The first "proper" Kepler news Fri 17th Feb?

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:08

Duff-Man said:
This doesn't mean that the majority of people overclock. My experience in the wider computing field suggests that overclocking of CPUs is restricted to a relatively small subset of enthusiasts, and those who overclock GPUs are an even smaller minority.

This is my experience too and as the CPU price goes up,I find people are less likely to overclock too(me included).

ALXAndy · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:10

Duff-Man said:
Well, clearly those who post about their hardware on internet forums - especially those who post on an overclocking forum - are highly likely to overclock their kit where possible.

This doesn't mean that the majority of people overclock. My experience in the wider computing field suggests that overclocking of CPUs is restricted to a relatively small subset of enthusiasts, and those who overclock GPUs are an even smaller minority.

If you have any hard figures that suggest otherwise then I'd be interested to see them, but my experience suggests that overclockers represent a very small minority of sales.

The "enthusiast" market is small. However, as you said, pretty much every one who posts here will overclock. Thus they wouldn't buy a part either without that capability or very little capability.

I admit that when I bought my I7 950 I knew it could do 4ghz. That was a part of my decision to pay £210 for it. However, I overclocked it once, didn't see any gain from it and then I realised that I had disabled Speedstep and all that and that the CPU was eating electricity whilst doing nothing.

I doubt I will overclock it again until I really have to. But tbh by that time I will probably replace it any way, as I don't want something I have to thrash the crap out of just to make it do what it should do natively.

I've no doubt that a non overclocked I7 2600k could do exactly the same thing as a heavily overclocked one in Crysis, for example, but that isn't what is at stake is it?

It's scores and synthetic numbers. THAT is why people overclock, thus, a product that doesn't is about as appealing to them as a bacon sandwich is to a Muslim.

MichaelM · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:12

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
This is my experience too and as the CPU price goes up,I find people are less likely to overclock too(me included).

If prices are increasing, someone is more likely to bridge the gap between the faster more expensive CPU and a slightly slower CPU by overclocking :confused:

Sorry if I'm missing any sarcasm.

rolypolyman · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:18

Well well well, Nvidia see the chance to sell what should have been a £200 card for £400 plus and this comes as a surprise! We are being had people, big time, Amd and Nvidia are both in on it. Why oh why can people not show some guts and tell them where to shove it. 256bit etc etc for £400 plus, god we are so stupid it beggars belief. :confused:

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:19

MichaelM said:
If prices are increasing, someone is more likely to bridge the gap between the faster more expensive CPU and a slightly slower CPU by overclocking

Sorry if I'm missing any sarcasm.

No,I was meaning if you spent more on a CPU. I find if I was going to spend £200 on a CPU, then I would less bothered about wanting to overclock as it should be fast enough at that price IMHO. If it were a £80 CPU,then I could justify the time spent on mucking around with it and the additional cost of a better motherboard and CPU cooler.

MichaelM · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:23

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
No,I was meaning if you spent more on a CPU. I find if I was going to spend £200 on a CPU, then I would less bothered about wanting to overclock as it should be fast enough at that price IMHO. If it were a £80 CPU,then I could justify the time spent on mucking around with it and the additional cost of a better motherboard and CPU cooler.

In theory that does make a lot of sense and I will agree with it

wolvers · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:34

Duff-Man said:
But still, from an architectural point of view, the GTX580 is 77% larger than the GTX680 (according to this chart), whereas the 6970 is only 6.6% larger than the 7970.

That just says it all really. This was definitely intended to be a mid-range card.

psychodil · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:51

wolvers said:
That just says it all really. This was definitely intended to be a mid-range card.

It also.shows what a huge die the fermi cores are, and that hopefully nvidia have learnt from the mistakes of fermi.

thezakarum · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:54

Anyone got a photo comparing fermi and kepler die sizes?

jonneymendoza · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:58

wolvers said:
That just says it all really. This was definitely intended to be a mid-range card.

wolves my fellow av, we are screwed blud

psychodil · 15 Mar 2012 at 15:59

thezakarum said:
Anyone got a photo comparing fermi and kepler die sizes?

Not seen any die photos yet, but the pics ive seen show the cores without a heatspreader on, good news in terms of cooling i think.

Stanners · 15 Mar 2012 at 16:07

If we are all playing the blame game, Maybe put some on AMD for not pushing hard enough. I mean if Nvidia's mid range is going to keep up with their top of the range, they have no need to move the higher end parts out yet or if and when ready.

You would almost think there was something going on between them

xsistor · 15 Mar 2012 at 16:15

thezakarum said:
Anyone got a photo comparing fermi and kepler die sizes?

Based on the info released on kepler's die size it should look like that:

chief barker · 15 Mar 2012 at 16:37

Are we likely to see any price drops on a 7970?

spankingtexan · 15 Mar 2012 at 16:37

rolypolyman said:
Well well well, Nvidia see the chance to sell what should have been a £200 card for £400 plus and this comes as a surprise! We are being had people, big time, Amd and Nvidia are both in on it. Why oh why can people not show some guts and tell them where to shove it. 256bit etc etc for £400 plus, god we are so stupid it beggars belief.

Computer components have been having us over since forever, if we all said sod that to every rip off hardware release, then we'd still be using over priced ZX81, I remember paying over £100 for 512k for the amiga in the 80's.

Now let's take the 7970, I have already said in earlier posts that this card is excelent and very impressive, cost just under £500 on release, everyone screames look at this it's great, Now Kepler comes along and assuming it trades punches with the 7970 and has the potential to be a little quicker as well as around £70 cheaper than 7970 on launch and people are screaming rip off.

Well in my calculation based on the above aren't ATI cards the bigger con?

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 15 Mar 2012 at 16:46

spankingtexan said:
cost just under £500 on release

No it didn't. People got cards for around £415 to £420 at launch. Over the course of the launch day retailers starting jacking the price up by around £20 to £30 to around £440 to £450 for the cheapest cards. It was hilarious. OcUK had cards on pre-order for £420 from launch day.

spankingtexan · 15 Mar 2012 at 16:54

I was going on ocuk prices for the saphire.

This is the cheapest i've seen on ocuk

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-206-XF&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=938

ALXAndy · 15 Mar 2012 at 17:00

rolypolyman said:
Well well well, Nvidia see the chance to sell what should have been a £200 card for £400 plus and this comes as a surprise! We are being had people, big time, Amd and Nvidia are both in on it. Why oh why can people not show some guts and tell them where to shove it. 256bit etc etc for £400 plus, god we are so stupid it beggars belief.

Unless you have information as to what -

1. A new technology costs to develop (in research and development costs)
2. That new technology costs to design (IE PCB tracks, component layout etc)
3. That new technology costs to produce (IE at TMSC or whatever it's calleD)
4. That new technology costs to package.

Then you really shouldn't be making statements like those above. IE - we are being had.

A product is worth (after all of the fancy marketing degrees and so forth) what people are prepared to pay.

People have been paying those prices (GPU) since (from when I really got into it all) 1996.

For example, a 3Dlabs Wildcat with all the trimmings cost a few thousand pounds at launch (it's a graphics card, BTW). Compared to the latest workstation solutions (IE - Tesla and so on) prices have changed very little or, have dropped.

It's been pointed out time and time again how much the 8800 Ultra cost in 2007 or whenever it made its debut, yet people have chosen to ignore it and say that we are being ripped off.

If you have inside information on just what AMD and Nvdia's 28nm technology actually cost, the price breakdowns and all of the projected information (IE what they are going to have to sell them for to break even and then start making money) then please oblige.

wolvers · 15 Mar 2012 at 17:08

psychodil said:
It also.shows what a huge die the fermi cores are, and that hopefully nvidia have learnt from the mistakes of fermi.

It's a good point. Also, this slide from a few months back shows GK104 as always intended to be the high-end part due this year.

Rroff · 15 Mar 2012 at 17:12

wolvers said:
It's a good point. Also, this slide from a few months back shows GK104 as always intended to be the high-end part due this year.

If you go by that image it shows the GK104 it to be somewhere around the 660ti/670 area and due out somewhere around the middle of the year.