A colleague of mine asked me whether he should upgrade his 3080 to a 4080 not long ago. Then he asked me what graphics card I've got. I told him I've got a 6750 XT. He replied "What's that?" Is this AMD's fault, too?
To a very large extent, yes. While AMD has many problems, one of the foremost is their hilariously bad marketing department. NV knows how to make their products desirable - and it definitely doesn't hurt they have the technical backbone to support that, which believe it or not, while AMD doesn't have it, it wouldn't even matter all that much if they knew how to make Radeon products attractive.
- Day-one game ready driver updates for every major release wave, accompanied of a press release exalting their features
- Their relatively affordable cloud gaming service, accompanied by press releases that also do the possible and impossible to make both the game and their service look cool
- Regularly marketing new features and showcasing improvements to their existing technologies
- Healthy developer community which benefits from a strong communication line between the company and the people who generally make things tick from behind the scenes
- Extreme investment in research and development, while bringing insights to both industry insiders, enthusiasts and the average fan alike
- Quick to embrace new market trends, positioning themselves in leadership from the get-go: NVIDIA got into next-gen raytraced graphics, crypto and the deep learning craze from the very beginning
- They have mastered user engagement with these giveaways they do every now and then (see their latest GeForce Greats and the old cards signed by Jensen Huang himself and people vying for their prize)
- Rapid response to major issues, hotfixes usually issued within a couple of days for any major issues found
- Bad times hit you? Don't worry, that old GTX 970 you bought back in 2014 when you were a teenager is still getting driver updates. Put it on your PC and go play some games big guy.
- CEO embraces the memes and cultivates a very positive opinion of himself:
Do you love my jacket!? And the crowd goes wild, etc.
You add the small things here and there, a touch of cult of personality, market your products well and there you have the result: 90% and rising market share. We're in the shadow of the next big release and I have people making me offers for about 85% of the price I paid on my already giga overpriced ROG 4080, these have started to hold value like Apple devices do. I mean for heaven's sake I sold my GTX 1070 Ti this week
within 10 minutes of it being listed. Just gotta think about that.