Nvidia's future endeavors

[eidairaman1]

Year its ti and titan x

 

[Chetkigaming]

You just pay premium(980) for sake of the next premium products, thats all, mid range will always be competitive, but highest-end not. So if you have money for best hardware, you will pay today, and you`ll get better premium hardware tomorrow.

 

[HumanSmoke]

So I was thinking 970 vs 980, the 970 wins in about everywhere. I'm thinking nvidia must be holding back something. The price difference is not justied in any way

The GTX 970 features 13 of 16 SMM's active

- that presupposes that between the fully enabled GTX 980 there should be 14 and 15 SMM salvage parts. A GTX 970 Ti could easily slot into the pricing gap and also allow for a price drop of the 980 once AMD bring some new competition and/or a GM 200 based GTX 980 Ti shows up, without disturbing the product stack pricing below the GTX 970 and incoming GTX 960 Ti.

 

[Naito]

A GTX 970 Ti could easily slot into the pricing gap and also allow for a price drop of the 980 once AMD bring some new competition and/or a GM 200 based GTX 980 Ti shows up, without disturbing the product stack pricing below the GTX 970 and incoming GTX 960 Ti.

It would cannibalize the GTX 980 too much. The GTX 970 is already within 10% of the GTX 980s performance, so something slotting in between just doesn't make sense for Nvidia, regardless of competition. There is already plenty of custom partner 970s that probably already meet or surpass the reference 980s performance. I just don't see anything fitting in that gap. However, next year when Nvidia refreshes the Maxwell lineup, we may see a GTX 1070? squeeze in.

 

[HumanSmoke]

It would cannibalize the GTX 980 too much. The GTX 970 is already within 10% of the GTX 980s performance, so something slotting in between just doesn't make sense for Nvidia, regardless of competition. There is already plenty of custom partner 970s that probably already meet or surpass the reference 980s performance. I just don't see anything fitting in that gap. However, next year when Nvidia refreshes the Maxwell lineup, we may see a GTX 1070? squeeze in.

That's why I referenced two scenario's. The 980 could well move down in pricing once GM 200 drops. Depending on the competitive landscape, it isn't beyond the realms of possibility that GM 200 could provide three (or more) SKUs or more given the likely granularity of the large die yields. Depending upon what AMD's Fiji provides it may be that Nvidia leads off with a fully enabled GPU, and large dies generally yield two or more salvage parts. If either is this happens, or Nvidia slot in a 970 Ti, or the 980 gets renamed x70 and a higher clocked GM 204 revision takes the original price point, the fact remains that there is enough separation between the $550 and $330 price points that a realignment at the top doesn't result in a cascade down through the product stack - which was half my reasoning for the original question posed - why the price disparity between two SKU's that show a ~ 12-15% performance difference.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

The 670 was hugely overpriced compared to the 660Ti, and both were based on the same chip. Simply comes down to them being able to charge a premium due to lack of competition. Look at the price of the largely similar 760 now...

It's going to be an almost exact repeat of Kepler.

 

[Hilux SSRG]

The 670 was hugely overpriced compared to the 660Ti, and both were based on the same chip. Simply comes down to them being able to charge a premium due to lack of competition. Look at the price of the largely similar 760 now...

It's going to be an almost exact repeat of Kepler.

The launch prices of the 660Ti/670/680 were all $300/400/500. Each one was 11% more performance per Benjamin spent.

What's different this time around is the 970 at $329 and 980 at $549, Nvidia is just seeing how much they can get away with.

Sucks for uninformed consumers who are getting milked buying the "high end" chip.

 

[newconroer]

Nvidia is *yawn* until Pascal.

 

[64K]

The launch prices of the 660Ti/670/680 were all $300/400/500. Each one was 11% more performance per Benjamin spent.

What's different this time around is the 970 at $329 and 980 at $549, Nvidia is just seeing how much they can get away with.

Sucks for uninformed consumers who are getting milked buying the "high end" chip.

The GTX 980 definitely isn't worth the price. Compared to the 970 you get ~11% increase in performance for ~66% increase in cost with the 980. I don't know what to say about people that don't know that the 980 is a mid range Maxwell. There are certainly enough reviews out there and people on tech and gaming sites saying as much. If some people are going to spend $550 on a GPU without reading a review then I don't know how they can be helped.

 

[the54thvoid]

Not sure why people are still harping on about prices. It's an irrelevance. The 970 is the best option for sure - we all know that but if you want the premium part (for now) it's the 980. You pay that silly premium for the part that simply is the fastest. It doesn't matter it's only 10% faster. It's the FASTEST single GPU card available. Same way Intel charge a massive premium for the x960 chip although this time they've gone and castrated the x930 part with only 6 cores, not 8.

Some people - and they're not fools (and it's really f*cking obnoxious, cheeky and lazy to say they are) - will want to buy the fastest part. If some folks don't like that, it doesn't matter.

FTR, I don't have a 980 but only because my current card doesn't merit it. If I was upgrading, hell yes I'd buy the 980 and clock the pants off it.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

The GTX 980 definitely isn't worth the price. Compared to the 970 you get ~11% increase in performance for ~66% increase in cost with the 980. I don't know what to say about people that don't know that the 980 is a mid range Maxwell. There are certainly enough reviews out there and people on tech and gaming sites saying as much. If some people are going to spend $550 on a GPU without reading a review then I don't know how they can be helped.

If I had $3k set aside to throw at a computer I would have been all over the 980... There's no doubt about it. And I can assure you there are plenty of NON-STUPID people that are in that position...

 

[Hilux SSRG]

So does anyone think NVidia will support Dx12 with next year's GM210 release or stick with 11.2?

 

[64K]

Not sure why people are still harping on about prices. It's an irrelevance. The 970 is the best option for sure - we all know that but if you want the premium part (for now) it's the 980. You pay that silly premium for the part that simply is the fastest. It doesn't matter it's only 10% faster. It's the FASTEST single GPU card available. Same way Intel charge a massive premium for the x960 chip although this time they've gone and castrated the x930 part with only 6 cores, not 8.

Some people - and they're not fools (and it's really f*cking obnoxious, cheeky and lazy to say they are) - will want to buy the fastest part. If some folks don't like that, it doesn't matter.

FTR, I don't have a 980 but only because my current card doesn't merit it. If I was upgrading, hell yes I'd buy the 980 and clock the pants off it.

You can overclock the 970 and close the gap again. You know that the GTX 970 is the best option for price performance. I know that. Probably most of the members on this site know that but not everyone knows that.

Sucks for uninformed consumers who are getting milked buying the "high end" chip.

There are uninformed people out there that look at the price of the GTX 980 and think that it must be something special over the 970 for the $220 price difference.
You are looking at things from an informed enthusiasts point of view. There's nothing wrong with that and wanting the best. Hell, I don't need a $500 monitor but I wanted it anyway and got it.

So does anyone think NVidia will support Dx12 with next year's GM210 release or stick with 11.2?

DX12 will be released with Windows 10. I'm not sure if it will be for Win 8 or Win 7 though.

 

[Hilux SSRG]

There are uninformed people out there that look at the price of the GTX 980 and think that it must be something special over the 970 for the $220 price difference.
You are looking at things from an informed enthusiasts point of view. There's nothing wrong with that and wanting the best. Hell, I don't need a $500 monitor but I wanted it anyway and got it.

DX12 will be released with Windows 10. I'm not sure if it will be for Win 8 or Win 7 though.

Nothing wrong with people who buy the best there is or for whatever reason that floats their boat. Just offering up that those "uninformed" may regret buying a 970/980 when GM210 drops next year and they see a big performance jump.

As to the Dx12, AMD seems to be touting support for it on the R9 285 so I figure NVidia might support it prior to Windows 10 release.

 

[64K]

My bad Hilux SSRG. I meant to direct this to the54thvoid.

Sucks for uninformed consumers who are getting milked buying the "high end" chip.

There are uninformed people out there that look at the price of the GTX 980 and think that it must be something special over the 970 for the $220 price difference.
You are looking at things from an informed enthusiasts point of view. There's nothing wrong with that and wanting the best. Hell, I don't need a $500 monitor but I wanted it anyway and got it.

 

[HumanSmoke]

You can overclock the 970 and close the gap again.

I'm of the understanding that the GTX 980 can also be overclocked, so at best, the performance gap remains.

You know that the GTX 970 is the best option for price performance. I know that. Probably most of the members on this site know that but not everyone knows that.

I don't think that point is under dispute. It is also a fact that if you want performance but aren't particularly fazed by price then the 980 fills that need. If it weren't the case, HWBot would be littered with sub-zero GTX 970 runs. As it stands, the 980 makes a convincing case for the competitive benchmarker.

There are uninformed people out there that look at the price of the GTX 980 and think that it must be something special over the 970 for the $220 price difference.

'ain't no cure for stupid - there are uninformed people buying hardware every day. I'd also suggest that the majority of GTX 980 buyers are well aware of the price-performance disparity, but either have a need/desire for the card and/or have a different perception of its cost ($550 means different things to someone on minimum wage versus someone pulling down a good salary). Depreciation on high end graphics cards - especially for serial upgraders- should negate any talk of price/performance arguments before the outset.

DX12 will be released with Windows 10. I'm not sure if it will be for Win 8 or Win 7 though.

DirectX 11.3 will be the "DX 12 Lite" for Win8 (and possibly Win7). Since the DX 12 spec hasn't actually been finalized it is rather premature to announce full compatibility. What is known is that both AMD's current GCN architecture and Nvidia's Fermi, Kepler, and Maxwell will all have some level of compatibility with DirectX 12. Until the hardware level and feature level specifications are released, it's still a guessing game as to what level each architecture will have compliance.

 

[RejZoR]

Maybe AMD is playing it safe by waiting for DX12 specs like they did with Radeon 9700 and that worked out great for them...

 

[Naito]

Until the hardware level and feature level specifications are released, it's still a guessing game as to what level each architecture will have compliance.

Maybe AMD is playing it safe by waiting for DX12 specs like they did with Radeon 9700 and that worked out great for them...

All news so far is suggesting that there will be no hardware specification changes. It will remain the same as the current DX11(.2). Although not a strong basis to go off, since they could just use a custom subset of DX12/more extensions to the superset of DX11 already in use, no hardware changes may make sense for the Xbox One.