Read more.The AMD GPU architecture roadmap was updated (slightly) too.
Read more.The AMD GPU architecture roadmap was updated (slightly) too.
AMD is going too slow with putting their video cards on the market.
Also I think they had to come up with RX 490 that could fight with at least GTX 1070. as of now nVidia is having high margins due to a monopoly with their high end cards.
GTX 1060 is coming soon, and there are conflict reports about its performance relative to RX 480.
Bad play from AMD.
The more you live, less you die. More you play, more you die. Isn't it great.
Margin isn't everything. AMD have gone for volume, and that's going to be much better for their balance sheet in the short to medium term. They're far better off investing their limited resources in these mainstream cards that will sell in huge volume then taking a risk on a high-end launch that might not compare favourably with nvidia and cost them. That high end card will come, a bit further down the line, at a time when nvidia don't really have anything new to bring to the market, and they'll have ample opportunity to tweak the performance and efficiency of Vega. That next-tier card will come, when AMD are ready for it. The fact is the majority of the market for discrete cards don't buy £300 - £500 GPUs. They don't even buy £200 - £300 GPUs. They buy £150 and cheaper GPUs. That's a market that AMD is going to have these new products in over thge next month or two, while nvidia will have nothing new there. Expect to see stories about AMDs increasing market share over the next 3 - 6 months.
The 1060 isn't going to compete with the 470 and 460, though, so isn't really relevant to this story. It's barely going to compete with the RX 480 pricewise - it's at the very top end of the projected 480 pricing, which means those performance comparisons to the reference RX 480 are going to be moot - it'll be competing with partner cards with better cooling and power delivery and higher clock speeds (and hopefully faster memory, IMNSHO). That's going to be a much closer comparison than we're currently seeing projected, and I think the picture will look very different, with the most expensive RX 480s matching the GTX 1060 at the same price, and the custom GTX 1060s being faster but also costing more.
We won't know that for at least 6 months, and probably 12, as we haven't seen this whole generation play out yet. No doubt nvidia will bring a card into the < £150 space that AMD's going to take with the 470 and 460, and we know that AMD will be releasing Vega towards the end of the year to fill that high-end enthusiast space that they're currently handing to nvidia. If, come March-time next year, AMD have gained market share from nvidia and have a Vega-based card that's challenging nvidia's fastest cards, it'll have been a pretty good play.
Assuming that Vega is similar in architecture to Polaris, but with HBM2 memory, we can see that a later launch will also benefit from several months work on Polaris drivers.
The 470 will be a very very compelling card for the price. Especially as at 1206MHz default clock, a third party variant should O/C nicely, possibly to the level where it is on par with stock 480.
460 is comparatively weak, but the price is nice. A good card for people who mostly play old games or who are happy to play with reduced settings. Or who have an older computer that simply can't power a 470.
Vulkan and DX12 benchmarks are pretty bad for Nvidia so far, whereas AMD is gaining massively. Part of this is because Nvidia's DX11 drivers get more out of their hardware than AMD's, but the issue for Nvidia here is that AMD have more theoretical performance available that VK/DX12 can utilise. The 1060 might be the best value DX11 card, but you have to consider the future.
Well, nVidia have now both volume and high margins. If AMD had compiting card, things would be quite different.
I know GTX 1060 will be more expensive for a little bit more performance, but it is on the marketing side and the way how people think, so that they can brag how they have fastest GPU in the category.
people tend to think that nVidia is so much better which informed people know is not completely true.
I agree with you on that, but still AMD needs to be more aggressive, as they need to do a catch up both on CPU and GPU side.
The more you live, less you die. More you play, more you die. Isn't it great.
That's my reading of the market too, tbh. The front end snip is 11%, so an overclock to around 1400MHz would give it the necessary compute to match the 480. Main issue might be the bandwidth - I reckon the 480 is already limited and the 470 theoretically uses slower memory. But if a partner is willing to push the 470 to 1350MHz+ and clock the memory nearer to 8Gbps, you could well see it matching a stock 480...
EDIT for crosspost:
Nvidia still don't have a volume product. The GTX 1060 is going to be close to £300 on launch. That's not the volume market, that's still niche/high-end. The RX 480 is the very top end of the volume market. It's the most expensive card AMD think can address the mainstream, and they priced it at around £200. The RX 470 and RX 460 will be the genuine volume products.
I reckon the 480 probably has reasonable margins, tbh. In terms of BOM it must be identical to the RX 470 - they're based on the same GPU, and almost certainly use the same PCB and cooler. AMD reckon they can turn a profit on the RX 470 at $149. So the $199 they charge for the 4GB RX 480 is an extra $50 for exactly the same hardware. The chip just passed a couple more binning tests. That's not bad in terms of overall margin.
Last edited by scaryjim; 12-07-2016 at 12:34 PM.
People wanting to brag about having the fastest GPU in a category is not volume. Volume is when people say I have a budget (which as mentioned, is typically <£200), what can I get for that budget. AMD are going for that. nVidia are pricing themselves out of that.
more cross post edits :
Agreed. Going from the power stuff it might not even be binned especially hard, just given a few more volts. Higher return rate more than covered by the additional margin.I reckon the 480 probably has reasonable margins, tbh. In terms of BOM it must be identical to the RX 470 - they're based on the same GPU, and almost certainly use the same PCB and cooler. AMD reckon they can turn a profit on the RX 470 at $149. So the $199 they charge for the 4GB RX 480 is an extra $50 for exactly the same hardware. The chip just passed a couple more binning tests. That's not bad in terms of overall margin.
Not that I reckon the 1060 is exactly costing nVidia a bomb to produce either, but AMD can easily drop the 480 prices to get clear air between them if they need to.
Last edited by kalniel; 12-07-2016 at 12:43 PM.
I agree with pretty much everything you've said.
AMD and slugging it out at the top is fun/beneficial for the top-end gamers, but never brings in that much of the actual cash. Best it gives is the Halo effect "Today nVidia make the fastest card, so I'll buy an nVidia that I can afford".
If you look at what people are *actually* using:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
It's a world apart from this forum.
Knocking out a range of £100-200 cards that offer better performance per-£ than nVidia is going to tempt an awful lot of those people.
I suspect AMD were surprised at how successful the 970 was. It was a very good upsell from Nvidia, I nearly went for one myself. The thoughts sort of went:
I need a new graphics card, let's look at the 960. Hmm, that's a bit pricey and for 30% more money I could have a 970 which is about twice as fast.
The upsell only really works because the 960 was such poor value for money. If the 1060 is laughable value for money at £300 then can it still work?
Ebuyer have a 4GB RX480 on pre-order for £174, now that is a mass market card and I can see them flying off the shelves and being very popular in pre-built PCs.
There are no more 4Gb version of RX 480 on sale here in Switzerland.
Also, not so much elsewhere (France, Germany.
Could it be possible that retailers removed sticker 4Gb version and updated GPU BIOS so it becomes 8Gb version? And then sell them as such?
The more you live, less you die. More you play, more you die. Isn't it great.
Doubt it - rumour is that the requisite lower-capacity GDDR5 chips were in short supply so to make up the numbers for 4GB pre-orders they BOIS modded some 8GB cards. I imagine now that first batch of pre-orders have gone they'll source the right memory and start producing proper 4GB cards - I know several partners have confirmed their line ups include 4GB Cards (Sapphire have a 4Gb Nitro RX 480, for instance), and we'll see those coming into retail at the same time as the partner 8GB cards.
With Nvidia essentially saying price drops to the 9xx cards will be their low end, they've essentially ceded that market to AMD for now. It seems AMD decided value was the first market to hit, and to face off in the high-end with Polaris later. For people like me a few generations of hardware back, it's a great move. If I can get a 480 8GB for a reasonable price around Xmas, that's me sorted for a while.
This is the top and bottom of it
Whilst people own 4k screens, these are the minority at this moment in time and it will remain this way until manufacturers develop a decent screens at reasonable prices (this should be over the next year or 2, now that tvs are becoming a lot more affordable, but most importantly, Nvdida and AMD have implemented HDMI 2.whatever)
Yes people game at qhd / 144hz, etc. but these are the minority (in the overall scheme of things) hell, there are still WAYTOMANYPEOPLE who game at below 1080p. 470 / 480 / gtx 1060 will play probably everything maxed out (if you exclude the ridiculous settings which change nothing other than fps)
So IF AMD can nip this 480 "thermal / powerdraw" nonsense in the bud, their prospects look promising (due to Nvidia pricing themselves so high) I think people also underestimate the amount of 460 and 470 units that will be shipped. But even AMD stock seems to be gone everywhere (although they have more than NVidia when it does show)
Onto Nvidia, regardless of market share, Nvidia have ALL the power. The have the (mostly) wanted brand (they've even proven this by spitting in the very face of their loyal customers over and over again, with no lashback - AND NO pissing and moaning does not count - the wallet does)
They have the tech advantage (seemingly so far)
Nvidia also have the cash reserves, the Higher margins (VERY extortionately so) only make thing smore difficult for AMD.
Until something changes (consoles or DX12 games, increased AMD hardware volume) to bring AMD back into the loop, Nvidia will also continue to have the developers,
1440p is less then 2% where 1080p is just over 36% and 768p just under 26% so
Ho ever if this hold true then and GeForce GTX 1060 keep price point of $250 US then it the better deal but go over $300 then starting to be not good deal for every one.
http://videocardz.com/62122/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-official-performance-leaked
If the 1060 gives you the performance of a 980GTX for £300, then won't the people who can afford that already have a 970 or 980? I struggle to see who that is aimed at. New PC builds perhaps?
460 and 470 have obvious people they would appeal to for whom they would be an upgrade.
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