Do you want AMD to make better low-end graphics cards?

[avidgamer121]

it as been like that since gtx 1050/ti launched

1050 ti is still decent 1080p low gaming, i have one and have pretty smooth experience. Also remember games look pretty decent at low settings nowadays and 4gb vram at this resolution is not that bad actually.

 

[Redwoodz]

Why do you have to make it about AMD? Clearly the whole entire market was a disaster the last years. This poll is quite frankly dumb.

 

[Tomgang]

1050 ti is still decent 1080p low gaming, i have one and have pretty smooth experience. Also remember games look pretty decent at low settings nowadays and 4gb vram at this resolution is not that bad actually.

I'm am not a low spec gamer with a rtx and a 4090. I had a gtx 1650 with 4 gb. That card was insufficient for my needs. I constantly ran out of vram.

Happy I got a2000. Expensive, but a much better gaming experience compared to 1650.

 

[Nordic]

The 6600 XT is starting to look very good at $275. It has difficult to beat performance per dollar

 

[_JP_]

The 6600 XT is starting to look very good at $275. It has difficult to beat performance per dollar

Right, because it has been in the market for a wee over a year now. Personally, below $200 would be fair for this card and $225~275 for the RX 6600 XT.
Besides, quoting a person (which must be tired of being tagged all the time ) that has a great overview of this market since the last 2 decades at least (while reviewing the RX 6600 XT):

I also have to wonder where the budget cards are. Even $380 for a "x60" class card is a lot of money; wasn't there a time when you could buy a decent graphics card to play games for $200?

And, to answer his question: Yes! from 2008 to 2013 (by default, you could always buy a G92 chip).

 

[wheresmycar]

Right, because it has been in the market for a wee over a year now. Personally, below $200 would be fair for this card and $225~275 for the RX 6600 XT.
Besides, quoting a person that has a great overview of this market since the last 2 decades at least (while reviewing the RX 6600 XT):

And, to answer his question: Yes! from 2008 to 2013 (by default, you could always buy a G92 chip).

The way the markets shaped up, i think we're lucky to see a 6600 XT at this price range. This is what I like about AMD - eventually fluctuating price drops which might further shift south of $275. To think of it, its a high performance graphics card at 1080p and does really well at 1440p too.

 

[_JP_]

Thing is, the markets owe you an offer of a product (good/bad) that fulfils a need of yours at the price you deem affordable for your personal budget. OTOH, you don't owe anything to the markets.
So that's where I draw a line, there is a perception of fair pricing that was set in the past - for the ability to reach a certain computing performance - and all the players involved shaped it (AMD, nVidia and even Intel). No matter how the markets evolved, those players can act just like it never happened, but demand can stall as well.
I, for one, don't feel lucky at all that a 6600 XT is at that price, or any.

 

[ARF]

Thing is, the markets owe you an offer of a product (good/bad) that fulfils a need of yours at the price you deem affordable for your personal budget. OTOH, you don't owe anything to the markets.

How does "a bad offer of a product" "fulfil" one's needs? Badly, right? High price for low service - the product should go unsold, and the company should make better offers.
But since these companies have so much wealth now, they no longer care about that basic "seller - buyer" agreements, and we need more strict regulations from the government.
Because, as it is clearly shown in this thread, the company abuses its dominant market position in relation with the buyer.

 

[Nordic]

Right, because it has been in the market for a wee over a year now. Personally, below $200 would be fair for this card and $225~275 for the RX 6600 XT.
Besides, quoting a person (which must be tired of being tagged all the time ) that has a great overview of this market since the last 2 decades at least (while reviewing the RX 6600 XT):

And, to answer his question: Yes! from 2008 to 2013 (by default, you could always buy a G92 chip).

With inflation and rising costs of decreasing node size, I don't know if we will see anything that low. The 6600 might ge below $200 next holiday season... Maybe. The market has changed so much.

 

[maxfly]

With inflation and rising costs of decreasing node size, I don't know if we will see anything that low. The 6600 might ge below $200 next holiday season... Maybe. The market has changed so much.

With demand ebbing off into nothingness around February, after the holidays (as it normally does). And the rx6600 being actively undercut and out performed by the 6600m in many scenarios. It will drop below $200 well before next holiday season imo. Last month with coupons you could get a 6600m for $133 shipped. Now that word has spread, it's jumped up to $187...in a month. As that continues to cut into rx6600 sales AIBs will have no choice but to drop prices in the big markets. Or they will never clear stock for rdna3.

 

[ARF]

With demand ebbing off into nothingness around February, after the holidays (as it normally does). And the rx6600 being actively undercut and out performed by the 6600m in many scenarios. It will drop below $200 well before next holiday season imo. Last month with coupons you could get a 6600m for $133 shipped. Now that word has spread, it's jumped up to $187...in a month. As that continues to cut into rx6600 sales AIBs will have no choice but to drop prices in the big markets. Or they will never clear stock for rdna3.

The last bit - this was supposed to be the so called "product replacement" that no longer exists. They for their own profits make new generations with higher performance and correspondingly higher price. I wouldn't be surprised if RDNA 3 doesn't offer anything under $200 and actually starts at 100% more.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

With inflation and rising costs of decreasing node size, I don't know if we will see anything that low. The 6600 might ge below $200 next holiday season... Maybe. The market has changed so much.

It's almost there. There's an MSI model on Newegg US right now that's $190 after promo code and rebate. Now, I know that doesn't necessarily count, but those sorts of incentives often precede a genuine price drop. Other models can be had for $220 or $230 straight up. I predict regular sub-$200 price points by the end of the year unless supply dries up.

 

[wheresmycar]

Thing is, the markets owe you an offer of a product (good/bad) that fulfils a need of yours at the price you deem affordable for your personal budget. OTOH, you don't owe anything to the markets.
So that's where I draw a line, there is a perception of fair pricing that was set in the past - for the ability to reach a certain computing performance - and all the players involved shaped it (AMD, nVidia and even Intel). No matter how the markets evolved, those players can act just like it never happened, but demand can stall as well.
I, for one, don't feel lucky at all that a 6600 XT is at that price, or any.

i share the same sentiments, more-so at the higher end of the spectrum which I'm more familiar with. I agree there was a some-what price standard being adhered to with small incremental increases per Gen and on top these cards were already expensive... now its completely pants especially with inflated halo X9XX SKUs impairing all price segments down south... more so with 70/80-series GPUs which cost an arm and a leg with RDNA3 - especially the rediculous $1200 asking for the 4080. By contrast, at the lower pecking order the last Gen 6600 XT sits way more favourably at $275 whether it meets the value criteria or not.

 

[Frick]

Seriously. We used to get capable, affordable x50 and even sometimes x40 cards from both camps, cards that could comfortably run 1080p less than 200 bucks. We haven't seen that since GTX 1050 and RX 560.

Have we though? I guess it depends on what you mean with "comfortably", but I've been on the budget end of the spectrum for most of my life and doing 1080p "comfortable" only became a thing when I bought the 2060 for €300. The Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro was €200 and that definitely did not run 1024*768 "comfortably". The only card I have ever owned that I can just set and forget was the RTX2060 @1080p. The GT240? A 2009 card that Required *a lot* of tweaking to run a 2007 game well on 1280x1024. The GTX550ti? Did do 1680x1050 well iirc, but required a lot of tinkering. The HD7750? Some games basically "unplayable". The GTX760 (MSRP of ~$250)? I could increase the settings, but it was definitely not what I now consider "comfortable" (this is foreshadowing to the conclusion of this piece). I went from that to the GTX2060, and that was actually comfortable @ 1080p/60hz. Set and forget. Every game. Then I got a 4K monitor and damnation it was gone. And BTW, the RX560 was very much not a good 1080p card, and honestly niether was the GTX 1050.

Cards are more expensive, yes. For some reason I in 2021/2022 did a spreadsheet on the prices (including adjusted for inflation) on every generation since the TNT2 (I lost the file sadly in a Total File System Corruption Due To Bad Memory, Or Whatever, or a TFSCDBM,W) and my conclusion was basically that ... yeah cards are more expensive but IMO not shockingly so, if one considers the highest end consumer cards as Titans (on the Nvidia side, there's not really an AMD equivalent) and the rest of the lineup as being basically buggered (Nvidia cards, again). There are 12 different (not countning things like the RTX 3080 20GB) RTX3xxx cards, and 8 RTX 2xxx cards, and 5 GTX 9xx cards. The RTX 3050 is not much more expensive than say the GTX1050ti.

The above paragraph refers to the MSRP of the cards, which as we know has been a fantasy for the past years. That says a lot about the world in general.

Now, for me the term "comfortable" has changed. It used to be "playable (dips to 20FPS is fine)" but now it's "I don't even want to look at the settings menu". Of course I am not "everyone else" (to their chagrin), but with the resolution increase I generally feel as if the MSRP's of GPU's did not drastically change for a long time. Then the RTX 4090 landed and that basically blew that notion out of the water. I have no idea if the upcoming AMD releases even have a MSRP.

Some random points follows.

• The RX6400 is a successor to the RX550, not the RX560, and as such is awesome, apart from the price. A $110 price (and low profile!) would be great.
• "Comfortable" gaming with a <$/€GPU hasn't been a thing for a long time, if ever. Maybe when they slashed the GTX970 to $220.
• GPU prices have fluctuated greatly. Every few years there's been $1000 cards, and then they plummet. This is because competition. Covid/the mining craze/scalpers proved to AMD and Nvidia that gamers buy cards ay any prices these days and so I don't see why they should be interested in lowering prices. Well, the massive old stocks they keep is a counterargument, but we'll see how that shakes out I guess.
• Maybe I'll make that spreadsheet again, it was pretty interesting actually.

 

[mclaren85]

Actually I want AMD to stop producing gpus altogether.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Actually I want AMD to stop producing gpus altogether.

Um, why?

 

[maxfly]

Um, why?

Glutton for punishment?

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Have we though? I guess it depends on what you mean with "comfortably", but I've been on the budget end of the spectrum for most of my life and doing 1080p "comfortable" only became a thing when I bought the 2060 for €300. The Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro was €200 and that definitely did not run 1024*768 "comfortably". The only card I have ever owned that I can just set and forget was the RTX2060 @1080p. The GT240? A 2009 card that Required *a lot* of tweaking to run a 2007 game well on 1280x1024. The GTX550ti? Did do 1680x1050 well iirc, but required a lot of tinkering. The HD7750? Some games basically "unplayable". The GTX760 (MSRP of ~$250)? I could increase the settings, but it was definitely not what I now consider "comfortable" (this is foreshadowing to the conclusion of this piece). I went from that to the GTX2060, and that was actually comfortable @ 1080p/60hz. Set and forget. Every game. Then I got a 4K monitor and damnation it was gone. And BTW, the RX560 was very much not a good 1080p card, and honestly niether was the GTX 1050.

Cards are more expensive, yes. For some reason I in 2021/2022 did a spreadsheet on the prices (including adjusted for inflation) on every generation since the TNT2 (I lost the file sadly in a Total File System Corruption Due To Bad Memory, Or Whatever, or a TFSCDBM,W) and my conclusion was basically that ... yeah cards are more expensive but IMO not shockingly so, if one considers the highest end consumer cards as Titans (on the Nvidia side, there's not really an AMD equivalent) and the rest of the lineup as being basically buggered (Nvidia cards, again). There are 12 different (not countning things like the RTX 3080 20GB) RTX3xxx cards, and 8 RTX 2xxx cards, and 5 GTX 9xx cards. The RTX 3050 is not much more expensive than say the GTX1050ti.

The above paragraph refers to the MSRP of the cards, which as we know has been a fantasy for the past years. That says a lot about the world in general.

Now, for me the term "comfortable" has changed. It used to be "playable (dips to 20FPS is fine)" but now it's "I don't even want to look at the settings menu". Of course I am not "everyone else" (to their chagrin), but with the resolution increase I generally feel as if the MSRP's of GPU's did not drastically change for a long time. Then the RTX 4090 landed and that basically blew that notion out of the water. I have no idea if the upcoming AMD releases even have a MSRP.

Some random points follows.

• The RX6400 is a successor to the RX550, not the RX560, and as such is awesome, apart from the price. A $110 price (and low profile!) would be great.
• "Comfortable" gaming with a <$/€GPU hasn't been a thing for a long time, if ever. Maybe when they slashed the GTX970 to $220.
• GPU prices have fluctuated greatly. Every few years there's been $1000 cards, and then they plummet. This is because competition. Covid/the mining craze/scalpers proved to AMD and Nvidia that gamers buy cards ay any prices these days and so I don't see why they should be interested in lowering prices. Well, the massive old stocks they keep is a counterargument, but we'll see how that shakes out I guess.
• Maybe I'll make that spreadsheet again, it was pretty interesting actually.

I've lived a budget-oriented life as well, but may be suffering from a faulty memory. You mentioned the 550 ti; I had one of those, and it handled 1080p okay when it was new. 60 fps at Ultra? Nope. But 30+ at Med-High, which was good enough for me. You're bang on about the definition of "comfortably", though. In sub-$200 land, 60+ fps at high settings is a big ask. Historically, if the framerate stays above 30, the frametimes are consistent, and the game doesn't look like poo, I amcontent. The 550 ti was the first card I ran at 1080p; my previous 9800 GT usually ran at 1152x864. I didn't upgrade the 550 ti until Fallout 4, which prompted an R9 380. That was good for 1080p for quite awhile, with an RX 470 taking its place. That did pretty good work until I picked up a secondhand 1060 6G as a stopgap before lucking out and managing to nab a 3050 for less than $200. (I had been holding out for a $200 6600, but that didn't happen in time.)

There are some caveats to the above. Most of the cards I had are actually above the level we were discussing. Also, I play a small-ish number of games, and they're usually a bit old, so my experiences aren't representative. BUT: The fact remains that I have yet to pay more than $200 for a graphics card, and have managed to have a good-to-great 1080p experience the entire time.

Comparing the 1050ti and 3050 is a bit disingenuous. The latter should be a successor to the former, but they're hugely different in practice. The 1050ti was a $150 part, while even the 3050's fantasy MSRP was $250. It STILL goes for over $300. :facepalm: It clobbers the 1050 ti in performance, but pulls nearly twice the power to do it. 1050 ti are only expensive new because they're out of production, so sellers are taking advantage of buyers who for whatever reason need to have one specifically and won't buy used. Secondhand they're <$100; 3050s still go for over $200.

I still think you're wrong about comfortable 1080p for $200. The R9 380, RX [4,5]70, GTX 960 and 1650S could all pull it off against the games of their day. The 5500 XT would have qualified, too, if the price bubble hadn't hit right after it released. Life at Medium ain't so bad. Usually.

Glutton for punishment?

Maybe.

 

[P4-630]

I vote more midrange..

 

[lemonadesoda]

I want a great performer in a cool quiet low power design. I’d pay a premium for those 4 specs.

 

[_JP_]

The 5500 XT would have qualified, too,

Might I interject, the 8GB version. I had it, no wimp at 1920x1200 for all the games I played and some were old, some were new, most of them I did what Frick described: Didn't even look at the settings.
The 4GB version of that card, I have my doubts. Before, I had the R9 280X (3GB) and some of the simulators I had would actually hit the vRAM barrier rather fast by 2016, other games were enough to slam the chip at 100% once some shading and occlusion were activated. The RX 5500 XT was within 5~15% performance above the R8 280X, albeit at some 150W less.

Otherwise I am agreeing with most of your points, although I see Frick's argument leaning towards the whole definition of a "set & forget" card being the base, adding resolution increase to the math, so what I end-up concluding is the existence of the unicorn "all-rounder, jack-of-all-trades, ace-of-none" for its supported life...and that was the 1080Ti that was most famous, I believe. But other contenders were the 8800 GT (G92), HD4870, HD5870, GTX580, R9 390, GTX970, 1060Ti imo.
Historically, that has been the card that when launched, people could be "comfortable" in their investment so that although expensive in the market range, it ran every contemporary game title with leeway for more, eventually more complex game engines in the supported card's life...assuming resolution did not change (this aspect has not been linear either in its evolution).

• The RX6400 (...) A $110 price (and low profile!) would be great.

Not going to happen while there are GT 1030s at the €100 price-point.

As for Hasmter's arguments, its the moment both camps decided that the next gen numbering wasn't going to match the previous at its performance AND price-points. So comparisons ran wide just before the crypto craze it and it sent already confusing segments into nightmare pricing. Then its everyone's understaning of their own expectations. Sure, a decade ago I didn't expect my HD 5770 (1GB) to do wonders, but I did ran all the games I threw at it at Medium and some at High, with a 1080p/60 screen. IIRC, at that time, aiming for 1080p playability was still...not the case, 1680x1050 was, while most displays were still 1024x768, 1280x800 or 1440x900.
Either consumers expectations raise or their demands, the market will have to comply to turn a profit. I think what both of you are concluding is that expectation has been all over the place and the demand has not been consistent, because of the various factors that existed for the last 6 years or so, but yes, this should not be an excuse for having a market segment "disappear" over the existing ones all raising themselves, imo. Even if just a bit.

 

[Frick]

Comparing the 1050ti and 3050 is a bit disingenuous. The latter should be a successor to the former, but they're hugely different in practice. The 1050ti was a $150 part, while even the 3050's fantasy MSRP was $250. It STILL goes for over $300. :facepalm: It clobbers the 1050 ti in performance, but pulls nearly twice the power to do it. 1050 ti are only expensive new because they're out of production, so sellers are taking advantage of buyers who for whatever reason need to have one specifically and won't buy used. Secondhand they're <$100; 3050s still go for over $200.

Yeah. The Nvidia lineup has really changed. I would argue that xx60 is now xx50. And with the Titans dissapearing and the x90's taking their place it sort of makes sense that the entire lineup has shifted.f

I still think you're wrong about comfortable 1080p for $200. The R9 380, RX [4,5]70, GTX 960 and 1650S could all pull it off against the games of their day. The 5500 XT would have qualified, too, if the price bubble hadn't hit right after it released. Life at Medium ain't so bad. Usually.

Oh yes I'm not preaching gospel. But looking at TPU reviews the R9 380 it did well in some titles, less well in others. The 1650s were released at the end of the XBONE and PS4's lifecycles so not really a surprise it did well. That was a thing I forgot to mention: console release cycles and the growth of gaming as an industry and the performance impact of multi platform. There are few Crysis-like games these days, the closest thing is maybe Cyberpunk 2077, but with Unity and the Unreal engine the only real graphical pushes comes with new consoles so the cards released at the end of the consoles cycle handle them just fine. The step from 1080p to 4K is a lot more than from say 720p to 1080p. Add to that the high refresh rate targets.

But yeah, medium and even low doesn't impact the quality of the game at all. I played through most of World of Warcraft: Draenor on a really slow computer (Intel e8400, GT520) and it was ... not a great game but the experience was just fine.

I'm not saying that the price of GPU's are fine. They're not. Especially not where I live (seriously some retailers are really f'ed in the pluto if you know what I mean). But I'm also saying that people are saying that inflation does not exist and that there is a golden line for GPU's and that they are wrong in that.

 

[Space Lynx]

The 6600 XT is starting to look very good at $275. It has difficult to beat performance per dollar

It was on sale for $218 recently. Sold out fast. I tried getting one for my niece's build. 6600 xt can do witcher 3 maxed out at 130 fps 1080p. insane value

 

[Sound_Card]

I don't understand...

You can get a 6600 for almost 200 bucks which is incredible at 1080p raster. Why would you want something cheaper and worse than that? Because that would be a complete waste of money. Considering that there will be RDNA 2 graphics in all modern AMD CPU's going forward, it makes no sense to make a theoretical 7500 or 7400.

The way I see it is like this:
XTX is the new XT, and XT is the new non-XT. There will be no non-XT cards anymore and everything got moved up by 100 in the naming process.

7950XTX = $1200
7950XT = $1100
7900XTX = $1000
7900XT = $900
7800XTX = $700
7800XT = $600
7700XTX = $400
7700XT = $300

If you want something cheaper, you buy a last gen graphics card. I just don't see it as being realistic having anything cheaper than $300 for next gen entry. Process nodes are expensive, silicon is rare, transportation is costly.

 

[sLowEnd]

I would like to see better low end cards, especially better low profile (and/or single slot) cards. It's a pretty under-served niche that they could definitely do better in. The best thing to come out in a long while is the Geforce A2000, which is expensive because it's a professional card.