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

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

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

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A lot of PMCR fans,can't see what many of use how are mainstream buyer saw what would happen with the Titan. The top end would have price inflation,and the mainstream which is more price constrained would also show price increases,but also lower and lower generational improvements over longer periods. I remember many saying it would never happen,etc except here we are. Mainstream GPUs are significantly lower than the stack than they used to be,and the performance jumps are worse and worse. The whole point was to upsell people into buying more expensive GPUs,because the mainstream ones are not so great.

For the people who only buy top end,and are less budget constrained,the improvements are there. Its very different as you go down the stack. Its why so many people have hung onto GTX1060/GTX1070 GPUs,and even the GTX970/R9 290 series lasted way too long.

Longer term PCMR shouldn't defend this. As the price increases,people keep hardware longer. As mainstream gets relatively worse,the average gamer lacks a powerful enough system. This means graphical improvements will slow down over time,and you can see that.

Also it opens up other platforms for those who can't afford to get into it. This is why nearly 75% of gaming revenue is phones and consoles,because the cost of entry is much lower.

It is also why the PC games with the largest revenues,have cartoony graphics so they can scale down better to weaker hardware. Tech demo type beautiful games are actually not the majority of PC gaming revenue.

Yes and as end user I'm expecting as low a price as possible.

I also don't understand why we are acting like socialists to prop these companies up?? Are we in Soviet Russia,where everyone who wanted a car had to pay through the nose to buy an overpriced Lada??

We don't exist to prop them up,and its in my capitalist rights to worry about my margins in life not another individuals!

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can't do that for curren gen. It seems they like to kill PC gaming one way or another

Don't worry PCMR fanbois will defend these companies like a cult. Worry about their margins,but forget about their individual margins. Its funny how so many PCMR fanbois are determined to enrich AMD/Nvidia/Intel at their own expense - its almost a form of socialism!

IIRC,in 2018 Nvidia didn't even pay any Federal state taxes:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/these-91-fortune-500-companies-didnt-pay-federal-taxes-in-2018.html

So poor they need tax relief!

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

what has taxation got to do with this as that would be mandated and a state/government level and every self-respecting accountancy firm would take advantage of every legal avenue they could to cut said bill?

All the people argueing they need to prop these companies up despite record revenue. These people don't seem to understand,companies like Nvidia will not only make your wallet lighter,but avoid as much tax as possible. That means more of the burden of the tax shifts to the general public,so you get charged more sales taxes,and other general taxes. Yet the average person(or even smaller businesses) won't be able to do the same amount of tax avoidance,or influence politicians enough to do so. Hence,why I don't give two damns about "having" to prop them up which some seem to want.

They get enough avenues of help,and many smaller businesses worldwide won't. I would rather pay more to help out a local business,than pay more for some nameless multi-billion USD foreign company which does not contribute much to the UK economy.

People seem obssessed with paying more for foreign made electronic products,but won't even pay more for stuff made in the UK,which leads to depressed wages for lots of people. Those depressed wages and currency outflows are not really helping our economy longterm.

Yeah, is beying me how some defend these companies. Just because they're ok with paying top dollar and don't mind beying squeezed, not everyone will afford or want to take the same road => PC gaming dying => less incentive for a company to release better games on the platform, nevermind exclusives.

Its become a sort of cult. So any criticism of these companies ends up reflecting bad on the people in the hobby? It reminds of certain cults which ripped off their patrons,and did dodgy crap. The moment any journalist tries to investigate,its all about closing ranks and defending the status quo.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Where are the options to buy off anyone else? AMD and Nvidia are the only two GFX card makers. I would be happy to pay a small premium for something that offers the same performance but is a local business with local support teams.

If they are becoming lazy with performance and greedy with profit someone else will invest in the sector, undercut them price wise and outperform them, then we will have a good old price war on our hands and the customers will win.

People with perfectly functioning GPUs are just rushing to pay any new price to be first. If the same people literally waited a month or two not buying,AMD/Nvidia/Intel would be forced to drop pricing due or poor sales. Its the same with Apple,people have no control so Apple does the same. If anything AMD/Intel/Nvidia have looked at what Apple has achieved and done the same.

The worst thing is many think Turing was a commercial failure - it wasn't! Nvidia had another record year of revenue,profits and increasing margins hence indicating the price jump worked. People couldn't help themselves. Unless consumers have some patience,this is going to get worse and worse over time. That is before you take inflation into account.

Steve went by RRPs,and looked at pricing and performance going back a few years. So lets just ignore mining and we have seen Nvidia(and potentially AMD) selling direct to miners,hence making things worse. Its quite clear from the history of AMD/Intel/Nvidia they are willing to sell the same products for much less to OEMs,or even subsidise them. Yet to the loyal PCMR enthusiast they just ripoff us off - Intel/Nvidia spent billions of USD subsidising Atom and Tegra,and in the case of Nvidia at the tme,a fair chunk probably would have come out of consumer GPU revenue. The irony is PCMR paying more for GPUs,allowed non-gamers to pay less for tablets!

Once I saw this years ago,it made me realise they look at PC gamers as whales. Its what you are seeing increasing with AAA game companies,lazy and expensive games made to exploit their customers as much as possible. It's not the same gaming and computer industry it was 10~20 years ago.

In the end its quite clear,if you don't want to pay the price AMD/Nvidia pretty much don't care. You either have to buy an overpriced secondhand GPU,or go and play games on a console or phone. Failing that you can pay for game streaming which AMD/Nvidia also profit from. PC gaming on hardware you actually owned is going to just back to be a very profitable niche over the next decade. I expect game streaming to eventually start to replace dedicated PCs in a decade,as it will be more affordable. So you end up renting hardware.

It's no wonder that over 70% of gaming revenue AFAIK,is outside PC. With MS trying to unify platforms you can see where things will head.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is that the same AIBs that are selling directly to miners?, the same AIBs that were selling on Ebay? The same AIBs that are scalping?

Maybe the AIBs are not the most honest?

Nvidia sold directly miners too at launch:
https://wccftech.com/nvidia-allegedly-sold-175-million-worth-ampere-geforce-rtx-30-gpus-to-miners/

For the quarter in review, Nvidia sold at least $175 million worth of new generation GPUs to ethereum miners, helping the outperformance, according to a note from RBC Capital Markets analyst Mitch Steves. The analyst had guided sales to miners to come in at $150 million for the quarter.

Steves noted that the upcoming network upgrade of the Ethereum blockchain, also known as Ethereum 2.0, which is scheduled to take place sometime in December, demands that miners switch over to more efficient mining hardware. Nvidia’s new Ampere GPU chips are thought to meet that need.

This was months before they made the mining GPUs,and barely two months after the RTX3080 launch. So that screwed over AIB partners too.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Its a stain on the industry for sure. I would prefer the recent past where a 'mid-range' GPU costing under £300 would be upgraded say in a three year cycle. Present day is 'mid-range' £700+ and if anything more people than ever want GPU's. Would love the live Steam hardware survey, surely people cant be gaming on onboard graphics...

You can get a whole XBox Series X system with a downclocked Ryzen 7 4700G and RX5500(or a bit better?) GPU for £250! Even scalped consoles cost less than a RTX3060!

At this rate a mainstream gaming PC is going to cost £1500.