AMD - NVIDIA and GPU Development Deceleration

FrgMstr

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DigiTimes is usually a solid source for GPU news out of Taiwan, and today it has a couple of interesting statements that pertain to the GPU market. First and foremost, DigiTimes states that both AMD and NVIDIA "have both been decelerating the developments of their new GPU architectures and prolonging their existing GPU platforms' lifecycle." While rumored speculation has NVIDIA releasing it next-gen Turing GPU releasing everywhere from yesterday to next year, little fact is still known on this, but DigiTimes says today that Turing will not go into mass production till Q318. As for AMD's next-gen Navi, we are firmly betting on 2019.

The story also has an interesting statement as to NVIDIA controlling sales of its current GPUs.

Nvidia has recently started placing restrictions on its downstream graphics card partners, forbiding[sic] them to publicly promote cryptocurrency mining activities or actively sell its consumer graphics cards to miners, the sources said. Nvidia hopes to shift its main sales target back to consumers in the gaming market, the sources added.

While I am sure no hardware enthusiasts and gamers are going to feel bad about that if it is truly happening, but let's just keep in mind how far NVIDIA is willing to go to control the GPU market as we have seen with it GeForce Partner Program.
 
And why not? I mean, they can't keep the shelves stocked as it is. Why would they do anything to derail the gravy train right now? Of course, they may also be hedging their bets. The cryptocurrency craze won't last forever, and when it finally dies, the market is going to be absolutely flooded with high-end and mid-range cards. It would be smart to have something new and faster to release when that happens, to have any hope of maintaining sales.
 
And why not? I mean, they can't keep the shelves stocked as it is. Why would they do anything to derail the gravy train right now? Of course, they may also be hedging their bets. The cryptocurrency craze won't last forever, and when it finally dies, the market is going to be absolutely flooded with high-end and mid-range cards. It would be smart to have something new and faster to release when that happens, to have any hope of maintaining sales.

I'm dying to get my hands on an itx length 1070ti. Even better if it's from fleabay for cheap.
 
just wondering myself how far they will go? Meaning borderline price control as well. Feds might wanna sniff around. Just because they say they are at max capacity doesnt make it so. Obviously due to price and demand we all know cards are double if not triple the cost they should be. So, they sell one card it equates to nearly 3 sold. The money is still comin in for em. Whether the public suffers or not, its just business. We dont have to like it, but it is what it is.
 
No competition means less money on development to milk the existing products even more.

There also seems to be a push in developing ai/machine learning gpu platforms which don't exactly equate to graphics performance. Before it was all one product line. With this school of thought, i would expect to see new products on the graphics side extend from every year to every year and a half to two years.
 
No competition means less money on development to milk the existing products even more.

There also seems to be a push in developing ai/machine learning gpu platforms which don't exactly equate to graphics performance. Before it was all one product line. With this school of thought, i would expect to see new products on the graphics side extend from every year to every year and a half to two years.
I want to upgrade (especially since I got a Rift for my birthday), but I refuse to upgrade until they release something new. I bought my 970 toward the end of that life cycle and almost regret it (my 670 died, not much choice there), I'm not making that mistake again.

That said, if AMD had sense, they'd rotate on the off times. Make a GPU that would take the crown of fastest/most powerful, and you'll hold the crown for a year or so until nV can get their act together.
 
I want to upgrade (especially since I got a Rift for my birthday), but I refuse to upgrade until they release something new. I bought my 970 toward the end of that life cycle and almost regret it (my 670 died, not much choice there), I'm not making that mistake again.

That said, if AMD had sense, they'd rotate on the off times. Make a GPU that would take the crown of fastest/most powerful, and you'll hold the crown for a year or so until nV can get their act together.
I think you're expecting too much from AMD.
 
Although the mining thing has been a boon for Nvidia and AMD, it really complicates their release strategy in the future. Now it seems they have to navigate or even predict a potential bubble burst with crypto and I am sure are following it very closely. I don't think BTC and others are going away but for the many joe-sixpack miners and hobbyists, they will loose interest in droves as complexity increases. I believe the "average" ROI on a GTX 1080 Ti is over 200 days and will get longer over time so look out for the next year or two? For the sake of their core gpu businesses Nvidia and AMD could fork and create red-headed stepchild products/decisions that are mining specific and feature-lock the products to protect graphics and gaming gpus from miners. I would just hate to see poor judgement being exercised in the name of profits, and we are forced to endure a longer period of stagnation. I want my new gpus every 1-2 years and game devs are finally catching up with the tech that is offered to them now. We will see...
 
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I'm solely waiting on new cards or prices to come down to build a new PC. I have the rest ready to go besides the GPU...
 
That said, if AMD had sense, they'd rotate on the off times. Make a GPU that would take the crown of fastest/most powerful, and you'll hold the crown for a year or so until nV can get their act together.


not necessarily. AMD probably knows far better then us what shape nvidia is in with its next gen cards, and is aware they can release it at will. so, from a business sense, it is better right now to ride the gravy train.
 
Pretty sure it's not nvidia that's price gouging. It's the retailers selling the cards to consumers.

just wondering myself how far they will go? Meaning borderline price control as well. Feds might wanna sniff around. Just because they say they are at max capacity doesnt make it so. Obviously due to price and demand we all know cards are double if not triple the cost they should be. So, they sell one card it equates to nearly 3 sold. The money is still comin in for em. Whether the public suffers or not, its just business. We dont have to like it, but it is what it is.
 
just wondering myself how far they will go? Meaning borderline price control as well. Feds might wanna sniff around. Just because they say they are at max capacity doesnt make it so. Obviously due to price and demand we all know cards are double if not triple the cost they should be. So, they sell one card it equates to nearly 3 sold. The money is still comin in for em. Whether the public suffers or not, its just business. We dont have to like it, but it is what it is.

Nvidia, like most manufacturers, sells at a price below msrp. The msrp gives retailers room to mark up and make a profit.

Nvidia/amd are getting volume out of the crypto market not increased price per unit.

The crypto crunch adds pressure to them w/o adding profit and adds risk, as others have said, the market could crash and burn at random.

My guess they are stalling waiting for ASICS to take over.

They must think this is going to crash sooner rather then later or more effort would go into headless mining cards. Imo.
 
I think NVidia and AMD would be nuts to continue to push GPU development. When they depended on gamers to buy the cards, it was a competitive environment pushing the companies to out do the other for the sales.

Now, it does not matter that much. They are selling all they can make. Why rock that boat? Why put development dollars into a market already selling everything they can make?

I see no reason for them to continue development and just ride the wave of sales, unless development is focused on making the same stuff cheaper, so they can increase profit margins.

The cryptocraze is not going away. Greed and support for illegal activites will be enough to sustain it forever. If things were going to change to crush that market, they would already be happening. I suspect there is more driving this than we are being made aware of.

Any lip service NVidia and AMD give gamers is just that. They cannot control who is buying cards, for what use, without running afoul of FTC regulations.

I went ahead and dumped all my games this weekend. I figure I might as well start getting used to the fact I will not be able to enjoy new games any longer. Getting rid of that gaming itch will take a while, but there are a number of other hobbies I can get into cheaper now, given video card and RAM prices are likely to never drop again to reasonable levels.
 
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If current stock is selling well there is no reason to replace them. It increases your return on investment (ROI) and makes you more profitable. Plus building faster architectures is getting harder and harder as node shrinks are less and less. There's going to be a CPU/GPU dark age soon as performance levels off due to physics limitations.
 
not necessarily. AMD probably knows far better then us what shape nvidia is in with its next gen cards, and is aware they can release it at will. so, from a business sense, it is better right now to ride the gravy train.
I'm not arguing that. What I'm saying is if nV is moving to a 1.5-2 year schedule, making their 1.5-2 year schedule coincide with nV's off year would be beneficial to them. Enthusiasts are already accustomed to running a 1 year upgrade cycle, but instead of nV -> nV -> nV like it has been the past few years, AMD throws in cards that outperform nV.

Either it will force nV's hand to release sooner (in which case we win,) or we get better cards more often (I'd still count that as a win). AMD gets their time to shine and hopefully make a quick cash grab. It may not be enough to overcome their sales deficit relative to nV, but it should put the numbers in their favor during nV's "off" time.
 
If Nvidia were to release their new cards now, the miners would buy them and sell their current Nvidia and AMD cards on the used market. This is a problem for Nvidia as the gamers are gonna want support for the Pascal cards. So I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia does what they did with Pascal and have Founder's Edition cards for a while before 3rd party card makers get to sell theirs.

There are other potential problems for Nvidia as well. Apple now makes their own GPU's... for their ARM SOC's. Which means it's just a matter of time before Apple completely removes Intel and AMD from their laptops. This will just further push Intel and AMD on Nvidia's market, putting more stress on their dominance. Plus we know Imagination Technologies was bought by some secret Chinese company, and faded out of existence. PowerVR could return onto the desktop market. Then you have Intel who plans to actually care about desktop graphics, and lets not forget AMD.

Either way, cryptomining is not a market that Nvidia wants to cater to. Not because cryptocurrency is dying, but because others will come out with better cheaper and less power hungry GPU's to do the job. Nvidia is smart to support gamers because that's the one market that Nvidia has the largest mind share over. Pretty clear miners favor AMD cards and no amount of brand loyalty is going to change that.
 
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I think NVidia and AMD would be nuts to continue to push GPU development. When they depended on gamers to buy the cards, it was a competitive environment pushing the companies to out do the other for the sales.

Now, it does not matter that much. They are selling all they can make. Why rock that boat? Why put development dollars into a market already selling everything they can make?

I see no reason for them to continue development and just ride the wave of sales, unless development is focused on making the same stuff cheaper, so they can increase profit margins.

The cryptocraze is not going away. Greed and support for illegal activites will be enough to sustain it forever. If things were going to change to crush that market, they would already be happening. I suspect there is more driving this than we are being made aware of.

Any lip service NVidia and AMD give gamers is just that. They cannot control who is buying cards, for what use, without running afoul of FTC regulations.

I went ahead and dumped all my games this weekend. I figure I might as well start getting used to the fact I will not be able to enjoy new games any longer. Getting rid of that gaming itch will take a while, but there are a number of other hobbies I can get into cheaper now, given video card and RAM prices are likely to never drop again to reasonable levels.

Eh. Not sure I agree with that. Cryptocurrencies aren't going to go away, but I believe they will reach a point that GPUs are useless see: Bitcoin. Nevermind the fact that nVidia would rather sell Tesla cards to miners. I absolutely would not be surprised if they nerfed the next gen gaming cards for that reason. They've all but said they hate miners using Geforce cards.

All the established currencies will reach a point that profitability is difficult, and the arena will be so flooded with alt-coins that any new entrants won't really gain much traction because what's the point? When we have 10-15 currencies that are monitored like cash, regulated like cash, and more can't be created, the GPU market will go back to "normal." That may be 5 months from now, or 5 years, but I think the time for rapid growth and becoming a millionaire off the back of cryptocurrencies has come and gone.

At that point, if they ditch the gaming market, who's there to buy product except datacenters?

Plus you don't stop development. You may not release, but you don't stop development. Your competitors won't, and when the next big thing hits, you'll be left with your hands in your pants.
 
Right now, NVIDIA has a competitive advantage, sales aren't declining, and their cards are flying off the shelves. They have no incentive to bring out a new GPU.

If AMD brought out something that compares at or above NVIDIA's offerings and drops sales to their cards or sales start dropping (neither of which I think will happen soon), then they might have something. As it stands, it'd be bringing something out for the enthusiasts and miners but with no real financial gains for NVIDIA. Regardless, they'll be selling out of whatever they are offering.

I'd love to see new GPU's come out. I think everyone would. But, it doesn't make financial sense for NVIDIA or AMD.
 
Nvidia, like most manufacturers, sells at a price below msrp. The msrp gives retailers room to mark up and make a profit.

Nvidia/amd are getting volume out of the crypto market not increased price per unit.

The crypto crunch adds pressure to them w/o adding profit and adds risk, as others have said, the market could crash and burn at random.

My guess they are stalling waiting for ASICS to take over.

They must think this is going to crash sooner rather then later or more effort would go into headless mining cards. Imo.

In regards to the headless mining cards, these will only be purchased if the price is much cheaper. You can only resell them for mining so you can't get money back by selling them easily at a later date. Since it isn't really cheaper by much to manufacture them this way, selling them for less would mean nvidia / and would be taking a loss. The benefit for them would only potentially be less used cards for sale if crypto crashes. This also wouldn't improve supply in any meaningful way since they are only making so many gpu dies and these would end up split between mining cards and gaming card. TLDR there is no valid reason to make a no ing specific card. Doesn't help anything.
 
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Eh. Not sure I agree with that. Cryptocurrencies aren't going to go away, but I believe they will reach a point that GPUs are useless see: Bitcoin. Nevermind the fact that nVidia would rather sell Tesla cards to miners. I absolutely would not be surprised if they nerfed the next gen gaming cards for that reason. They've all but said they hate miners using Geforce cards.

All the established currencies will reach a point that profitability is difficult, and the arena will be so flooded with alt-coins that any new entrants won't really gain much traction because what's the point? When we have 10-15 currencies that are monitored like cash, regulated like cash, and more can't be created, the GPU market will go back to "normal." That may be 5 months from now, or 5 years, but I think the time for rapid growth and becoming a millionaire off the back of cryptocurrencies has come and gone.

At that point, if they ditch the gaming market, who's there to buy product except datacenters?

Plus you don't stop development. You may not release, but you don't stop development. Your competitors won't, and when the next big thing hits, you'll be left with your hands in your pants.

There certainly is a love-hate relationship with cryptocrazies. They serve to create a more volatile market, which is the bane of any business, particularly when they build out manufacturing to meet the crazy demand and then the demand dries up. Oops.

And you are right. They do not stop developement, but they can scale it back to research levels while the hardware guys figure out how to make it cheaper. They certainly do not need to get in a hurry to make new products.

I do not see NVidia or AMD being in a big hurry to release next generation video cards. I think it would be a bad business decision.
 
I remember wanting one of those when they come out. Had a g450. The open gl performance was awesome.

It's too bad they were not up for staying in the gaming GPU market.

I wanted XGI and their Volari series to succeed, but that didn't happen. You can still get the parhelia on fleabay.
 
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I can see nVidia waiting for crypto to die down as long as nothing else changes. What is the benefit to launching a new product when a volatile market will pick up everything you produce, leaving your regular customers without. This pisses off the long term customer base, as can be seen now with Pascal and Vega shortages.

Crypto guys will claim their dollar is worth just as much as mine, but the reality is their dollar is temporary, once mining dies (and it will) they will cease to exist as a market for nVidia and AMD. People will be back to buying one maybe two gpu's per gaming system. In the meantime miners flood the market with used cards, depressing values.

The smart strategy is to wait and see, no pressure to launch now.
 
I can see nVidia waiting for crypto to die down as long as nothing else changes. What is the benefit to launching a new product when a volatile market will pick up everything you produce, leaving your regular customers without. This pisses off the long term customer base, as can be seen now with Pascal and Vega shortages.

Crypto guys will claim their dollar is worth just as much as mine, but the reality is their dollar is temporary, once mining dies (and it will) they will cease to exist as a market for nVidia and AMD. People will be back to buying one maybe two gpu's per gaming system. In the meantime miners flood the market with used cards, depressing values.

The smart strategy is to wait and see, no pressure to launch now.
There's no pressure to launch because there's no competition. But if this was really the case, they would have continued to make the chips for the 1080ti and milked it for the next 6 months. But i think they stopped producing that chip.

The conspiracy theory that they're slowing down production because they're waiting for bitcoin miners to stop buying their cards is so much of a loony bin idea that it's criminally bad.

Nvidia wants to sell graphics cards/chips. They don't care who buys it. If they can sell more chips/cards then they're more than happy to reap the profit. Thinking companies care about their consumers or who buys their stuff and why is nonsense.
 
There's no pressure to launch because there's no competition. But if this was really the case, they would have continued to make the chips for the 1080ti and milked it for the next 6 months. But i think they stopped producing that chip.

The conspiracy theory that they're slowing down production because they're waiting for bitcoin miners to stop buying their cards is so much of a loony bin idea that it's criminally bad.

Nvidia wants to sell graphics cards/chips. They don't care who buys it. If they can sell more chips/cards then they're more than happy to reap the profit. Thinking companies care about their consumers or who buys their stuff and why is nonsense.

This isn't tinfoil hat conspiracy, its a theory. Yes companies do care about who is buy their product, because it can have long term impacts on profitability.

nVidia has followed a release schedule like clockwork for several years now, regardless of the ongoing lack of competition from AMD. If nVidia follows suit they should be announcing the new line up sometime between end of March and early May, with a summer release. If we don't see it I doubt its because of lack of competition (again as nVidia has shown they are more interested in the tick/tock release cycle to drive sales rather than AMD) but because of other market concerns. The biggest change in the market from then to now is crypto mining, ergo if it is delayed (particularly with 1080ti chips stopped) my theory is its due to crypto.

Edit: It could be that nVidia is gearing up its GPP program, and in doing so delaying launch to further put nails in AMD's proverbial coffin, but I'm reserving judgement on the GPP program till more is known. I don't like the sounds of it though.
 
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There's no pressure to launch because there's no competition. But if this was really the case, they would have continued to make the chips for the 1080ti and milked it for the next 6 months. But i think they stopped producing that chip.

The conspiracy theory that they're slowing down production because they're waiting for bitcoin miners to stop buying their cards is so much of a loony bin idea that it's criminally bad.

Nvidia wants to sell graphics cards/chips. They don't care who buys it. If they can sell more chips/cards then they're more than happy to reap the profit. Thinking companies care about their consumers or who buys their stuff and why is nonsense.

While I agree that there is no production slow down or conspiracy, a wise company does indeed care who buys their product; especially when future sales are on the line.
 
Companies only care who buys a product because it gives them the ability to predict sales volumes. Important in manufacturing. Cryptocrazies have put a huge wrinkle into sales predictions. Part of the love-hate relationship.

I can see the marketing guys sitting around scratching their heads trying to predict sales six months out. I would not want that job today. Nope.

EDIT: I worked for a company who had this problem. At the planning meetings it would start;

Guys, great news! We are selling everything we can make!
Guys, some bad news too. We are selling everything we can make!


Now, the reason AMD and nVidia do not care, nor do they need to care, who is buying the product is this. What are you, the gamer, going to do? Not buy AMD? Not buy nVidia? All because they sold thier product to the cryptocrazies? Yeah, sure, not buying either is not an option for a gamer. They know that.

You can get pissed off all you want, but at the end of the day, you are going to buy one their products.
 
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In regards to the headless mining cards, these will only be purchased if the price is much cheaper. You can only resell them for mining so you can't get money back by selling them easily at a later date. Since it isn't really cheaper by much to manufacture them this way, selling them for less would mean nvidia / and would be taking a loss. The benefit for them would only potentially be less used cards for sale if crypto crashes. This also wouldn't improve supply in any meaningful way since they are only making so many gpu dies and these would end up split between mining cards and gaming card. TLDR there is no valid reason to make a no ing specific card. Doesn't help anything.

I am thinking more of the 3rd party manufactures not the one made by Nvidia and relabeled.

No Ramdac, no connectors, less complex board, Asus and some of the others have the means to engineer a cheaper board to build. Not saying they would put in the effort, just that it could be done.
 
If you don't like it, you can always buy from Nvidia's competitor!

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Wonder if all of this has caused anyone to cave and buy a Titan V for gaming?
 
Its hard to justify massive R&D budgets when your only competitor AMD is asleep at the wheel and about to crash into a lake. If it wasnt for crypto they would have already folded.
 
My way or the high way I guess. I have noticed over the last few years how driver updates may add features, but on some occasions they remove them. That combined with GPP on the AIB side really shows NV as going off the deep end with control.

We'll see what happens in a year or so when the real next generation stuff starts rolling out but at the moment it isn't looking good in terms of $$$ per performance and potential availability. Too much unknown to say for sure but stories like these don't paint a bright happy picture. Saddest part is that even if GPP is illegal the amount of effort to get it on any government's radar will be substantial and then trying to get the powers that be to comprehend it will be near impossible.

I admit I did find it really odd the vast amount of models NV made available this round. I don't think I've seen this many combinations since the 6xx series. I couldn't tell if they were trying to conquer the whole market or some of act of desperation. I'm leaning to an act of desperation to set up the market for future plans.
 
Well, I am still running an R9-390 and have seen absolutely 0 reason to even try to upgrade. If the prices came down, I might add a second one.... but even FFXV at 1920x1200 with almost max details runs just fine at default clocks although this is the first game I have really decided to run my overclock of 1150/1600.

If mining actually crashes, I will scoop up some better cards... last time I got a couple of 7970s for really cheap. Both are still in use and working fine even though at least one of them was very obviously abused for as when I got it, the thermal pads for the RAM were all jacked up/missing and there was a massive amount of paste on the GPU core. Both have the reference blower cooler on them as well. Just up the speed on the fan and it keeps the cards nice and cool although a bit loud.
 
"both AMD and NVIDIA "have both been decelerating the developments of their new GPU architectures and prolonging their existing GPU platforms' lifecycle"

this is a good thing...I'm glad to hear it...an un-intended positive side effect of the mining craze...no need to release new cards every 6 months or even every year...longer cycles mean developers can optimize their games better for a particular architecture and consumers aren't tempted to buy the latest and greatest every few months
 
where it will still take quite a few more years i am happy intel is finally treating the discrete gpu market seriously and getting into it. the more competition in the field the faster the innovation will come. nvidia can rest easy right now because it has a clear lead and AMD does not have the money for R&D but what happens a few years down the line when Intel starts to get competitive? Intel has the money to easily compete with Nvidia's R&D and Intel sure is hungry for Nvidias market share. Sure Intel might be more interested in the machine learning /AI aspect of discrete graphics cards but lets not forget the gaming industry right now is a billion plus dollar a year industry and I dont think many companies would scoff at being a leader in a billion dollar plus industry
 
where it will still take quite a few more years i am happy intel is finally treating the discrete gpu market seriously and getting into it. the more competition in the field the faster the innovation will come. nvidia can rest easy right now because it has a clear lead and AMD does not have the money for R&D but what happens a few years down the line when Intel starts to get competitive? Intel has the money to easily compete with Nvidia's R&D and Intel sure is hungry for Nvidias market share. Sure Intel might be more interested in the machine learning /AI aspect of discrete graphics cards but lets not forget the gaming industry right now is a billion plus dollar a year industry and I dont think many companies would scoff at being a leader in a billion dollar plus industry
Eh.... intel isn't very forward thinking anymore. They're on a MBA milk course trying to maximize profits and slowing down their R&D. I doubt they're going to really get serious into the integrated market or even the discrete graphics market.
I mean what are they doing now with integrated graphics? Slapping on a radeon core to their cpu? That's considered innovation now?
 
.longer cycles mean developers can optimize their games better for a particular architecture and consumers aren't tempted to buy the latest and greatest every few months

While I don't completely agree its a good thing you do have very valid points. Optimized games seem to be a bit of a lost art these days. I'm lucky that my wife doesn't give me too much grief when I upgrade GPU's or displays, and let's face it they usually do go hand in hand. Part of that is that if I spend a chunk, she gets to as well. So that ends up being a double whammy to the house budget. Quid pro quo and all.

On the note of displays, though, it does seem like we've been in a trend in the last five years or more where they're evolving far quicker than the cards are. Even before mining was a thing this started issues for those of us trying to take advantage especially since even early adopters can usually pick up a new panel for an o.k. price in its first year run.
 
I don't necessarily want to bring fruit to this bbq but it sure seems like Intel, NV, AMD are taking pages from Apple's book with these new business models. Those of us enthusiasts who do our own builds have been ripping them for decades in the desktop markets since we know we can make more powerful for cheaper. Now our cutting edge will have to be even more though out in examining a theorized release schedule for each vendor. Not to say this isn't completely new, just more speculation on our part in guessing their agenda.
 
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