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The GPU war is over.

AMD were outselling nvidia until nvidia lowered their prices. As someone already mentioned the GTX 260 outsold the competition because of insane deals at the time, not just because it said nvidia on the box. Also I don't really get where he got his benchmarks from, as I remember the GTX 280 being quite a bit faster than the 4870, with the gtx 260 matching it in most games? Just check out this review from back then, and tell me the GTX 280/260 weren't the better cards, especially after nvidia lowered their prices?

You are quite correct and although my memory is shockingly poor, I did a lot of research after deciding to move away from my GT 8800 and the GTX 260 was indeed faster, or at least in all the games I had seen. The 280 was too much money for my low budget back then but I clearly remember several sites and PC Formatt giving the 260/280 the lead and priced the same.
 
AMD were outselling nvidia until nvidia lowered their prices. As someone already mentioned the GTX 260 outsold the competition because of insane deals at the time, not just because it said nvidia on the box. Also I don't really get where he got his benchmarks from, as I remember the GTX 280 being quite a bit faster than the 4870, with the gtx 260 matching it in most games? Just check out this review from back then, and tell me the GTX 280/260 weren't the better cards, especially after nvidia lowered their prices?

A little-known site called Anandtech, I believe.
 
Interesting video but it's also forgetting things like peoples past experience of products from both companies which can even make the enthusiasts buy the other product even if it's not as fast.
Also, I would have thought enthusiasts would be looking past the benchmarks or maybe I'm reading enthusiasts and intelligence? :). Benchmarks are flawed in that they are playing through a sequence and more importantly it does not necessarily prove the smoothness of actual gameplay, ie, we need the the average, peaks and troughs plotted out on a graph - not just a simple average single score. For example, 10 secs of gameplay at 50fps is not the same as 5 seconds at 10fps and 5 seconds a 90fps but the average would be the same. Because benchmarks are sequenced it would be relatively easy for either competitor to tweak their drivers for the benchmarks too.

I remember moving from a 4850 to a 260 216core because I was disappointed by the way the 4850 handled some of the games at the time and the early drivers were quite bad in my experience. The 260 was indeed a much smoother gaming companion from day 1,actual gameplay not some statistic from a bechmarking tool.

People/enthusiast don't shallowly look at a score on a review website only when making a purchase or they're not enthusiasts. They will consider past experience too for example and of course the bad experience do stick in the mind and also know that a single score from a benchmark does not necessarily represent actual gameplay experience
 
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Interesting video but it's also forgetting things like peoples past experience of products from both companies which can even make the enthusiasts buy the other product even if it's not as fast.
Also, I would have thought enthusiasts would be looking past the benchmarks. Benchmarks are flawed in that they are playing through a sequence and more importantly it does not necessarily prove the smoothness of actual gameplay, ie, the average, peaks and troughs plotted out on a graph - not just a simple average single score.

I remember moving from a 4850 to a 260 216core because I was disappointed by the way the 4850 handled some of the games at the time and the early drivers were quite bad in my experience. The 260 was indeed a much smoother gaming companion from day 1.

People don't shallowly look at a score on a review website only when making a purchase. They consider past experience too for example and of course the bad experience do stick in the mind.

correct, I prefer to do a lot of research before I commit to any new GPU, or any other computer part to be honest. Benchmarks do play a role but only if there are consistent results across multiple sources and testing on things I am going to use as well.

Out of curiosity, how do you decide which GPU you buy?
 
A little-known site called Anandtech, I believe.

Doesn't really explain why I'm seeing and remembering very different numbers from back then. Also, didn't nvidia buy Ageia at around this time as well? Could also explain why people were picking nvidia over AMD, as the tech-demos of physx were pretty cool. :cool:
 
Thats the thing ATI must have been having great margins at the time since the GT200 was massive chip,so its probably a case they didn't market themselves well enough.
 
He goes on about how Vega is being released next year since AMD is focusing on other areas now.

However,apparently Hynix only started HBM2 mass production at the very end of Q3 this year:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10527/sk-hynix-adds-hbm2-4-gb-memory-q3

So surely the easier explanation is one of cost and availability??

Plus the XBox Scorpio and Zen launches must be also putting a lot of pressure on their resources too.


No probs and I wanted to make sure I wasn't going mad lol. The 260 I got was the same price as the 4850 and the small gap was what swayed me.

You got a bargain as I remember the HD4870 and GTX260 pricing as being quite close.
 
Nvidia used to be the best value for the money even though they cost a bit more. But they are far from that now with their mid range cards being £400+ and only about 10% or less ahead of AMD's £250 cards.

Also Nvidia drivers used to be much better than AMDs, which was one of the main reasons people went with them. Again that isn't the case any more (and now they spy on you too).

People need to break the nvidia adiction :P
 
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Nvidia have and have had for a while, the better hardware. When AMD truly compete again and if they can get the better hardware they will again get more sales.

I like AMD and Nvidia products, right now Nvidia has the better cards. It's that simple.

Hopefully AMD's new cards don't disappoint, I fancy a switch up but right now AMD don't have anything I want over my GTX 1070.
 
I'm not actually sure they do have the better hardware. I think it's more to do with how games use the hardware. AMD ones usually much better at raw number crunching, which is why people use them for bitcoin mining.
 
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correct, I prefer to do a lot of research before I commit to any new GPU, or any other computer part to be honest. Benchmarks do play a role but only if there are consistent results across multiple sources and testing on things I am going to use as well.

Out of curiosity, how do you decide which GPU you buy?

Varies. The same as most, read reviews and benchmarks just with an open mind on actual performance. In the past I've sometimes bought from both companies and sold the one I preferred less. These days, based on past experiences, I still do the research but buy my safe option and/or usually the fastest available at the time by a large margin or next down. So for the last two gens that decision has been easy as both fastest and my 'safe option' requirement have been matched by one company.
In life with most things you 'usually' you get what you pay for. Sometimes the price may be a bit out there and not value for money but nonetheless it'll likely be the better option if budget allows.

if anyone is in the market right now for a card and have £380+ to spend they'd be daft not to buy a 1070,80,TX whichever they can justify buying. Another consideration these day is of course power consumption. Oh, and an issue AMD has right now is that NVidia are selling a lot of cards....how much better does their next gen need to be than what Nvidia currently offer for people to consider selling their 1070,80,TX for especially when Nvidia's next gen may again be just around the corner? I think it'll not be the enthusiasts buying but the die hard AMD fans as they'll be the only ones who haven't bought one of the current NVidia products :)
 
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Nvidia used to be the best value for the money even though they cost a bit more. But they are far from that now with their mid range cards being £400+ and only about 10% or less ahead of AMD's £250 cards.

Also Nvidia drivers used to be much better than AMDs, which was one of the main reasons people went with them. Again that isn't the case any more (and now they spy on you too).

People need to break the nvidia adiction :P

Wait, what? Are you honestly saying the GTX 1070 is only 10% faster than the RX 480?
 
Nvidia have and have had for a while, the better hardware. When AMD truly compete again and if they can get the better hardware they will again get more sales.

I like AMD and Nvidia products, right now Nvidia has the better cards. It's that simple.

Hopefully AMD's new cards don't disappoint, I fancy a switch up but right now AMD don't have anything I want over my GTX 1070.

But... did you actually watch the video??
It shows that historically when AMD had the FASTER, CHEAPER card. Nvidia still outsells them.
 
But... did you actually watch the video??
It shows that historically when AMD had the FASTER, CHEAPER card. Nvidia still outsells them.

AMD did outsell them at the start and then Nvidia dropped prices and outsold them. Honestly look at what Nvidia was selling - 500MM2 GT200 and 260/330MM2 G92 based graphics card for the same price as 255M2 RV770 based cards. ATI was destroying them in margins for GPU,so ultimately despite Nvidia handing them such a huge chance they could not exploit it.

That is down to poor marketing on the part of ATI and AMD has exactly the same issue. Ultimately that is why so many of us just facepalm that the last few years of AMD launches have so many issues which gives Nvidia material to exploit.

Edit!!

Come on - look last year. AMD hit 18% marketshare but had reasonably OKish products. Compare that to the HD2000 and indeed the HD3000 series. ATI marketshare did not drop under 30% despite all that.

Its the same with Polaris - sure AMD has gone from 18% to 30% marketshare in a year and probably has doubled sales this quarter over a year ago.

But even then they have lost momentum to Nvidia as the Polaris launch was not perfect and Nvidia exploited AMD again as a result.

They can't seem to do a decent stock cooler to save their lives and its becoming a bloody joke.

Aftermarket GTX1060 cards were launched before the equivalent RX480 cards. So all the GTX1060 launch reviews tested aftermarket and FE GTX1060 cards against the RX480 reference model which could not hold its rated clockspeed.

Now sites like TPU in their charts only have reference RX480 scores which every GTX1060 looks better against.
 
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Nvidia used to be the best value for the money even though they cost a bit more. But they are far from that now with their mid range cards being £400+ and only about 10% or less ahead of AMD's £250 cards.

Also Nvidia drivers used to be much better than AMDs, which was one of the main reasons people went with them. Again that isn't the case any more (and now they spy on you too).

People need to break the nvidia adiction :P


10% or less? Where? 1070 and 1080's are miles ahead of an RX 480. I think you should be comparing 1060 vs 480 etc for 10%.

I for one would go with the faster cheaper card which ever side. My main preference is Nvidia but would go AMD if they one day bring back some competition.

The main issues is nvidia have held the high end for a while now and people will spend a little more thinking they are getting something better. Not to mention nvidias marketing campaign has been a whole lot better than AMD's recently.
 
7950/7970 was the last set of great cards from AMD. If they had something to compete with the 1080 for a little less, I'd of happily considered one.
 
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