Hey drunkenmaster
The problem [I assume] you're not factoring in Big Wayne is, common sense and long term viability of the companies. The cheaper Nvidia sell cards, the more loss they make, these are BIG chips, REALLY big, the longer Nvidia makes a loss, the more problems they have, or should I say, the sooner their problems get really really insurmountable.
You honestly don't know what I am and am not factoring in but please feel free to assume away and consider me less knowledgeable that yourself!
You say the nVidia chips are big . . . really big . . . so what? . . . I didn't ask them to make big chips that would be super expensive to produce?
. . . give the engineers a kick up the backside and get them to work harder to produce more out of less . . . I don't see why we should have to pay for these huge slabs of silicon . . . they think its alright with us because we will pick up the bill for their slack designs? . . . no way jose . . . pull your finger out nVidia design teams, cancel your holidays and get to work you lazy blaggards . . . its do or die . . . they been in the game long enough now to know how to design something better without expecting the consumer to throw good money at whatever they come up with . . . its not good enough!
Likewise AMD are making a decent profit, they AREN'T making a huge profit, the 5850 was a very tight profit card, it was again pretty big, the 6580 is significantly smaller to be £50 cheaper, the profits will be fairly tight on it also, not quite as tight though.
Do you have any idea how much it costs nVidia to make a GTX 460 or a GTX 480? . . . do you know how much it costs them to take a full blown GTX 460 and "cripple" it down to a 768MB unit? . . . do you know how what the nVidia annual budget is for R&D? . . . how about Marketing & advertising? . . . what about staff salary? . . . do you think that Jen-Hsun Huang is worth $25 MILLION dollars a year? or has he taken a pay cut? . . . how much do nVidia invest their TWIMTBP program etc etc
I would like to see a fairly accurate breakdown of the nVidia corporations profit and loss, expenses, R&D, Fab costs etc etc . . . then the truth would come out as to why they are making a loss . . .
The thing is, companies can't make a chip for say $30, and sell it for $31 and be happy, they plough BILLIONS into R&D over a few years, which by and large is wage bills for HUGE engineering teams to get these things designed and built. This money HAS to be factored into the prices of cards and AMD/Nvidia HAVE to recoup that money or they continue to make a long term loss and eventually become unable to keep going.
Oh good grief . . . please avoid stating the obvious, drives me potty when someone talks to me like I am 5 years old!
I'm fully aware they just can't mark up each item a single dollar!
nVidia need to renegotiate with the design teams or get some new geeks in . . . restructure the company, chop off the dead wood who are sitting around smoking cigars, do some new market research . . . and maybe come to the conclusion that unless they pull something really special out the bag then they are heading for a fall . . . I personally think they are reaping what they have sowed . . .
Nvidia prices are what you would call "every other option has utterly failed" firesell pricing, its not sustainable, this gen is from a business sense utterly killing Nvidia.
Tough titties!
They should have done their homework better and not "assumed" we would all be happy to pay top dollar for whatever they came up with . . . who are they designing for anyway? . . . themselves or us? . . . I got no sympathy for them man . . . silly gits what were they thinking! . . . oh dear Pride comes before the fall as they say! . . .
$141.0 million loss is a symptom that they are not doing things as well as they could . . . it does not mean that the end user has to cough up their hard earned money ££ to buy an overpriced product to keep them in champagne & caviar . . . someone with a calculator needs to get to work and streamline the companies expenditure . . .
What they need to do is go back to the drawing board and have a fundamental rethink about their designs, what the public want and what the public are prepared to pay for . . . its totally their problem and in no way our problem . . . I don't want them to go bust but at the same time I don't think the consumer should have to bail them out with sympathy cash by paying a premium which they shouldn't have to pay . . .
This is all aside from the fact you're basing a huge amount of your opinion on ignoring higher memory usage in DX11, the fact that games are and continue to improve in visual quality in DX11, that MOST users do infact buy for at least a short term future and not, the game they are playing today as you do, and therefore your advise of not wasting money on a 1gb version is, frankly obsolete.
Rasss your doing it again, telling me what I am thinking, what I am ignoring etc etc . . . steam is coming from my ears!
Direct X Smex . . . stop making excuses for them! . . . . Why are you making out that direct X 11 is such a big deal . . . what does it offer the average punter that is so exciting . . . sure it uses more memory but thats hardly a good sales pitch . . . "Buy DirectX 11 . . . it uses more memory and makes you tech demos look really pretty!"
History repeats itself for those with their eyes open . . . how many times have we seen first gen products produce really poor FPS when running the latest direct X . . . looks lovely but is laggy as a laggy thing? . . . runs direct X 9 and 10 great though . . . if you think its important to buy a direct X 11 card today and spend a heap of extra money doing so that’s your call . . . doesn't mean anything to me and it doesn't mean anything to a lot of other people who are playing their favourite games which are not using the latest direct X . . . it does not appear to be a "killer app" and I don't see what this has to do with cards being over-priced? . . . does incorporating hardware to accelerate newer direct x features cost a lot? . . . surely that's just a bit of R&D time added in with all the rest of the R&D time that goes into a new product? . . . does directX 11 hardware require gold plated components or? . . . does the average gamer really think that much of direct X 11? . . . enough to get excited anough about to spend spend spend? . . . . maybe nVidia and ATI think so but that's not as important as what the punter thinks . . . sure the manufacturers could spend some dollar $$$ to get the punter to change the way he/she thinks about the newer directX but personally I think the corporations are wasting their money . . .
I'm not sure what your talking about when you say most people buy a GPU for at least the short term future?
. . . you have totally misunderstood or "Twisted" something I said before . . . buy a GPU to play a game lol!
. . . what I actually said is "personally" I don't buy a GPU to last more than 6-12 months . . . I get along fine with an IGP until the gaming urge strikes then I buy a GPU that plays the current crop of games fine . . . easy to understand right? . . . I do not buy a GPU to play games that are coming out in 18-24months? . . . if other people want to and feel its a good ideal to spend extra money ££ for this pleasure then that's their call . . .
And again you "Twist" my words when you say I am advising people to buy a 768MB GPU? . . . what I actually did is to ask the question why pay £50 extra for the 1024MB GTX 460? . . . its a question (at the time this was raised there was indeed a £50 price difference) . . . I then pasted up a heap of benchmarks showing the 768MB model performing decent FPS results with good quality settings @ 1920x1200 . . . the notion of getting a 768MB card really went against the grain of the forum hardcore gaming massive who insisted that 1024MB was standard issue for "everyone" who wanted to enjoy gaming at 1920x1200 . . . the "Facts" painted quite a different picture . . . HD 5850 50% faster than the carp bang-for-buck GTX 460 eh drunkenmaster!
Think what you like man . . . your in an ever shrinking "Minority" anyway, the people know what they need and they are doing their thinking with their wallets . . . I suggest the "anything less than 32XAA, DX11, Ultra High is not real gaming but a blurry, smeary mess, may as well play a console" cronies understand that they represent a tiny portion of the market and there will always be some super-dooper expensive product which they can buy three or four off to keep them happy . . . the sweetspot for GPU's is approx £125-£150 quid and that's where the design teams need to be aiming for . . . that gives the uber gamers the choice of a sweet SLI or TRI-SLI set-up! . . .
OcUK Value GeForce GTX 460 1024MB GDDR5
£134.98 inc
1024MB GTX 460's for reduced price, been up all day and still 14 units left? . . . what does that tell us? . . . the demand for GPU's is not that great and even when presented with a great price such as this they don't sell? . . . why don't they sell? . . . think about it . . .
£150 for a 6850 is a great deal, £180 for a 6870 is a great deal, £200 for a 470gtx is a fantastic deal, as is a £125 768MB 460gtx, however the later two are making pretty large losses to be at those prices, encouraging that is not a good thing for long term competition.
This is your opinion . . . I think they are overpriced . . . £150 for a HD 6850 is not a good deal . . . £119 for a HD 6850 is a good deal . . . £180 for a HD 6870 is not a good deal . . . £159 for a HD 6870 is a good deal . . . . £200 for a GTX 470 is not a good deal at all!!!!! . . . . £170 for a GTX 470 is a good deal . . . . £125 for a 768MB GTX 460 is not a good deal unless its an overclocked model featuring a special heatsink . . . £115 for a GTX 460 768MB is a nice deal . . .
Encouraging people to not pay for sloppy design using excessive sized dies that use a lot of power and run hot is exactly what the doctor ordered . . . I don't care if they make a loss, its not my problem and its not your problem, its their problem . . . get the engineers back to the drawing board and have a serious rethink about what the public want and what the public are prepared to pay for . . . its a shoddy state of affairs tbh and shame on them for even thinking we would be stupid enough to let them get away with it . . . its not good enough . . . we "demand" better from our employees!
You also seem to be forgetting with your ridiculous age of profiteering nonsense, that the 4850 was a £125 card, the 4870 was a £180 card,
Please stop telling me what I am forgetting . . . I bought a ****** HD 4850 on launch for £119 inc (01 July 2008) . . . that was over two years ago? . . . what has that got to do with anything in October 2010?
Ah actually now you reminded me . . . the HD 48XX series was the beginning of ATI's comeback . . . nVidia had been sitting pretty for "YEARS!!!!!!" milking the 8800GTX cash cow . . . milking it for every last drop! . . . thank god ATI got their game together and totally slashed the prices of the cards down!
I remember the 512MB HD 4870 was £180 . . . then £200 . . . a few months later the 512MB model was £150 and the 1GB model was £200 . . . what happened? . . . did the cost of manufacturing suddenly drop? . . . was there a cut price sale on GDDR5? . . . no what happened is ATI drip fed people until the sales slumped so they cut the prices to temp people to buy again and once that didn't work they released the 1GB units to get sales flowing again . . .
They have to keep the sales flowing but its getting harder and harder for them . . . money is getting tighter for some people, other people have seen through the smokescreen & mirrors and marketing hype and have decided their older GPU is still doing the business . . . the market is slowly drying up and becoming saturated with products . . . there is only so much GPU's that can be sold . . . Real innovation is the only thing that will get the sales tills ringing again and an extra 10FPS is not real innovation . . . so lets be having some price cuts . . . stimulus >> response!
you're also mistaken massive profits of a multibillion dollar profitable company, with AMD, making sustainable, healthy but not even close to excessive profit, nor Nvidia, who made a pretty hefty loss last quarter.
I'm not mistaking anything . . . the GPU's are too expensive, if nVida are making a loss then its their fault, design something better, use a smaller die, get creative etc etc . . .
Please produce your "Facts" as to what money nVidia and AMD are making from their GPU divisions . . . if you really want to be useful work out "exactly the cost of a GTX 460 768MB & 1024MB model including a portion of R&D, Advertising etc . . . and how much nVidia add on top as a "branding" fee . . . also do the same for AMD with their HD 6850 and HD 6870! . . .
As long as you try and "Justify" the companies high prices I will continue to debate with you . . . one would think you have some incentive to keep the prices inflated? . . . . why you pen so many words of sympathy for the corporations I do not know?
