NVIDIA unveils Founder Edition - AMD to blame?

Status
Not open for further replies.
C

ChosenUno

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 26, 2011
Messages
1,318
If you haven't, check out this video first.


Jay made a good point regarding HTPC/Mini-ATX builds that pretty much requires blower fans.

Pretty much everyone who buys reference buys it because of a. water blocks/b. early adopter/HTPC crowd.

Is the Founder Edition NVIDIA's attempt to target the HTPC crowd? Because let's face it, there's not much of a market for reference cards after custom boards are released and the water blocks to go with those.

Why is this related to AMD? Well, we have the Nano, which is basically a Fury, priced at Fury X levels simply because it works in HTPC.

And from the looks of things the cooler will actually cope pretty well with the heat output.

What do you guys think?
 
linkgoron said:
Yes, we have AMD to blame because nvidia couldn't price gouge as much if AMD would actually deliver.
Click to expand...

Give me a break. Nobody is to blame for Nvidia's price gouging but Nvidia for proposing it and their customers for willingly paying those prices. If AMD weren't around, Nvidia would still be price gouging. Who would you blame then?

You want Nvidia's price gouging to end? STOP BUYING THEIR CARDS AT INFLATED PRICES.

ie - vote with your wallet.

Simple.
 
Last edited:
Well, AMD started the trend with the Nano. A short Fury sold for as much as a Fury X and it seemed to sell well. If the reference board's only shot is HTPC/boutique builds then why not charge a premium? AFAIK no AIB does blower on their custom designs, except for mini special SKUs, and that weird stint with ASUS and white blowers.
 
Let your money flow.. flow into the nvidia coffers, nobody likes a Scrooge.
 
trandoanhung1991 said:
Well, AMD started the trend with the Nano. A short Fury sold for as much as a Fury X and it seemed to sell well. If the reference board's only shot is HTPC/boutique builds then why not charge a premium? AFAIK no AIB does blower on their custom designs, except for mini special SKUs, and that weird stint with ASUS and white blowers.
Click to expand...
What?!? Have you forgotten the TITAN already? $1,000 for a single GPU card and they flew off the shelves. AMD hasn't even come close to that. I'm sorry, but it's Nvidia that has nearly always had higher MSRP's on their video cards than AMD.
 
For the performance Nano's price was too high.

Yeah Titan X was over priced, but people that got it were very few and willing to spend that kind of money.

Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti XtremeGaming 6GB Review

the nano would have been placed lower on this chart than the Fury X (at its original MSRP)
 
trandoanhung1991 said:
Well, AMD started the trend with the Nano. A short Fury sold for as much as a Fury X and it seemed to sell well. If the reference board's only shot is HTPC/boutique builds then why not charge a premium? AFAIK no AIB does blower on their custom designs, except for mini special SKUs, and that weird stint with ASUS and white blowers.
Click to expand...

To be honest with what material from Nvidia are you going to compare this, I can not recall for the life of me when they had a product feature HBM.
 
Why would a small form factor require HBM? they can do one without HBM.....

That said, I don't care for the "founder's edition" much but I can tell you dev cards, which are reference cards and are solidly built, but I also have had no graphics card problems for PNY or EVGA or XFX or Asus. So I might be lucky but over all It doesn't interest me.
 
This is the first time reference cards are going to be priced higher than their custom AIB counterparts, and there must be a method to their madness. It wouldn't make sense to change decade-old traditions just for short-term cash grab.
 
Kyle explained it; basically they historically sold reference cards at break-even, and now they're pricing them to make a profit. That would be fine if reference cards were competitive at that price, but third-party cards have always had much better cooling, cherry-picked GPUs, and factory overclocks. And even then that would be fine too, if the "founders editions" weren't the only cards available until the end of June, which makes them essentially an early adopter tax that will also end up as being inferior hardware.

And before anyone busts in, perhaps not inferior in amorphous "craftsmanship". Inferior in terms of cooling, noise, and performance, things we actually care about.

(This is all just my opinion until reviews come out.)
 
I have a hard time believing that reference cards are sold at break-even pricing when AIB's obviously make a profit producing cards with even more exotic cooling systems for the same price. Yes, the reference card may (or may not) have higher quality components. But I just can't see there being enough of a difference from the reference to make it worthwhile to produce aftermarket cards if the margins are that thin.
 
schizo said:
Kyle explained it; basically they historically sold reference cards at break-even, and now they're pricing them to make a profit. That would be fine if reference cards were competitive at that price, but third-party cards have always had much better cooling, cherry-picked GPUs, and factory overclocks. And even then that would be fine too, if the "founders editions" weren't the only cards available until the end of June, which makes them essentially an early adopter tax that will also end up as being inferior hardware.

And before anyone busts in, perhaps not inferior in amorphous "craftsmanship". Inferior in terms of cooling, noise, and performance, things we actually care about.

(This is all just my opinion until reviews come out.)
Click to expand...
Do you really believe that nvidia (who is making record profits) is selling reference 650$/1000$ cards at break even? Really?
Do you think there is a 220$ cost difference between manufacturing a 980 and a 970? (or that a 970 really costs 330$ to make?)

trandoanhung1991 said:
This is the first time reference cards are going to be priced higher than their custom AIB counterparts, and there must be a method to their madness. It wouldn't make sense to change decade-old traditions just for short-term cash grab.
Click to expand...

We need to see if Gigabyte/Asus/Whatever actually sell @600$. It's possible that they'll also take a shot at a 700$ msrp. I'm not really sure why they wouldn't.
 
Last edited:
They sold the vast majority of their reference cards in the first month or so after release, when they're still very expensive to make. Titan is obviously an outlier as it had no third-party versions.
 
I'd say Jay's video (and the WTF article) outline the thinking fairly well.
NV's trying to make sure a specific design for their card is universally available throughout the lifetime of the card.
This frees up the AIBs from having to continually do rote copies of the reference boards, eventually dropping them (though they can if they want).
This then allows the AIBs to then go in and innovate on the cards to speed bin, deliver different cooling options, etc.

Then, if someone with a setup requires the reference cooling design (SFF has been mentioned), they can still get them, even if the AIBs are pushing something different.
Additionally, NV has demonstrated that buying "reference" no longer means "shitty/no overclocks". So if an SFF'er wants to crank the GPU and memory some and eke out a bit of extra performance, no problem!
 
We don't know what a "good" 1080 overclock looks like yet. The GPU may top out at 2.1Ghz regardless of cooling, due to architectural constraints. Or it may easily hit 2.3 with high-end 3rd party fan coolers and 2.5Ghz on water. The reference card may be power constrained by the single 8-pin connector, and AIBs with 8+6 could get much higher. We just don't know.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top