NVIDIA & AMD Won't Like This: GPU Price Creep, Greed, and Generational Stagnation

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 5 May 2021 at 11:02

Like I said for years on here,AMD and Nvidia have been mucking around with naming,tiers,etc to hide the worse and worse progression,and price/performance improvements are stagnating. The entry level and mainstream has been affected the most due to the realworld price inflation of each generation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_m2i5hU9jM

Calin Banc · 5 May 2021 at 11:17

Finally someone had the courage to say it.

Cooper · 5 May 2021 at 11:22

Nothing new in this video, to those who paid attention to the price creep and naming BS, but at the end of the day, your dealing with a consumer mentality in the 'PC Gamer', who are seemingly willing & able to throw ever more money down the drain, just for the E-peen buzz.

I mean, how can their lives be complete unless they're getting 10fps more than anyone else, even if it does cost them £$1500+ for the privilege.

Wrinkly · 5 May 2021 at 11:36

At least with Nvida RTX GPUs we get usable raytraing and DLSS. Dedicated RT and Tensor cores that use silicon that could have been used for legacy performance.

This is something I feel GN have not considered in the price/performance arguement.

Joxeon · 5 May 2021 at 11:47

Wrinkly said:
At least with Nvida RTX GPUs we get usable raytraing and DLSS. Dedicated RT and Tensor cores that use silicon that could have been used for legacy performance.

This is something I feel GN have not considered in the price/performance arguement.

People buying at the low end want rasterisation though. Is RT even worth turing on in a card like the 3060 and how's DLSS look if you only game at 1080p anyway.

Calin Banc · 5 May 2021 at 11:57

Wrinkly said:
At least with Nvida RTX GPUs we get usable raytraing and DLSS. Dedicated RT and Tensor cores that use silicon that could have been used for legacy performance.

This is something I feel GN have not considered in the price/performance arguement.

That could have also been said about DX11 or previous versions of DX and premium tax for that.
Ray tracing is just a normal advancement, no need to extra charge it.

Wrinkly · 5 May 2021 at 11:58

Joxeon said:
People buying at the low end want rasterisation though.

I don't see any evidence of that. Look at the new consoles and how they have been trying to show off RT for example.

Joxeon said:
Is RT even worth turing on in a card like the 3060 and how's DLSS look if you only game at 1080p anyway.

Not the most performant title, but I'd still rather have RT on..

Wrinkly · 5 May 2021 at 12:01

Calin Banc said:
That could have also been said about DX11 or previous versions of DX and premium tax for that.
Ray tracing is just a normal advancement, no need to extra charge it.

Isn't it like a car which costs more if you want the high end audio. The difference being they don't offer the car without the audio system.

StrongSad · 5 May 2021 at 12:02

Wrinkly said:
At least with Nvida RTX GPUs we get usable raytraing and DLSS. Dedicated RT and Tensor cores that use silicon that could have been used for legacy performance.

This is something I feel GN have not considered in the price/performance arguement.

Because the uptake for RT and DLSS is so wide.

Even then, for the 20 series of cards it was a marketing gimmick.

Twinz · 5 May 2021 at 12:09

I have been playing Control lately to check out ray tracing and it looks like they went out of their way to make the game look pretty bad when ray tracing is turned off. Ray tracing on looks great, but not a night and day difference over games that put effort into canned lighting.

I find DLSS more impressive as a feature. I could see this feature swaying purchasing decisions for a lot of people.

danlightbulb · 5 May 2021 at 12:10

Gonna post my chart again.

Current pricing aside, there is progression, at broadly the same price points give or take.

Wrinkly · 5 May 2021 at 12:11

StrongSad said:
Because the uptake for RT and DLSS is so wide.

Even then, for the 20 series of cards it was a marketing gimmick.

20 series was a joke as it launched with very little RT support and what was offered was terrible. DLSS 1.0 was also a fail. Even Jensen joked about the 20 series.

Things have improved with the 30 series offering very useable RT, while DLSS 2.0 is excellent. Titles supporting said tech are steadily growing, plus we have engines such as Unity, Unreal Engine and IW including support. Metro Exodus Enhanced is launching in a few days requiring a RT capable card, while The Witcher 3 Enhanced is being worked on.

Calin Banc · 5 May 2021 at 12:12

Wrinkly said:
Isn't it like a car which costs more if you want the high end audio. The difference being they don't offer the car without the audio system.

Don't compare cars with this, is not the same thing.

Is simple: previous generations brought performance increases in older and newer APIs at similar prices. These ones don't.

Wrinkly · 5 May 2021 at 12:12

danlightbulb said:
Gonna post my chart again.

Current pricing aside, there is progression, at broadly the same price points give or take.

Nice chart.

Wrinkly · 5 May 2021 at 12:15

Calin Banc said:
Don't compare cars with this, is not the same thing.

Is simple: previous generations brought performance increases in older and newer APIs at similar prices. These ones don't.

I was trying to simplify. Hardware based RT and Machine Learning workloads are nothing like CUDA and require their own silicon. This is why Nvidia leads in this area by a huge margin. That extra silicon and the design of costs more money.

Twinz · 5 May 2021 at 12:16

danlightbulb said:
Gonna post my chart again.

Current pricing aside, there is progression, at broadly the same price points give or take.

A little off topic, but I think the current 11th gen Intel offerings highlight why looking at generational progress is better than just assessing value *now*.

The 11900k looks okay within Intel's current gen, but looking at last gen shows how terrible it is.

An argument could have been made for Turing in a vacuum, but when compared to Pascal it lacked value and/or progress.

Ampere was decent progress *at MSRP* but the market is jacked right now.

Calin Banc · 5 May 2021 at 12:17

Wrinkly said:
I was trying to simplify. Hardware based RT and Machine Learning workloads are nothing like CUDA and require their own silicon. This is why Nvidia leads in this area by a huge margin. That extra silicon and the design of costs more money.

Their record earnings at some point indicates the price increases are just a "cash grab".

Wrinkly · 5 May 2021 at 12:19

Calin Banc said:
Their record earnings at some point indicates the price increases are just a "cash grab".

They are a business, makeing money is the goal. Competition brings down costs, but so far there is no competition.

They also seem to be selling a lot of GPUs, not just to the PC sector.

Alt0153 · 5 May 2021 at 12:21

Wrinkly said:
They are a business, makeing money is the goal. Competition brings down costs, but so far there is no competition.

They also seem to be selling a lot of GPUs, not just to the PC sector.

yeah nvidia sells them to partners and then they manufacture them and sell them by the pallet load direct to miners

Nexus18 · 5 May 2021 at 12:22

Twinz said:
I have been playing Control lately to check out ray tracing and it looks like they went out of their way to make the game look pretty bad when ray tracing is turned off. Ray tracing on looks great, but not a night and day difference over games that put effort into canned lighting.

I find DLSS more impressive as a feature. I could see this is a feature swaying purchasing decisions for a lot of people.

That is the problem though, whilst games like the standard metro, rdr 2, cyberpunk etc. look great without ray tracing, it requires developers to put in more time and effort to get results with the old methods close to what ray tracing can provide i.e. in the below video, they show the workflow developers have to do for ray tracing and non-RT metro here:

https://youtu.be/fiO38cqBlWU?t=312

And even then, it still doesn't provide the same experience/visuals that ray tracing offers.