Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition

[scaryjim]

... I really do not know what AMD PR is doing - they should be out pushing out as many of the AIB cards out for review as possible ...

I'm pretty sure it's the AIB partners who would send those boards out for review - I doubt AMD have much control over that, and if the partners haven't produce cards yet because they're fulfilling back-orders for reference cards they simply won't have custom boards to send out for review. It's not like AMD has a huge war chest of PR money to throw at any problems that crop up.

Didn't you post a thing about there being supply issues due to extreme adverse weather in south-east asia? In which case you *know* what the problem is, and you *know* it's not within AMD's control. They can't get cards out for review if those cards don't exist.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm pretty sure it's the AIB partners who would send those boards out for review - I doubt AMD have much control over that, and if the partners haven't produce cards yet because they're fulfilling back-orders for reference cards they simply won't have custom boards to send out for review. It's not like AMD has a huge war chest of PR money to throw at any problems that crop up.

Didn't you post a thing about there being supply issues due to extreme adverse weather in south-east asia? In which case you *know* what the problem is, and you *know* it's not within AMD's control. They can't get cards out for review if those cards don't exist.

Nvidia is exactly in the same situation and you need to spend money to make money!

Nvidia with less volume than AMD at launch still managed to get AIB cards produced in some volume at the same time as the reference card and seeded out to a few review sites.

Honestly how much does it cost AMD to seed a few priority cards to reviewers?? Think of all the AIB RX480 pre-orders they will have saved. In fact think of all those RX480 reference pre-orders too??

Nvidia has done that in the past with the 1GHZ GTX560TI cards which they used to try and spoil the HD6950 launch.

Those cards barely made production.

It does indicate Nvidia has more control over AIB partners than AMD does apparently,when they cannot even get 10 examples of the RX 480 Nitro in for review this week.

Edit!!

Also,isn't the GF 14NM fab in New York??

Plus that supply issue was regarding Nvidia not AMD IIRC.

Second Edit!!

Didn't Tarinder say they were getting an AIB RX480 card within a week THREE WEEKS ago??

What does AMD expect - wait another two to three weeks while 1000s of AIB GTX1060 cards flood the market.

Yes,all those reviews with AIB GTX1060 cards being compared to the reference RX480 with its throttling issues,which makes the GTX1060 look better than it probably is.

The same thing happened with the R9 290/290X - great initial sales and by the time the AIB cards came,Nvidia had responded well enough with some price cuts on AIB GTX780 cards.

Nvidia has greater mindshare than AMD,so people won't bother waiting if they can get an AIB GTX1060 NOW,with the ETA of AIB cards apparently slipping from this week to August now,even if the AIB RX480 is the better card,it is still an unknown quantity.

Its clever marketing again from Nvidia - get a few AIB cards out. They will be reviewed and owners on forums will no doubt talk about them,whilst the reference RX480 will look less and less enticing.

Nvidia knows how to paper over its cracks,AMD apparently makes them look more obvious.

Lets see if AMD gets some AIB RX480 reviews out this week,because Nvidia is going to make sure they get everyone of the better ones out for review as quickly as they can.

AMD needs to keep pushing the RX480 otherwise they will lose all the momentum of the RX480 launch.

[SlickR]

My brother was going to get a GTX 970 and I told him to wait for the 1060. It is a little more expensive for the 1060, but he can make his money back by having a 150w card instead of a 250w card!

Not really. 100W difference, even assuming your brother has no life and games 6 hours every day, that is at best few dollars difference per year. Essentially, replace 1 of your old hologenic lights with a led light and bam you save more on electricity.

[SlickR]

The cheapest card I can find is 290 euros and its not even available yet. The cheapest RX 480 8GB is 260 euros though though out of stock for now.

So personally I'm going to likely go with a custom RX 480, but wait at least a month for prices to normalize and reach their recommended price. Maybe we'll see more competition from both teams and have both cards sell even cheaper.

[HW90]

I thought this was going to be a ripoff but looking at OCUK they have a few cards in the £230-£240 range which is right where the 8GB 480s are and slightly above the 4GBs so it might actually be a good buy providing you don't mostly play hitman.

[kalniel]

Hexus, I can't see the 3D mark stability/stress test results.. I presume it passed?

[Defiant]

I can see this taking chunks out of the RX480 sales if they can keep the prices close as the performance and electricity savings kind of make this a no brainer.

I can see AMD getting rather worried sooner than later if this cards sales flops, I really wish that they would sell it off to someone with deep pockets to help fund a balanced battle with Nvidia as the state of the market is helping only Nvidia

[DanceswithUnix]

I can see this taking chunks out of the RX480 sales if they can keep the prices close as the performance and electricity savings kind of make this a no brainer.

I can see AMD getting rather worried sooner than later if this cards sales flops, I really wish that they would sell it off to someone with deep pockets to help fund a balanced battle with Nvidia as the state of the market is helping only Nvidia

Not everyone is convinced: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-downgrade...m-wells-fargo/

When the 4GB cards turn up in volume, that might turn things around a bit. I can't see anyone much caring about the drop from 8GB to 6GB, but from 4GB to 3GB will start making people uneasy.

[kalniel]

Agreed - AMD might not be appealing to forum enthusiasts quite as much, but we are a minority. They've gone after volume, and by any accounts I've heard, the sales of the reference cards (that tend to go to system builders) have been fantastic, to the point they're even ramping production of more OEM preferred specification. Add in the console wins and I don't think you need to be worried about a sales flop.

That said, for the enthusiast AMD have also performed a huge favour - they have at least matched the card nVidia were probably hoping to sell in volume, forcing nVidia to match AMD pricing, not the other way around. nVidia won't mind too much - they've still got margins, especially on the high end cards, but it makes the ~£200 (to £250, thanks brexit) area much more competitive and prevents quite as much price gouging. At the MSRPs $230 vs $299 for reference cards I was expecting a big price difference, but it's basically nothing in UK shops.

[The Hand]

Not really. 100W difference, even assuming your brother has no life and games 6 hours every day, that is at best few dollars difference per year. Essentially, replace 1 of your old hologenic lights with a led light and bam you save more on electricity.

He would be using it for work as well, as stated earlier in the thread.

[Parm]

Folks, just to update you all on a couple of things:

We will look to add 3DMark Time Spy in the very near future and we will also transition Doom from OpenGL to Vulkan. Time constraints have prevented us from doing so on our initial 1060 reviews, but we hope to add these elements in time for custom-cooled RX 480s - yes, they are on their way.

In the meantime, Hitman, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Total War: Warhammer have all been tested in DX12 mode. The latest patch for Tomb Raider (1.0.668.1) was applied.

Kal - Tarinder did attempt to run the 3DMark stress test, but it kept coming back with 0, which he's putting down to an error in the software.

[kalniel]

Folks, just to update you all on a couple of things:

We will look to add 3DMark Time Spy in the very near future and we will also transition Doom from OpenGL to Vulkan. Time constraints have prevented us from doing so on our initial 1060 reviews, but we hope to add these elements in time for custom-cooled RX 480s - yes, they are on their way.

In the meantime, Hitman, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Total War: Warhammer have all been tested in DX12 mode. The latest patch for Tomb Raider (1.0.668.1) was applied.

Kal - Tarinder did attempt to run the 3DMark stress test, but it kept coming back with 0, which he's putting down to an error in the software.

Thanks so much for the information! Great engagement.

[cheesemp]

Folks, just to update you all on a couple of things:

We will look to add 3DMark Time Spy in the very near future and we will also transition Doom from OpenGL to Vulkan. Time constraints have prevented us from doing so on our initial 1060 reviews, but we hope to add these elements in time for custom-cooled RX 480s - yes, they are on their way.

In the meantime, Hitman, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Total War: Warhammer have all been tested in DX12 mode. The latest patch for Tomb Raider (1.0.668.1) was applied.

Kal - Tarinder did attempt to run the 3DMark stress test, but it kept coming back with 0, which he's putting down to an error in the software.

Thanks guys. Looking forward to the new benchmarks! Can't wait to see how a custom 480 compares with a custom 1060

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Agreed - AMD might not be appealing to forum enthusiasts quite as much, but we are a minority. They've gone after volume, and by any accounts I've heard, the sales of the reference cards (that tend to go to system builders) have been fantastic, to the point they're even ramping production of more OEM preferred specification. Add in the console wins and I don't think you need to be worried about a sales flop.

That said, for the enthusiast AMD have also performed a huge favour - they have at least matched the card nVidia were probably hoping to sell in volume, forcing nVidia to match AMD pricing, not the other way around. nVidia won't mind too much - they've still got margins, especially on the high end cards, but it makes the ~£200 (to £250, thanks brexit) area much more competitive and prevents quite as much price gouging. At the MSRPs $230 vs $299 for reference cards I was expecting a big price difference, but it's basically nothing in UK shops.

But the problem is that many consumers never really expected the GTX1060 to be released only a few weeks later - Nvidia has far more exposure on gaming and general youtube type sites,and these are getting more and more influential than the traditional computing sites.

AMD would have had a better idea of this happening IMHO,and they had THREE WEEKS to do something about it.

This is the problem - you can get an AIB GTX1060 now,whilst you can only get reference RX480 cards - gamers will have those cards NOW,and they will be talking about them on numerous sites. With AMD with don't even have the cards available for the next few weeks - and since reviews have not been released,it is pushing people towards the GTX1060.

In real life I know far more people would get Nvidia over AMD and they tend to be the non-enthusiasts and its worse the younger they are.

Heck,one of my mates who posts here,has a RX480 Nitro+ pre-order and nearly cancelled that to buy a GTX1060 since he was getting fedup of waiting. Seen it on OcUK,and you see it elsewhere too and these are enthusiasts.

AMD has less marketshare than Nvidia too - they need to be more aggressive.

AMD is far too reactive - they needed to have had the AIB RX480 already in to spoil the GTX1060 reviews. The GTX1060 reviews of both FE and custom cards should have had AIB RX480 cards - it would have made the GTX1060 less of a glowing recommendation that many well known sites like TPU,Ars,etc have made over the RX480. Then when you add some of the well known youtube channels giving glowing recommendations over the RX480,it just boggles belief AMD seems to not understand that Nvidia would be doing everything to reduce the sheen of the RX480 launch.

Its no point resting on their laurels,just because they had a good launch nearly a month ago - they need to keep up the pressure on Nvidia,not give them chances like they are doing now and Tarinder said they EXPECTED the RX480 to be faster.

This is the same company which seeded pre-overclocked AIB 1GHZ GTX560TI cards,which were eventually withdrawn,to look good against the reference HD6950.

It is no point winning the opening salvo to lose the entire battle.

Remember,AMD has only 30% of the discrete market,so they are the ones who need to be pushing to get more sales 24/7.

Edit!!

This is Nvidia literally mocking AMD before the RX480 launch:

https://twitter.com/pellynv/status/747805063519731713

They did it just after the HD7900 series launch too.

[scaryjim]

... Nvidia with less volume than AMD at launch still managed to get AIB cards produced in some volume at the same time as the reference card and seeded out to a few review sites. ...

I think the point you're missing is that nvidia's partners won't be selling the reference GTX 1060. Since nvidia have decided to be the only source for the FE 1060 they HAVE to allow partners to release custom versions at the same time, otherwise they'll have NO volume in the channel at all. That will mean they've been supplying bare silicon to partners for months, who'll have been building up stock of custom cards ready for a known launch day. Since AMD decided to have a partner-distributed reference version, they'll have been supplying pre-built cards to partners in the run up to the reference launch, which means they won't have been shipping bare silicon, and the unexpectedly high demand for the reference RX 480 is likely to have left silicon in lower supply for their AIB partners.

Besides which, I'm not convinced we ever had a firm release date for partner RX 480s, so there's no way to know if they are delayed, or if we're still within the window that AMD planned for reference card sales only. And once you've set those kind of release schedules, you CAN'T simply change your plans at the drop of a hat, because you plan production ramps and logistics in advance. If anything AMD are currently victims of their own success - again, you've posted quotes from Gibbo saying that one reason for AMD's delays is that partners are having to fulfil back-orders for reference cards.

Most of AMD's partners are based in SE Asia and they'll be constructing custom cards in their own facilities out there, so where the GF fab is is irrelevant; if there's been supply and assembly disruption in SE Asia it will have impacted the release of custom RX 480s.

I honestly don't think that most of these delays are within AMD's power to correct - they followed a fairly routine launch plan and had excellent availability of the reference card on release, but the demand ended up outstripping their expectations and they've had to fulfil all the back-orders for reference cards before they can start shipping partner cards. Most companies would consider it a huge success to have sold out of their entire initial production run of cards.

Besieds, the GTX 1060 isn't so far ahead of the RX 480 that the people who've already chosen to wait three weeks will be put of by hanging on another week or two to see what the partner cards are like and what price they come in at. I think the biggest threat to partner RX 480s might actually be the RX 470...!

[excalibur1814]

£250 later and I now own a 980. I would have considered this card, if it had performed better, or even the same, as the 980. Then again the price is also a complete pain. How can this company charge these prices again and again? Oh... People pay them that's why.