nvidia or amd card?

[psychodil]

I'm going to get shouted at for this but I don't care as it applies in general not just graphcs cards as well:

If you consistently lower your prices in response to the competition it gives the impression of an inferior product...

I'm not saying it's true; I'm saying it's just what that kind of strategy implies.

People that come and discuss the pro's and con's on a graphics card forum are quite small compared to the masses and while you and I both know it's not true it undoubtedly costs them sales to Nvidia as well as brings more in due to the lower price point. I'm not qualified enough to estimate how many sales it costs them compared to how many it brings in .

(see Chipachap's link)

So you are saying that people are thinking "Oh, AMD are dropping prices, that must mean nvidia cards are better. Im gonna buy a nvidia card"

If so thats a sad reflection of the intelligence of the average computer user. Mind you my brother has just bought a crap laptop for £400 after buying whatever PC world told him.

 

[Rusty0611]

So you are saying that people are thinking "Oh, AMD are dropping prices, that must mean nvidia cards are better. Im gonna buy a nvidia card"

If so thats a sad reflection of the intelligence of the average computer user. Mind you my brother has just bought a crap laptop for £400 after buying whatever PC world told him.

No - I'm saying that it's only a sad few (me included ) who follow the prices of the cards over time. I can safely assume that the mass majority don't and they take their snapshot of prices at the point in time they buy.

If you apply it to TV's (or anything else you aren't as interested in but still purchase upon occasion) could you say what price they were 12 months ago from now in relation to its direct competitor?

I couldn't. This forum is definitely a good indicator of the high end enthusiast however we are a fairly small minority. Most people I have played games with over the years haven't got any more than a basic understanding of what's in their machine and how to resolve problems. Doesn't make them stupid - just means they aren't as interested as we all are.

The fact is lowering prices devalues your product in the eyes of the market.

 

[pgi947]

Can't really expect them to honour a warranty if they GI e you up to 1.8v on the 7970

Imagine if MalX got hold of afterburner extreme! You could smell the burning varnish for miles

hahah!!

This is exactly the issue, if MSI allowed every lightning owner to get 1.8v with ease its going to end in fire, all it takes is someone who likes the cosmetic look of the lightning to be told "push all the sliders up" and it will end in disaster, I must stress MSI are VERY strict with who gets to play with the unlocked afterburner, they even release versions with expiration dates (like the betas) that only work durring overclocking events.

Somebody had to but yer, unless you are going for the world record and using LN2, I can see no reason other than stupidity for going that high on volts.

Is exactly what the Lightnings are made for tbh, world records, fairly sure every revision of the Lightning has held one record or another at some point in its lifetime, brilliant publicity for MSI too

I'm going to get shouted at for this but I don't care as it applies in general not just graphcs cards as well:

If you consistently lower your prices in response to the competition it gives the impression of an inferior product...

I'm not saying it's true; I'm saying it's just what that kind of strategy implies.

People that come and discuss the pro's and con's on a graphics card forum are quite small compared to the masses and while you and I both know it's not true it undoubtedly costs them sales to Nvidia as well as brings more in due to the lower price point. I'm not qualified enough to estimate how many sales it costs them compared to how many it brings in .

(see Chipachap's link)

Agree with this, someone with little knowledge of GPU performance at the moment may base a purchase based purely on price = performance. Which is why fantastic places like the OcUK forums exist to advise otherwise.

I think we can all agree roughly what cards suit what budget and setup at the moment.

 

[Rusty0611]

Agree with this, someone with little knowledge of GPU performance at the moment may base a purchase based purely on price = performance. Which is why fantastic places like the OcUK forums exist to advise otherwise.

I think we can all agree roughly what cards suit what budget and setup at the moment.

Yeah. To be fair the problem is exacerbated by the fact AMD drivers were rubbish compared to now when the cards were initially reviewed.

If someone's looking for performance reviews I can almost guarantee that they look at the usual sites from a Google search which returns the original review which shows the card performing worse than its nVidia equivalent.

 

[pgi947]

Thanks for the reply, was shocked when I saw your sig.



At what temps do the vrms cause instability?

Sorry tommy missed your post.

The short answer is we don't really know, but I am well informed from MSI that the cooler the better, as it is my VRM's are hotter than both the core and memory under water, load temps are around 43/37/46 over core/mem/VRM.

What we do know however is that cooler VRM are more efficient, lowering power consumption and possibly giving headroom for an overclock.

 

[spoffle]

I'm going to get shouted at for this but I don't care as it applies in general not just graphcs cards as well:

If you consistently lower your prices in response to the competition it gives the impression of an inferior product...

I'm not saying it's true; I'm saying it's just what that kind of strategy implies.

People that come and discuss the pros and cons on a graphics card forum are quite small compared to the masses and while you and I both know it's not true it undoubtedly costs them sales to Nvidia as well as brings more in due to the lower price point. I'm not qualified enough to estimate how many sales it costs them compared to how many it brings in .

(see Chipachap's link)

Only morons who associate price with quality though.

Okay, I admit that makes up a vast amount of people, but realistically most people who are into computers will be a bit more clued up than the average chump.

nVidia's sales aren't really based on price for the die hard fans, it's like a religious aspect to them, they'll buy nVidia over AMD simply because it's nVidia.

 

[Rusty0611]

p.s. I'm not against lowering prices - I think it's good. I'm an informed buyer so I can decide based on all the angles.

I was just putting another angle on it that's all.

(in before humbug see's it and posts a plethora of graphs which no-one's interested in)

 

[spoffle]

Yeah. To be fair the problem is exacerbated by the fact AMD drivers were rubbish compared to now when the cards were initially reviewed.

If someone's looking for performance reviews I can almost guarantee that they look at the usual sites from a Google search which returns the original review which shows the card performing worse than its nVidia equivalent.

The problem is, you have a load of people talking about all these AMD driver problems, whilst pretending or suggesting nVidia drivers are problem free.

Sensible people know AMD and nVidia have rubbish drivers at times, but most of the time they're fine.

 

[spoffle]

p.s. I'm not against lowering prices - I think it's good. I'm an informed buyer so I can decide based on all the angles.

I was just putting another angle on it that's all.

(in before humbug see's it and posts a plethora of graphs which no-one's interested in)

I got that part, I was just saying that the people who do think like that are objectively morons.

Considering the current economy, things are quite different at the moment, people are a lot more interested in getting better deals and better value for money when they spend their money.

I've got first hand experience of significantly cheaper, yet higher quality products that sell well and customers highly praise for the quality, and choose it based on that, and they see the competition products as way too overpriced.

 

[Rusty0611]

Only morons who associate price with quality though.

Okay, I admit that makes up a vast amount of people, but realistically most people who are into computers will be a bit more clued up than the average chump.

nVidia's sales aren't really based on price for the die hard fans, it's like a religious aspect to them, they'll buy nVidia over AMD simply because it's nVidia.

Maybe... you're of course correct that the average PC gamer is more clued up than your average market sheep but I wouldn't expect most people to go to the extent that we do to understand what the best cards are at the moment.

As explained above, a Google search and reading a few different sources is enough for most (IMO) which would indirectly re-inforce the point that a lower price equals a devalued product.

The problem is, you have a load of people talking about all these AMD driver problems, whilst pretending or suggesting nVidia drivers are problem free.

Sensible people know AMD and nVidia have rubbish drivers at times, but most of the time they're fine.

Performance when they were initially reviewed was way, way down compared to now. It doesn't help. Neither did my use of the term, "rubbish" granted.

 

[spoffle]

Performance when they were initially reviewed was way, way down compared to now. It doesn't help. Neither did my use of the term, "rubbish" granted.

Of course, it's just that the people who love to talk about drivers readily forget any nVidia shortcomings when it's driver related, but can't forget anything AMD related.

If you ever point this out to them, the response is usually something along the lines of "that was in the past" or "NOPE. NOPE. NOPE" or "Doesn't matter, it never happened to me".

 

[psychodil]

Thats because a lot of people had AMD 4xxx and 5xxx cards, realised crossfire was flaky at best, and went nvidia ever since. Their first recollection of AMD is "poor drivers", even though its not applicable any more. Thankfully crossfire and AMD drivers in general are a lot better than they were then.

We have this guy at work who bought a brand new chevrolet in 2010 (cant remember the model, but its the cheapy butch looking one), and he takes the mick out of another guy who bought a new skoda superb, just because of the stigma attached to skodas many years ago

 

[tommybhoy]

If you post a graphics issue on the AMD forums, no one bothers to take notice especially if it's an older game.

At least it never got closed due to bad publicity, sorry, I meant because it got hacked.

It's still not been re-opened 3 months later(despite having zero finance details), because of 'being hacked'.

Prior to closing their forum, Nvidia started the old AMD strong armed tactic of deleting complaining posts because of the 6 series stutter bug.

So you are saying that people are thinking "Oh, AMD are dropping prices, that must mean nvidia cards are better. Im gonna buy a nvidia card"

The fact is lowering prices devalues your product in the eyes of the market.

That's not what happened though, there was public outrage-mostly from AMD users that the price hike was not acceptable way back on release all the way up to when AMD decided to react to the 6 series.

*AMD have been informed of desired price points which need hitting. *Whether they will do anything remains unseen.

AMD is frowned upon for charging premiums, but when Nvidia do it, that's because premiums are an exclusive for Nvidia(more importantly for Nvidia though is)-it's accepted.

The presumption the price drops were because of low sales, is exactly that.

There can be other reasons for the price drops, It could have been to increase AMD's market share, only AMD know how many extra units need shifting to get the same return, so ramp up production and reduce prices.


When the 660 series got released, Amd dropped prices again which directly choked 660 sales, while increasing market share.

@OcUk alone:

AMD's price move, has made them sell like hot cakes, infact many of our lines are looking to sell out.

AMD have had the right effect!

Today over 100pc of 7950 sold and over 250pc of 7800 series in a day - WOW!

How many 660Ti's?

Just 29pc today, so quite a bit lower, but not so bad if they sustain that daily.

Still at £30 or so less they'd fly!

It's also a presumption that Nvidia 'don't need to drop prices' rather than Nvidia 'can't drop prices'.

An awful lot of users are going from green to red because of the price difference which is bad news for Nvidia as it's hard to get customers back, add in the voltage locking, next gen if it's still the same, they could lose even more.

 

[spoffle]

The whole AMD drivers thing doesn't really stem from back then anyway, it's been a long term thing, way before the 4XXX series.

However, I had 2x 4XXX series cards since release in crossfire and they were always fine. The only reason I upgraded was for playing games on multiple monitors, a single 4850 wasn't hacking it (softth, both cards are used to get the 3 outputs required, but only one can actually do the graphics processing work).

Take note of the people that tend to go on about drivers, it tends to be one of the only things they can actually talk about, like the guy who mentioned it in this thread. I've noticed him do that a few times in a few different threads. He doesn't tend to stick around to actually respond to any responses he gets.

*cough*nVidia focus group member*cough*

To be serious though, they have been known to actually do that sort of thing on forums, just to "remind" people of the reasons why they need to keep buying nVidia.

 

[tommybhoy]

Sorry tommy missed your post.

The short answer is we don't really know, but I am well informed from MSI that the cooler the better, as it is my VRM's are hotter than both the core and memory under water, load temps are around 43/37/46 over core/mem/VRM.

What we do know however is that cooler VRM are more efficient, lowering power consumption and possibly giving headroom for an overclock.

Thanks for the reply mate, your temps are making me cry...

I can keep the core about 50-55c(on a MSI 7970OC, low Asic)but my vrms are in the 80's-on air.

Any more than 1140/1500(stock GHz memory) and it collapses, that's with using the Ghz bios, on the OC bios, it only goes 1100 stable and you can't touch the memory at all, regardless the voltage.

 

[psychodil]

Well I had a 4890 and had a few driver problems with it, mainly V-sync was broken for quite a few games, and a few crashes. Ive used both AMD and Nvidia cards over the years and I believe the nvidia drivers were better in general at that time.

Ive gone back to AMD this generation and am very impressed with the drivers and would recommend them to anyone. Things change very quickly in the tech world and thankfully drivers do too.

Its pretty clear that both sides have driver problems this generation, and both sides have room for improvement.

 

[pgi947]

Whats your memory temps like? I can OC my memory up to the point where memory correction becomes an issue before artefacting (somewhere just after 1900mhz).

From what I can make out reference cooling on the 7970 VRM's isn't brilliant, I think they are hidden just under an aluminium plate under the blower fan, so don't get a tremendous amount of airflow.

Also if ASIC quality holds any ground (I think it does a little but is far from accurate, the lottery is a far larger factor) then it may show in your OC results, low ASIC = poor clocking on air, my ASIC is 62.4%.

 

[spoffle]

Both sides have always had driver problems at various points.

That's what I find the most ridiculous thing about the whole driver argument, well except for those two "rogue" drivers that got out and killed dead various GTX590s and 9800GTXes.

As for ASIC, I don't think that means anything to be honest, I've seen threads where people are suggesting low ASIC numbers are good overclockers.

It looks like it's something that doesn't mean a whole lot, but that some one will try to take advantage of it in the future as some sort of premium feature.

 

[psychodil]

Both sides have always had driver problems at various points.

That's what I find the most ridiculous thing about the whole driver argument, well except for those two "rogue" drivers that got out and killed dead various GTX590s and 9800GTXes.

The dead GTX590's was probably the beginning of Nvidias decision to limit voltage on the 6XX series, IMO.

Sorry to go off topic.

 

[spoffle]

What about the 9800GTX though?

However, it's still a fair point for people who want to go on about driver "quality" because the vast majority of them will just deny that such things ever happened, or think of some way to suggest it doesn't matter or isn't relevant.