough for those 900 numbers at all. It isn't highend like they claimed they could do by their third RDNA genertation either.
Nvidia's Mid range cards are now $1,000-$1,200. Which isn't a good thing & it's not because of Inflation. I mean the RTX 3080 10gb had a MSRP of $699
it's almost twice as much for an 80 series card. Why because Look at what AMD has it's only priced in the Nvidia's Mid-range. There is no Compition at the highend for Nvidia so they can manuver prices for theirs teirs however they want.

You seem to be far to emotional on that topic and your kind of mindset is a good example for the underlying problem: To high - probably gutted about - expectations. What do you think AMD should have done? Without further ado create another, more powerful chip or do what other companies - and AMD has also done this before - last time with Zen 4 - increase power consumption? Navi 31 is the top of the notch chip in the RDNA3 setup thus making the initial GPUs 7900 class and - probably later on - refresh GPUs 7950 class. There is nothing they could have done about it. One grand is still a lot of money but - and I would say AMD has better insight on how their products fare against the competition - the way to compete is not on performance but on price and to some degree features. I doubt they are happy that they have to put 7900 XT/XTX against 4080 but that's reality, Unless there are real, indendent tests it's also a waste of time and effort to already freak out. It's also reality that nVIDIA has a much higher and less wide spread R&D budget. They had an advantage before and they obviously made their homework to stay in lead.

Apart from that: Most people will not be able or willing to buy 4090/80 or 7900/7800 class at all. It's the same as with CPUs. i9s and R9s do look great on paper but the most value you get out of i5/R5 or even i3/R3 products. In the end you don't have to be market leader to be successful.

Yeah my primary pc with the rx6600 is great for 1080/60 and my secondary pc with gtx970 is honestly fine for 1080/60 as well I’m most games except for new aaa titles.

but now that I got a 4k monitor I need to save up for a top end card. Because it’s hard to push 4x the pixels at 60+ fps.

You could also pass a generation, meanwhile turn down settings/use a lower upscaling resolution and get a mid-class next-gen GPU that will most likely outperform RX 7700 or RTX 4070. I think you do already know this and are doing exactly that.

We have to adjust our expectations and consumer behavior. When products don't sell companies will either go out of business - based on how AMD stayed in business with Bulldozer I doubt this will happen to them or nVIDIA - or adjust their product portfolio. We need not to forget that there is a 3rd player in the ring right now. Might get really interesting when intel get's their drivers right.

 

[qubit]

@evernessince I agree with everything.

Firstly, there's the rinse and repeat aspect of it: what, the latest card is 40% faster than the old one? You don't say! Wow! Yes, they might be hugely more powerful than cards from a decade ago, but one simply expects this year over year improvement. On top of that, one might have to upgrade their CPU and supporting components to keep get the full performance from it - that's almost the whole rig just to upgrade the graphics card.

And then there's the price. Oh, that damned price! Previously, one could aspire to buy the top card. Sure, it was somewhat pricey compared to a midrange model and cost more than the performance gained, but definitely within reach. Now? One needs to take out a loan for it (on a card that will be soundly bested in a year by the new model) and even if not, the prices are just obscene. As you say, designed to milk the most profits from the customer. What happened to the good old days where the new model cost the same or even less than the same model (same tier) from the previous year? Now, the card costs more in rough proportion to its performance uplift over the old model. Things aren't supposed to be this way.

Nowadays, I increasingly believe that if someone wants to game, just get a PS5 or Xbox. Hugely cheaper, great graphics performance with the latest models, far less hassle to make it work - the games usually just go, without any tweaking needed or possible - and so much cheaper than a gaming PC setup.

In a shameless plug, I wrote an article about this situation a little while ago people might like to read:

RTX 4090 enormously fast, enormously expensive: is building a new gaming rig worth it, or go console?

Judging from these benchmarks, the upcoming RTX 4090 is a very desirable graphics card that will breeze 4K gaming and likely not be bad at 8K either. However, there's something wrong when, at an eye watering $1600, a top end card may require a loan to buy it. Something that will be replaced with...

nerdzone.uk

 

[damric]

Blame Raja

 

[evernessince]

Blame Raja

I know a lot of people like to blame Raja but I'm not sure if Vega could have been amazing given the limited resources AMD had at the time. On top of that AMD split GPU development between two teams, one that worked on polaris and one that worked on Vega. Vega was good at compute where as polaris was good at raster. Maybe Vega would have been better if primitive shaders had actually been natively implemented.

That said, at least from what was reported at the time, Raja did like to act like a star. It's hard to know without actually being there.

 

[64K]

I know a lot of people like to blame Raja but I'm not sure if Vega could have been amazing given the limited resources AMD had at the time. On top of that AMD split GPU development between two teams, one that worked on polaris and one that worked on Vega. Vega was good at compute where as polaris was good at raster. Maybe Vega would have been better if primitive shaders had actually been natively implemented.

That said, at least from what was reported at the time, Raja did like to act like a star. It's hard to know without actually being there.

That's my take on it too. At the time Lisa Su was making CPU development the priority and not GPU development. This was actually a very smart move and just look at the strong AMD CPUs that came from it. Intel got caught off guard and tried to react by making the 6 core CPU mainstream for the same price as the 4 core used to be. I think this had a bearing on why Koduri went to Intel to develop GPUs also. Intel had the ability to have a strong R&D budget.