[H]ardOCP: GeForce Partner Program Impacts Consumer Choice

[Defiant306]

Is a rock and a hard place, I really hate that they are doing this as it doesn't benefit us the consumers but they make the fastest of cards or the only cards at the time that are that fast. When I got my 1070 there wasn't a AMD card to match it or beat it on price or performance.

If AMD gave me a card that I would want to buy at the time I purchase that meets my needs without any underlying issues then I would buy one. But as all know their performance has not matched Nvidia for some time now and their later options outside my circle of purchase for GFX cards.

In all honesty I wish AMD would sell off the GFX side (Lets face it, its still ATI) to the likes of Intel where they have the money to pump the R&D up to make products to match Nvidia's offerings so that we can have some good competition.

 

[Bazzards]

If AMD gave me a card that I would want to buy at the time I purchase that meets my needs without any underlying issues then I would buy one. But as all know their performance has not matched Nvidia for some time now and their later options outside my circle of purchase for GFX cards.

Totally agree with this post.

 

[sideways14a]

There is no way i would want to see AMD give up the video side of there business just because they are a few % behind nvidia in performance and power.
I have just spent some quality time wading though drivers and crap to fix a brand spanking new dell inspiron i got for one of our professors here. It came from Dell ******, stuttering and lagging like a good un..
why??? because intel, nvidia and microsoft cant bloody write a proper set of drivers to save themselves.....

So no i dont want intels garbage paws on ATI as it will revert back to the good old days of "AMD drivers are crap" which is nonsense now as they are great. Also no one else can do the cpu/gpu thing like AMD so ... nope stay where you are.

 

[humbug]

after nearly 800 posts people are still arguing over whos fault this mess is .

I think as a community we are at least in part responsible for this mess, AMD had at more than one time a large R&D budget with very good GPU's, they were never really rewarded for it while nVidia were always rewarded for their efforts, even for bad GPU's.

One cannot keep up an R&D you don't get a return on, eventually you just run out of money, AMD are out of money and so this where we are at.

 

[4K8KW10]

I think as a community we are at least in part responsible for this mess, AMD had at more than one time a large R&D budget with very good GPU's, they were never really rewarded for it while nVidia were always rewarded for their efforts, even for bad GPU's.

One cannot keep up an R&D you don't get a return on, eventually you just run out of money, AMD are out of money and so this where we are at.

Yes, mid Q2 2004 - mid Q2 2005 is the only period in history when discrete Radeons had higher market share than the competition.
There was one period around 2009 when Radeon HD 4890 and Radeon HD 5870 dictated what was hot and what was not, but they had considerably small influence on the market share.

https://www.game-debate.com/news/16613/12-year-gpu-market-share-history-of-nvidia-and-amd-revealed

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

The problem is not about bothering what's on the box. You and me would do our research and would know better that the name means nothing. We however are not the majority.

What if Nvidia changed there name tomorrow and called themselves something else, they would automatically lose a lot of there brand power for those that didn't know better. People know and trust the Asus ROG brand thinking it's the best where as people have no clue who Arez is. It's not even Asus Arez but just Arez Strixx and so on. Asus is a big name but Arez is a nobody in most people's minds. Surely you can see the difference.

So we're talking about people that are buying a GPU on a whim with no research, that don't know which card is best but are very aware of GPU branding?

Most of my friends don't know GPU branding (they probably know Nvidia, but that's unaffected by this). But at the same time probably wouldn't buy a GPU without asking someone or doing some research, especially if they're confident enough to swap the cards over themselves. But I suspect a number of them would probably just run a PC into the ground and then buy a new one rather than upgrade a component.
So from my personal experience people that don't know about GPUs but are very aware of branding like ROG (which will likely carry an increased price tag as you're paying for the badge) seems quite small.

 

[Rozzy85]

I think as a community we are at least in part responsible for this mess, AMD had at more than one time a large R&D budget with very good GPU's, they were never really rewarded for it while nVidia were always rewarded for their efforts, even for bad GPU's.

One cannot keep up an R&D you don't get a return on, eventually you just run out of money, AMD are out of money and so this where we are at.

That's the way I see it. The consumer base has created this environment over the last 10-15 years so now they can reap the rewards of the monopoly. There's been plenty of times in the past where ATi/AMD have offered decent products yet they still failed to do well in comparison to Nvidia counterparts. Doesn't really matter what they do now, Nvidia can undercut on them whatever they release and offer something slightly better at the same or higher price and have it sell more. I can see them concentrating mostly on the low to mid end market from here on as there's still money to be made here and just leave the top end to Nvidia where they can offer performance "upgrades" for $700 every 2 years.

 

[TheRealDeal]

So we're talking about people that are buying a GPU on a whim with no research, that don't know which card is best but are very aware of GPU branding?

Most of my friends don't know GPU branding (they probably know Nvidia, but that's unaffected by this). But at the same time probably wouldn't buy a GPU without asking someone or doing some research, especially if they're confident enough to swap the cards over themselves. But I suspect a number of them would probably just run a PC into the ground and then buy a new one rather than upgrade a component.
So from my personal experience people that don't know about GPUs but are very aware of branding like ROG (which will likely carry an increased price tag as you're paying for the badge) seems quite small.

You see the problem is if this were true Asus and the like would not bother with spending money on building up top branded stuff as it doesn't matter according to you . It does matter and people have heard of Asus and there ROG brand even if they know very little. They might have seen it somewhere or have heard from there mates. I agree not everyone with a PC or even a gaming PC will know but there is a lot more chance they will. Nvidia are already the bigger brand and now they have the biggest brands for gaming. I wonder why Nvidia didn't specifically ask for these companies to create there own new brand to go with Nvidia cards. We could have the Nvidia 1080ti Arez.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

That's the way I see it. The consumer base has created this environment over the last 10-15 years so now they can reap the rewards of the monopoly. There's been plenty of times in the past where ATi/AMD have offered decent products yet they still failed to do well in comparison to Nvidia counterparts. Doesn't really matter what they do now, Nvidia can undercut on them whatever they release and offer something slightly better at the same or higher price and have it sell more. I can see them concentrating mostly on the low to mid end market from here on as there's still money to be made here and just leave the top end to Nvidia where they can offer performance "upgrades" for $700 every 2 years.

It feels like at least some of that is down to marketing. Nvidia's marketing can sell snow to the Eskimos while AMD's couldn't sell food to the starving.

The 7000 series and 200 series by AMD were decent, although I think they had driver issues around the start of the 7000 series. But I think the damage was done by this point and a lot of people's good will towards AMD had started to run out.

Nvidia ran their business as a business and it seems a lot of people didn't hold that against them.
I think a lot of people accept that businesses are run as businesses and sometimes they do some things that aren't nice. But the fact that Google is so big and popular suggests a lot of people are prepared to look the other way with these things if it doesn't directly affect them.
I mean we all know Intel have done questionable things, but people don't seem to mind as they still buy their products. This doesn't set an example of "we'll only buy products from you if you're run like a charity". Microsoft is another example, how many people here use Windows and puts up with the questionable things they've done because it suits them (maybe they want to game and there aren't any real alternatives)?

 

[sideways14a]

I lot of folk could also be swayed to nvidia by visiting forums such as this and reading some of the utter crap AMD gets thrown at it and believing it all.
Its bound to make folk think.

All those "Amd drivers are crap" and "Amd graphics card use huge power" or "Amd cards run super hot"....
Either exaggerated to the extreme - What... a 580 uses only a couple of dozen or so watts more and its temps wont be boiling water or causing nuclear fusion..
Hardly the end of the world when folk are nuking 8700s with god knows how many watts to reach forum-epeen-max-level scores of 5 or so Ghz while spanking the 90s mark and needing 3 fan water coolers.

Same with the AMD drivers, i dunno about many of you but after having used AMD graphics cards for years in my machines i have found there software to be increasingly better equipped, stable and updated quick. Heck the nvidia control panel and geforce experience is naff and as for its little habit of calling home... well.

But these things stick to AMD for some reason, unlike nividia who can make noob mistakes with memory sizes (the 970), manage to set fire to some of there cards with drivers and have also sent out just as many crappy drivers as AMD in the past yet seem to get a pardon almost instantly..

Enthusiasts have voted, the noobs have followed and now everyone will need to eat there own crap and suck up what nvidia deems an upgrade yearly now.. its what you all wanted anyway.

 

[sideways14a]

Yeah a lot of this can be levelled at AMDs woeful marketing, it really is superbly awful.
Take a leaf out of the competitions book, hire shills, flood forums with fake news and bribe reviewers (then threaten them with not getting hardware if they dont always tow the line)

 

[JediFragger]

Yeah a lot of this can be levelled at AMDs woeful marketing, it really is superbly awful.

It's pretty bad, probably none at all would be slightly better and just let positive word-of-mouth do the work.

 

[4K8KW10]

It feels like at least some of that is down to marketing. Nvidia's marketing can sell snow to the Eskimos while AMD's couldn't sell food to the starving.

nVidia should have lost the credibility of a company manufacturing graphics chips in the Matrox G200 Millenium era when the GeForce counterparts offered woeful image quality both in 2D analogue and 3D environment. Even then, ATi Radeon used to be the superior choice regarding proper display of content on the screens.
But hell no, consumers for whatever weird reasons decided to make the small then troll nVidia to the giant monster it is now.

 

[sideways14a]

I remember all to well bumpgate as well, back when i was a technician i had to deal with loads of machines we recommended and bought in for our staff - been a little reluctant to recomend nvidia since then.

That said i still went out recently and bought an overpriced 1080ti, why? because.. well its true AMD have no product at that level, not happy about it but thats it.
Doesnt mean folk should be blindly buying 1070s or 1060 over vega 56s and 580s without thought - just because nvidia holds the very high end doesnt mean the rest of there line is all conquering.

 

[Ian Evey]

nVidia should have lost the credibility of a company manufacturing graphics chips in the Matrox G200 Millenium era when the GeForce counterparts offered woeful image quality both in 2D analogue and 3D environment. Even then, ATi Radeon used to be the superior choice regarding proper display of content on the screens.
But hell no, consumers for whatever weird reasons decided to make the small then troll nVidia to the giant monster it is now.

Or Nvidia just make better gaming cards.

 

[Rozzy85]

It feels like at least some of that is down to marketing. Nvidia's marketing can sell snow to the Eskimos while AMD's couldn't sell food to the starving.

The 7000 series and 200 series by AMD were decent, although I think they had driver issues around the start of the 7000 series. But I think the damage was done by this point and a lot of people's good will towards AMD had started to run out.

Nvidia ran their business as a business and it seems a lot of people didn't hold that against them.
I think a lot of people accept that businesses are run as businesses and sometimes they do some things that aren't nice. But the fact that Google is so big and popular suggests a lot of people are prepared to look the other way with these things if it doesn't directly affect them.
I mean we all know Intel have done questionable things, but people don't seem to mind as they still buy their products. This doesn't set an example of "we'll only buy products from you if you're run like a charity". Microsoft is another example, how many people here use Windows and puts up with the questionable things they've done because it suits them (maybe they want to game and there aren't any real alternatives)?

Yes, the majority on it is marketing at play which is sad but that's just how powerful it is. It's the long process of building brand trust and then having it reach a point where your consumers become zealots and do not question. I still remember a CS:S player from 2005 who sat camping in the stairwell every match on cs_office, clutching his M4A1 and telling everyone in chat how his ATi GPU touched him at night and that they should not buy ATi on his one bad experience. To think his rhetoric may have actually convinced some playing at the time. This is the consumer mentality you can be up against where people choose a side and stick to it for life. That's why Nvidia can pull this anti-competitive move and most will not care or even understand how it effects them. This isn't necessarily harmful but can be seen as negative if it allows one side to reign supreme and do as they wish with no repercussions. Not singling out Nvidia, I know for certain AMD would do the same should they be in the dominant position. They are both businesses set out to make money for the shareholders and will do whatever it takes.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

nVidia should have lost the credibility of a company manufacturing graphics chips in the Matrox G200 Millenium era when the GeForce counterparts offered woeful image quality both in 2D analogue and 3D environment. Even then, ATi Radeon used to be the superior choice regarding proper display of content on the screens.
But hell no, consumers for whatever weird reasons decided to make the small then troll nVidia to the giant monster it is now.

As someone that owned an ATI Rage Fury MAXX I can tell you ATI made some duff cards back in the day too.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

I remember all to well bumpgate as well, back when i was a technician i had to deal with loads of machines we recommended and bought in for our staff - been a little reluctant to recomend nvidia since then.

That said i still went out recently and bought an overpriced 1080ti, why? because.. well its true AMD have no product at that level, not happy about it but thats it.
Doesnt mean folk should be blindly buying 1070s or 1060 over vega 56s and 580s without thought - just because nvidia holds the very high end doesnt mean the rest of there line is all conquering.

And that's the thing, AMD have nothing that will touch Nvidia's 3rd best card at the minute. For the 14 months before the Vega 56 and Vega 64 AMD had nothing that would touch the 1080 or 1070 either.

 

[4K8KW10]

And that's the thing, AMD have nothing that will touch Nvidia's 3rd best card at the minute. For the 14 months before the Vega 56 and Vega 64 AMD had nothing that would touch the 1080 or 1070 either.

The majority of sales, perhaps 95% of the total, fall under the RX 580 market segment and lower.
Why does AMD need to have the performance crown in order to sell the lower tier graphics?

 

[bigmike20vt]

All those "Amd drivers are crap" and "Amd graphics card use huge power" or "Amd cards run super hot"....

The problem is it takes a long time to build a reputation..... and a very short time indeed to ruin it imo.

AMD drivers WERE crap - I had a few amd GPUs back in the day and compared to nvidia at the time their drivers stank... and the power usage / heat from their cards per performance WERE a lot worse. If you say this is no longer true i will take you at your word - it has been a while since i followed closely, a child kind of changed my priorities / the time i had to follow this stuff.

but there are still people out there who will swear blind that fiat/alfa cars are rust buckets, despite them galvanising all their cars years and years ago - before most of their rivals.
there are still those people who will tell you that Ideal combi gas boilers are rubbish... because they once were.... despite the fact that in trying to build their reputation back they now happily trade blows with much more expensive brands and offer a better warranty.

Mud sticks and sadly it takes a while to clean the stench. my next gaming cpu could well be AMD however.... right now they are pretty good... that said i am not planning on upgrading for some time yet.

given AMD power both of the major player gaming consoles must surely make em a few quid... not that that bears much relation to the sharp end of pc gaming