From ATI to AMD back to ATI? A Journey in Futility @ [H]

razor1 said:
The gtx 970 really hurt AMD.
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And it may continue to do so. There is nothing stopping NVidia from continuing to sell GTX 970s but at a new lower price (and, if they follow AMD's playbook, with a new name like "GTX 1050"). The fab capacity is out there, and the R&D costs on the 900-series are paid off by now.
 
razor1 said:
it might be the case, not sure yet though. What ever it is, they aren't as efficient as AMD made them out to be in comparison to Pascal, to their old gen yeah they are a lot better.
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Every site has the RX-480 at 150w. Seems pretty darn solid to me.

Definitely an major improvement in perf/watt for AMD-- and AMD really had fallen behind there. They're still behind, as Pascal is even better. But at least Polaris won't single-handedly heat your house in the dead of winter.

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housecat said:
To dispel a few more myths:

1) NV sabotages old cards while AMD gets better with age.
Patently false. This only appeared so in recent times because AMD had not updated GCN's fundamental design in ages. NV simply stopped optimizing older designs, not maliciously but this is how they have more efficient drivers from a CPU utilization standpoint for their new cards. Drivers are hard. AMD knows this so they never really tried to do a complete job. NV always has more complete support (noticeably better performance on older CPUs/machines on the desktop). An Nvidia card is an investment because as you move it around machines, or as yours ages, the drivers are always going to be better optimized for gaming and general usage, than the comparable AMD card. AMD cards in comparison, are cheap thrills. Fine for new builds but not something that is great for pairing with an older CPU.

2) AMD will change their historical precedent with a $199 card and begin crushing Nvidia.
They will sell a decent number of 480s but only to AMD Poverty Gamers who are running 7850s today. Regardless of people finding AMD Radeons as chips for people in poverty offensive. I find these grandiose delusional claims of AMD making a comeback offensive. TWO DECADES of failure and people are still ranting about an ATI/AMD comeback, when they're on their last leg and peddling $199 cards at that?
Unreal to be honest, but fanboys be fanboys.
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You wrote some premium green/blue bullshit.
Two decades of failures? Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Opteron all meaningless to you? X800XT came out even and pulled ahead with drivers, not to mention omegas.. 6970 pulled ahead slightly also. 7970, do I even need to go there? That thing is still a decent beast for 1080p.

At least AMD let us use 10bit monitors outside of DX applications for years, Nvidia only just changed that bullshit policy. Yeah they had perfect win10 drivers too, you carefully avoided mentioning that. They also used to also have incredibly lacklustre support for unusual projector resolutions..

And you said cheap thrills? At least AMD doesn't voltage lock cards permanently like pascal, or take half the advertised fets off the board. Or charge a $100 premium for and hype up 5+ year old cooling technology.

Nvidia getting Nintendo with a mobile gpu is not anything to be super excited about. When was the last time Nintendo won an epeen award? N64?


AMD is not trying to only (allegedly) show that the dual 480 system is faster, more the cost/performance ratio. But yes it's bullshit marketing, just like NVidias 'a new king' graph also..
They have made improvements in frame pacing for mGPU and now more than ever will have to focus on it. Don't just wipe it out till we see how it plays.
 
N4CR said:
You wrote some premium green/blue bullshit.
Two decades of failures?
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I've been PC gaming since the Commodore 128. Of course I'm speaking from a GPU standpoint, not CPU- I never saw ATI and then AMD do much of anything. And I remember watching ATI products being released in the 1980s. Most of my cards back then were Cirrus Logic or S3. Back then, display drivers weren't a thing and ATI did well as a result. The 9700 Pro and 5870 were a few of their true hits. Maybe the 290X counts but I'd write that one off due to the reference cooler situation. The ATI Rage cards had their fans, but I don't remember them being particularly dominant or exceptional by any means. The driver complaints "raged" even back then.

They'll do better with DX12/Vulkan than they ever did in DX7-11/OGL, but unfortunately it appears too little too late. They sold out to some wealthy arabs a few years back and now sold out to the Chinese. This ship is being dis"Mantled" and it's long past due to give up the ruse that this is a competitive market. NV is competing against the 980Ti and 970 with the 1080/1070s, AMD needs to die ASAP so that a competent competitor can take up their position. Or, just let NV continue to compete against themselves, that's been working out very well the last few years.

Even DX12/Vulkan won't save AMD, because legacy support matters a lot. The PC platform is all about backwards compatibility. So you can get Grade-A legacy DX/OGL support and Grade-A DX12/Vulkan support from Nvidia... or you can pay for Grade-A DX12/Vulkan support and Grade-F legacy DX/OGL support from AMD.
 
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As someone who has only bought video cards from the red team for the previous decade, I hope that this editorial is wrong. Intel doesn't need to become a 1000 pound gorilla (they're already at 900 pounds). nVidia needs RTG to be competitive to keep prices in check.
 
pcgeekesq said:
And it may continue to do so. There is nothing stopping NVidia from continuing to sell GTX 970s but at a new lower price (and, if they follow AMD's playbook, with a new name like "GTX 1050"). The fab capacity is out there, and the R&D costs on the 900-series are paid off by now.
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Well, yes there is. The 970 is discontinued, that and it doesn't cost much more to make a 1070. What Nvidia will actually do is introduce a smaller die or cut-down card to replace the 970. The rumors already say they'll launch a 1060 so that's probably it.
 
This 480 looks to be a bit more power efficient than Maxwell. Considering Maxwell was on 28nm I'm not sure that this bodes well for the new architecture. The 480 seems to confirm what Kyle says: "In the simplest terms AMD has created a product that runs hotter and slower than its competition's new architecture by a potentially significant margin."
 
jwcalla said:
The 480 seems to confirm what Kyle says: "In the simplest terms AMD has created a product that runs hotter and slower than its competition's new architecture by a potentially significant margin."
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And something tells me we'll be repeating this line when Zen finally hits the market.
 
housecat said:
And the 150watt figure is exactly why the 480 is DOA. The 1070 is also 150watt TDP and will completely obliterate this thing.
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Who cares about power usage? I mean, the 390x was a bit ridiculous at 275w, but 150w is fine.

If the RX-480 MSRP was $379 I would agree, the 1070 would annihilate it. But it's not, it's $199.
 
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housecat said:
To dispel a few more myths:

1) NV sabotages old cards while AMD gets better with age.
Patently false. This only appeared so in recent times because AMD had not updated GCN's fundamental design in ages. NV simply stopped optimizing older designs, not maliciously but this is how they have more efficient drivers from a CPU utilization standpoint for their new cards. Drivers are hard. AMD knows this so they never really tried to do a complete job. NV always has more complete support (noticeably better performance on older CPUs/machines on the desktop). An Nvidia card is an investment because as you move it around machines, or as yours ages, the drivers are always going to be better optimized for gaming and general usage, than the comparable AMD card. AMD cards in comparison, are cheap thrills. Fine for new builds but not something that is great for pairing with an older CPU.

2) AMD will change their historical precedent with a $199 card and begin crushing Nvidia.
They will sell a decent number of 480s but only to AMD Poverty Gamers who are running 7850s today. Regardless of people finding AMD Radeons as chips for people in poverty offensive. I find these grandiose delusional claims of AMD making a comeback offensive. TWO DECADES of failure and people are still ranting about an ATI/AMD comeback, when they're on their last leg and peddling $199 cards at that?
Unreal to be honest, but fanboys be fanboys.

3) AMD is bringing VR to the masses with the 480.
Pipedream. No one who can afford a $800 HTC Vive will pair it with microstuttering Crossfire 480s.

4) AMD is not "Poverty Gaming Evolved"
Then watch the 7850 buyers come in droves. Here's one I just saw on THG. AMD Radeon RX 480 Designed To Bring VR To The Budget-Strapped Masses

5) People are too negative about AMD
The negativity against AMD is warranted, they've earned it. Over and over again. The endless optimism for a company that has long needed put out of its misery needs to stop.

6) Nvidia "isn't hungry" and giving up the consoles
Maxwell defined a generation, NV has Nintendo Nintendo NX will powered by an NVIDIA Tegra processor, not an AMD chip

7) Nvidia is still competing with AMD
No, they're not. Nvidia has been competing with themselves for a long time now, people are just incapable of seeing it. NV at this point is simply trying to outdo their last engineering feat so they can sell new Geforce cards to existing Geforce customers. We don't need AMD to drive down prices, they only drive down quality by lowering the standard that Nvidia has to meet. AMD dominating NV has never and will never happen, but if it did, it would be horrible for PC gaming as it would signal to Nvidia that working as hard as they do is the wrong way forward. Today, NV is rightly rewarded for meeting market demand. They've earned this.
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Taking your points in order:

1. Agreed - patently false. If anything, it's been nVidia (and especially their reference GPUs from Fermi to now) that has gotten to be better buys with age. (My GTX550Ti was a factory-refurb when I got it - and I got it BECAUSE it was the best bang for buck at the time than anything new out there - from either AMD OR nVidia.)

2. In order to do that, they would have to whack GTX960 (in the space as of now) and GTX970 4GB AIB cards (which will almost certainly drop into that space post GTX1070; that's right - before GTX1060 launches three months further down the road).

3. VR? Please; not with 4K and DX12 (better yet, both together) viable in GPU quantities of one - and without a halo GPU; that is what GTX1070 does.

4. Instead of chasing consoles, nVidia is taking Tegra everywhere else - it started in phones and tablets (not just SHIELD, either); Tegra has even come to PCs (and not just portable ones, but the replacement "Frankencard" market - AMD's old turf - as the GT 7xx). In fact, I called Maxwell in general (and baby Maxwell in particular), a "son of Tegra", due to all those efficiency gains it picked up DIRECTLY from Tegra. Those same Tegra/Maxwell efficiencies show up in Pascal as well; in fact, compare GTX1070 in terms of efficiency to GTX980. Throw in that GTX1070 is actually curb-stomping GTX980 in terms of performance, while ALSO being more efficient in terms of power - and the same price point.

5. Until the GTX550Ti, I ran AMD (and ATI before that) GPUs only since the days of the Original Pentium; today, the only AMD GPU in any of my hardware is in the newest of my notebooks - and THAT is HD4200 from the pre-RCE/pre-APU era of mobile Turion II - in short, the Windows 7 era.

6. Before I will purchase - or recommend - an AMD GPU again, they have to get themselves off the deck in the mainstream space - which they have, in fact, utterly failed in terms of. Intel has done better than AMD has even in terms of the integrated/portable space. In fact, my choice order is the following - new nVidia, refurbished/used nVidia, followed by Intel - and that is the GPU space - and I don't DO halo GPUs; the closest I GOT to a "halo graphics card" was that run of ATI AIWs starting with the original one going forward to the AIW 9700 Pro; and those all took either the PCI-bus or AGP-bus to work.

It's not being a fanboi, unfortunately - I'm still not one. It's the cold truth - as cold as the Yukon Territory - unfortunately for AMD.
 
schizo said:
Who cares about power usage? I mean, the 390x was a bit ridiculous at 275w, but 150w is fine.

If the RX-480 MSRP was $379 I would agree, the 1070 would annihilate it. But it's not, it's $199.
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Because it means NV has more to work with. They can do more with less power/heat/noise, and scale higher than AMD can too. This is a losing proposition for AMD, anything they can do/offer/create, can be beaten by a Pascal variant. So if it's a value today at $199, it will be irrelevant tomorrow with NV's response at the same price or lower, with better margins.
It would be wishful thinking that NV is going to give AMD a freebie in the market like that.

The 980Ti was the defacto king last gen for this reason, the overclocking headroom was pretty amazing. Otherwise the Fury X would've been the better card from my perspective. The Fury cards IMO were AMD's last hurrah. They were absolutely fantastic products, but still was not enough to stop Nvidia. They didn't see Maxwell coming and they're totally cooked. Internally I'm positive they're in Intel or Samsung sell-off mode at this point.

That's true that 150W TDP is fine in a vacuum, it just means AMD's Polaris/Vega is more than likely not going to be generally competitive with Pascal variants.

I'm absolutely not shocked that AMD tried selling their performance per watt like they did prior to launch, because I figured they were simply selling their minor update and the standard perf-per-watt increase that the dieshrink was going to grant them. They had to say something. In the end it's not going to be enough. They needed an outright perf-per-watt design win because they are in desperate times.

It also explains why the high end was delayed and absent, it would've been nothing but an embarrassment.
 
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housecat said:
Because it means NV has more to work with. They can do more with less power/heat/noise, and scale higher than AMD can too. This is a losing proposition for AMD, anything they can do/offer/create, can be beaten by a Pascal variant. So if it's a value today at $199, it will be irrelevant tomorrow with NV's response at the same price or lower, with better margins.
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When NV actually releases that response, we'll evaluate it. We can't talk about a product without anything other than a faith that it'll be awesome.
 
wantapple said:
Different Architectures...
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Does NOT matter. To get up to 1070/1080 speeds, the waste heat will get out of control. It may not even be possible. The hazard with a die shrink is your heat density also exponentially increases. This is one of the problems that started showing up with Ivy Bridge.
 
schizo said:
When NV actually releases that response, we'll evaluate it. We can't talk about a product without anything other than a faith that it'll be awesome.
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:)

We've seen this play out a number of times since the 3D video card market started in ~1996, when I bought my 3dfx Voodoo 4MB. Pascal is the superior architecture where it's going to count (performance/heat/power/scaling). Maybe I just need faith, but honestly, this is all pretty obvious. This card showed AMD's hand.
There absolutely is no secret sauce coming from AMD. Other than R300 and Cypress, there never was. But people will stick their heads in the sand hoping against hope that the rumors that will begin about Vega and how it has more perf/watt than Pascal, how it's so fast, how it's at least, the savior. The last ditch resort is always, "wait till we see it". True. But this is a mature market, the low hanging fruit is gone. AMD would need to invest a few years and a billions dollars to beat Pascal.

We know what just happened with the Polaris reveal. AMD is very much, indisputably (outside of rumor mongering about "next year!"), done. It's been over but no one was aware, and I presume many will continue to pray that Polaris is a fluke and AMD has the Pascal-crushing-secrets still in the lab. They don't, so do not invest in their stock. The Fiji cards were their (admirable) comeback attempt, at this point it should be clear this is a dead man walking.

Nvidia won't mess up any response. The AMD vs NV game is over. The market for a while now, has been new NV product vs old NV product. And lowend Intel IGP eating up NV lowend. Nvidia's biggest threat is Intel (the inverse isn't true though).
 
razor1 said:
AMD in their right mind would never just hand over the performance market for 6 months *2 quarters*, it is the largest segment by volume and by far the largest margin segment with volume in mind.
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Whoa there, cowboy. Care to back up that "performance market is the largest segment by volume" claim with some actual numbers? Because I'm willing to bet that $400-$700 cards are NOT the largest segment by volume. The $150-$300 tier would seem to be much more likely to outsell the high end "performance" cards.
 
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They are, JPR report that came out just a few weeks ago confirms it, I was surprised too I thought that report was Mainstream, Performance, enthusiast, etc which line up with how AMD and nV sells cards, its not, JPR's mainstream is mainstream + value segments.

The reason JPR did this is because they break down board prices by what target system they go into.

So a 1k system is a mainstream system, what cards do you usually find in there? Tonga, gtx 960 or less
1.5 k system is a performance system, what cards do you usually find in there? gtx 970/ 390 - gtx 980 r390x
2k system and up are enthusiast, what cards do you usually find in them? 980ti Fury line and up.

This is exactly why nV's margins have been climbing up the past few years, cause performance segment has been increasing and even eating away at the mainstream/value segments. More people have been willing to purchase the low end performance cards, and this is definitely seen with the gtx 970.
 
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schizo said:
Every site has the RX-480 at 150w. Seems pretty darn solid to me.

Definitely an major improvement in perf/watt for AMD-- and AMD really had fallen behind there. They're still behind, as Pascal is even better. But at least Polaris won't single-handedly heat your house in the dead of winter.

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It's interesting if Polaris has better FP64 than 1/32 - if they cut down double precision totally like Maxwell/Pascal is then their efficiency gains over 390X are rather meh since they are just few watts below Maxwell cards on 28nm
 
So AMD will likely sell a bunch of 480 cards, assuming a hard launch, right up until the 1060 hits and NV outperforms and/or undercuts them due to more efficient chips. AMD's high end cards will be another huge disappointment when they finally come out as they either won't be able to match 1070/1080 performance or will only be able to with massive (expensive) cooling. Maybe next gen AMD...
 
Michaelius said:
It's interesting if Polaris has better FP64 than 1/32 - if they cut down double precision totally like Maxwell/Pascal is then their efficiency gains over 390X are rather meh since they are just few watts below Maxwell cards on 28nm
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IIRC minimum rate GCN supports is 1/16 that was present on Fiji/Tonga.
 
What is the actual beef with this card? When the 960 was released, it could not beat an old 780 @1080p. [H] gave it a great review along with a Silver award only knocking it down because it had 2GB of memory. Now here is an under $200 card that looks like it can keep up with a 980 @1440p, it has 4GB of memory and it's getting dogged out.

"One thing very exciting about the new GeForce GTX 960, is the price point NVIDIA is targeting. NVIDIA is pricing the GeForce GTX 960 at an MSRP of $199. This surprised us and is lower than we were expecting. When we think of the "sweet spot" of video card pricing we generally think of a price point around $250,
so it excites us to see NVIDIA being aggressive with this target"


Or is only getting dogged out because AMD isn't competing in the high end?
 
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TroubleMagnet said:
So AMD will likely sell a bunch of 480 cards, assuming a hard launch, right up until the 1060 hits and NV outperforms and/or undercuts them due to more efficient chips. AMD's high end cards will be another huge disappointment when they finally come out as they either won't be able to match 1070/1080 performance or will only be able to with massive (expensive) cooling. Maybe next gen AMD...
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The 1060 is probably not going to be the same price if it follows the same pricing gains the 1070/1080 got. Now, nVidia could do a 1060Ti (unlikely with a GP106 though) and keep the price and performance above the 199/239 of the 4/8 GB 480 but that's a risky play from nVidia without seeing what RTG may have up its sleeve in the 299 region (whatever part that may end up being).
 
Having a halo product is important and does help sell the lower end models. Years ago when the Ford GT came out I saw one sitting on the show room floor. It wasn't for sale. I asked the manager why it wasn't for sale. He said "Because it sells a lot of Mustang GTs." Very few will buy the halo product, but it gives a certain level of cachet to everything below it and make them more attractive and desirable. As it stands, the best AMD can muster is a 5th place finish. The Fury X is below the 1080, 1070, Titan X, and 980 ti. If your're the average joe shopper and see a particular company's products occupy the top 4 positions and the competition's best offering can only place 5th, who are they going to go with? The one with the top 4. Because they must be pretty good if they can do so well.
 
Drep said:
What is the actual beef with this card? When the 960 was released, it could not beat an old 780 @1080p. [H] gave it a great review along with a Silver award only knocking it down because it had 2GB of memory.
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Whats with the timeshift. Different times, different performance, different strategy.
Even then, why do you think the 960 should have beat a 780?
 
Drep said:
What is the actual beef with this card?
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I think there's concern about the architecture. If they need 150W to compete with a 980, how much performance could they get out of a 300W chip? Who knows, I guess we'll see what Vega brings, etc., but will Vega be so dramatically more power efficient?
 
Drep said:
What is the actual beef with this card? When the 960 was released, it could not beat an old 780 @1080p. [H] gave it a great review along with a Silver award only knocking it down because it had 2GB of memory. Now here is an under $200 card that looks like it can keep up with a 980 @1440p, it has 4GB of memory and it's getting dogged out.
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I have some trouble getting excited about cards with performance I had 15 months ago ;)
 
Nailed it. No one cares about performance they already had. I've been saying this all over the internet for months now in regards to AMD's lowend quarter machine GPU "Master Plan". And, the reveal is a massive failure because the architecture is inferior to Pascal. 150W RX480 < 150W 1070. NV is running the table in that situation. If AMD took over at this point, or in 1 years time, or in 2 years time- it would be because Huang decided he doesn't want to destroy AMD or take our money anymore, and any other reason is an impossibility.

NV has this locked up and has since Maxwell 1.0. Vega will be trotted out by AMD like the FuryX was and either already be beat by the 1080Ti or will be beaten shortly by the 1080Ti, depending on whenever Nvidia chooses to release it. It'll be beaten something miserable, too. The low hanging fruit are gone, which means the Good Old Days of wild west GPU competition where there's an air of mystery, chance or doubt is over, other than in people's minds.

Cue the mysticism and wonder about how amazing Vega is. May as well enjoy the bullshitting IMO. Everyone knows AMD's time is up or they wouldn't have sold out to the Chinese. Once Vega arrives souls will be crushed like Polaris just did to everyone.

We had a lot of bluster and huff and puff in this thread just a day or two ago. That's all gone now.
 
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Michaelius said:
I have some trouble getting excited about cards with performance I had 15 months ago ;)
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Agreed, nothing to get excited about, but who would have dreamed just 15 months ago that a $199 card would arrive that will essentially max out 1080/1440p games? Everything else aside, I am still shocked this card will sell for $199. Even as an nVidia fan I am very happy to see this happen, as their pricing has been steadily creeping up.

Exciting times ahead for gpu's and even cpu's.............
 
its a normal upgrade cycle, performance parts of today should be midrange of tomorrow.
 
razor1 said:
its a normal upgrade cycle, performance parts of today should be midrange of tomorrow.
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Exactly, but remember those performance parts of today will reach EOL and will only be available in the used market. Not to mention with each cycle of new games being released, older gpu's begin to struggle with the greater graphical demands.

Also, has there ever been a new gpu released at a sub $200 price point that can run every game at any performance setting at 1080/1440? Again, I am shocked the 480 is so cheap, $199 is ridiculous.
 
well if you want to go by timing, you have to understand these resolutions weren't there before either.

Take the g80, 8600 gt was a great card and pretty much could do the same with the average high end monitor out too. Of course resolution at that time I think was 1080p.....
 
It's not ridiculous at all, it's the same price as the 380 at launch. And it won't run many newer games "at any performance setting" at 1440p.

It is an aggressive price for the performance, though, I agree. And that's awesome.
 
There are exciting times ahead, but it's unfortunately only Volta and Cannonlake. Volta should have everyone extremely excited as Nvidia is obviously willing to invest and innovate. That's been proven time and time again.

Zen is another Polaris. Performance we already had. An AMD Poverty Gaming Evolved product. But it will at least be interesting, as long as no one actually believes AMD claims until AMD actually starts making good on their promises. Vega and successors are going to be even less interesting products than Zen.
 
Nenu said:
Whats with the timeshift. Different times, different performance, different strategy.
Even then, why do you think the 960 should have beat a 780?
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because that's a common issue with alot of the comments on here. people are complaining that AMD's under $200 card is only on par with performance they had from a year 1/2 old card (980). From that logic, why did the 960 get great a great review here when it couldn't even beat the year and half old 780.
 
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