GPU prices and how it isn't fun

[Kagthul]

But judging by the current GPU they have out, they'll need to fix some driver problems before it's ready for prime time

Oh, no doubt. Its still early days. IIRC didnt their former AMD hardware guy basically say “hardwares all done, software team has a lot of work to do, best of luck”?

[Temp name]

Oh, no doubt. Its still early days. IIRC didnt their former AMD hardware guy basically say “hardwares all done, software team has a lot of work to do, best of luck”?

Sounds likely, but haven't heard the quote

[Afrospinach]

They seem fairly serious about it and are branching out more, time will tell if it works or not but i do not get the impression it is just there for show.

Super computers and computing in general is moving toward much more parallelism, intel is squarely behind in this department compared with AMD and Nvidia and I am pretty sure this is what the intel GPU division is about. I would not expect the intel GPU to ever disappear from here on out.

[Thoriangun]

So can only go by the UK PoV.

prices are steadily going down and I am noticing for a number of retailers that list newly stocked products at a lower price.

Take for example a retailer CCL listed earlier today a gigabyte 3070ti for £699, still way above the msrp of the card but bare in mind just last week these were going for just under £1000.

There is a gainward card for £750 on there too (fun fact picked that up) its been in stock for a few hours now.

The gpu that most people seem to be overlooking is the AMD 6700XT, looking at benchmarks, it actually goes toe to toe on average with the 3070, not the 3060 as people seem to think.

That gpu is £700 and give or take, that gpu as a whole has been seeing drops constantly as the days go by.

Now the GPUs that still command high prices way above the msrp, all AMD 6800 and above, these are so rare its stupid.

Nvidia 3080 and 3090 too.

There appears to be a number of 3060s now but still above its msrp.

Its worth checking at the moment, I think the bitcoin crackdown in china has defo had an effect but really that effect would take weeks to feel it, scalpers are likely not been able to shift gpus at all recently I am guessing so they arent being bought as fast, just actual buyers trying to buy now but the high prices still put them off.

TLDR - the hope seems to be coming sooner then we are led to believe right now.

[Ange]

The gpu that most people seem to be overlooking is the AMD 6700XT, looking at benchmarks, it actually goes toe to toe on average with the 3070, not the 3060 as people seem to think.

Its worth checking at the moment, I think the bitcoin crackdown in china has defo had an effect but really that effect would take weeks to feel it, scalpers are likely not been able to shift gpus at all recently I am guessing so they arent being bought as fast, just actual buyers trying to buy now but the high prices still put them off.

1. It doesnt really matter what AMD GPUs do in pricing. NVIDIAs market share for GPUs is at all time high and above PASCAL levels. NVIDIA pushed DLSS quite hard this year, RTX games made a huge impact for consumer GPU choice and CUDA is the defacto standard for anything that would require CPU or GPU performance. NVENC, RTX voice, NVIDIA Omniverse, the weekly AI/CUDA free stuff like NVIDIA Canvas killing the alternative GPU choice even more.

AMD RDNA couldnt get market share with ultra cheap price/performance winning GPUs and RDNA2 went face first with TSMC's issues and is now dropping even faster with the DLSS push of the last months.

FSR or not, NVIDIA got this GPU generation, went beyond PASCAL's numbers and sadly we can expect a huge price jump with next generation.

2. Bitcoin is not a GPU currency. GPU mining with Ethereum was the most profitable and a big hotspot for Ethereum was/is in US. Scalping and the extreme difficulty in getting GPUs is clearly impacted by mining demand and getting a GPU in US is much harder as basicly everywhere else. First world countries have high electricity cost (environmental reasons) and are not hit by the mining boom as much.

You clearly did not watch news right now, if you think the GPU prices will ge down in the next weeks/months.

[Thoriangun]

1. It doesnt really matter what AMD GPUs do in pricing. NVIDIAs market share for GPUs is at all time high and above PASCAL levels. NVIDIA pushed DLSS quite hard this year, RTX games made a huge impact for consumer GPU choice and CUDA is the defacto standard for anything that would require CPU or GPU performance. NVENC, RTX voice, NVIDIA Omniverse, the weekly AI/CUDA free stuff like NVIDIA Canvas killing the alternative GPU choice even more.

AMD RDNA couldnt get market share with ultra cheap price/performance winning GPUs and RDNA2 went face first with TSMC's issues and is now dropping even faster with the DLSS push of the last months.

FSR or not, NVIDIA got this GPU generation, went beyond PASCAL's numbers and sadly we can expect a huge price jump with next generation.

2. Bitcoin is not a GPU currency. GPU mining with Ethereum was the most profitable and a big hotspot for Ethereum was/is in US. Scalping and the extreme difficulty in getting GPUs is clearly impacted by mining demand and getting a GPU in US is much harder as basicly everywhere else. First world countries have high electricity cost (environmental reasons) and are not hit by the mining boom as much.

You clearly did not watch news right now, if you think the GPU prices will ge down in the next weeks/months.

So let me get this straight, you are telling me that people need to ignore those AMD cards because of Nvenc, RTX voice, omniverse and cuda?

You are saying people that want a performance upgrade foremost to ignore that because they want to stream?

I will give Nvenc is great for streaming and RTX voice only works well if using headset microphones - useless if using a proper audio solution.

Your average gamer is not gonna care for cuda acceleration, so stop smoking that joint if you think they do.

DLSS is only in a few games and quite frankly and true with FSR, still slow uptake, I don't care for either solution since I know how to set up my games in the options menu, but for those that don't want to spend time in the menu, well more options the better no?

AMD technically has the crown for market domination if you take consoles into account, desktop yes Nvidia has the current win but you are really gonna say to someone, don't get this AMD GPU that is an obvious upgrade to your system to get it from 40 FPS to 90 or whatever because Nvidia has 80% market share?

What people are mostly looking for is more performance and to be able to turn up the common eye candy settings since thats still most games coming out, even a lot of new titles coming out still don't have ray tracing or resolution scaling technology.

I think you need to take a look at current news and window shop at retailers at the moment, I have and got a 3070ti cheaper then it was 2 weeks ago by a few hundred £$€s at retail.

[Kagthul]

So let me get this straight, you are telling me that people need to ignore those AMD cards because of Nvenc, RTX voice, omniverse and cuda?

You are saying people that want a performance upgrade foremost to ignore that because they want to stream?

I will give Nvenc is great for streaming and RTX voice only works well if using headset microphones - useless if using a proper audio solution.

The number of people using what you call a "proper audio solution" is microscopic compared to people using headset mics. So this is a compelling feature.

Your average gamer is not gonna care for cuda acceleration, so stop smoking that joint if you think they do.

DLSS is only in a few games and quite frankly and true with FSR, still slow uptake,

Uhh... whut? Its now available as a simple drop in in any Unreal engine game, the same is coming for Unity, and its about to be added to idTECH (or already was when i wrote this IIRC).

And more to point - while the "number" of games is "limited" - its the ones that people want to play. CoD, Battlefield, Cyberpunk, Outriders. (And in the case of CoD and Battlefield, its now engine-wide as older titles got it same day).

I don't care for either solution since I know how to set up my games in the options menu, but for those that don't want to spend time in the menu, well more options the better no?

Except that no amount of tinkering will get you the performance that DLSS gets you. None. Zero. Zilch. Nadda.

AMD technically has the crown for market domination if you take consoles into account,

So if you twist the stats to say what i want them to say, then they say what i want them to say. Lulz.

desktop yes Nvidia has the current win but you are really gonna say to someone, don't get this AMD GPU that is an obvious upgrade to your system to get it from 40 FPS to 90 or whatever because Nvidia has 80% market share?

No, im going to tell them that because the nVidia card has features that the AMD card does not, that are compelling features that AMD has no answer to. FSR is NOT DLSS. Its lossy AF. They have no RT cores or Tensor cores.

nVidia makes a better product.

Thats why id recommend nVidia.

[Thoriangun]

The number of people using what you call a "proper audio solution" is microscopic compared to people using headset mics. So this is a compelling feature.



Uhh... whut? Its now available as a simple drop in in any Unreal engine game, the same is coming for Unity, and its about to be added to idTECH (or already was when i wrote this IIRC).

And more to point - while the "number" of games is "limited" - its the ones that people want to play. CoD, Battlefield, Cyberpunk, Outriders. (And in the case of CoD and Battlefield, its now engine-wide as older titles got it same day).



Except that no amount of tinkering will get you the performance that DLSS gets you. None. Zero. Zilch. Nadda.



So if you twist the stats to say what i want them to say, then they say what i want them to say. Lulz.



No, im going to tell them that because the nVidia card has features that the AMD card does not, that are compelling features that AMD has no answer to. FSR is NOT DLSS. Its lossy AF. They have no RT cores or Tensor cores.

nVidia makes a better product.

Thats why id recommend nVidia.

First point we are in agreement then, exactly what I said, only useful for headset users, those with proper audio solutions its useless for, it needs to be specified that RTX voice simply makes the garbage mess that is headsets sound less garbage, it doesn't actually make them sound nice.

2nd point I still stand by, games are still limited in number and still limited in release schedule for both, though I would argue FSR has better uptake looking at all of the studios taking part, so IMO since both vendors offer a solution to this, its moot really.

You can tinker with many settings to get boosts, imo most people are terrible with what a lot of settings actually do, consider how many people in the WoW forums stuck render scale to max and wonder why they have low FPS, most people are idiots, lets not overlook this, but I am not against with the inclusions of these settings.

Its not a twist now is it, saying Nvidia is dominating the market only applies to DIY desktop PCs, that makes it sound like AMD is non existent when its everywhere, more so now then ever with Samsung and Google soon to use them in their smartphones soon.

Features vs Features is exactly how it should work, but only price to price but also what people actually use, if people will never stream then many of its features are not selling points, but I would actually recommend Nvidia for people that want to stream unless you want to buy a 5900X then its well push it.

What I was saying, on average the performance of the 6700XT actually matches the 3070 or close enough too, its a bit cheaper and is way more available for those that really want to upgrade and just want more performance in their games only, which is most people and their wallets.

AMD has its own features too to be fair, its settings to actually inject from a driver level more detail such as RIS is actually pretty good since it actually works, I am more of a fan of features that inject fidelity into an image then reduce it and only grant performance, I am a pixel peeper so I will notice.

Enhance sync is way better then Nvidias alternative granted thats still good of adaptive sync.

This one I am unsure if Nvidia has at a driver level, last I checked it doesn't but colour blind adjustment at a driver levels to affect all games you play is solid to me - personal preference, I am well aware a number of games provide these but still a number don't, something AMD now provides.

Looking at benchmarks though, which is what people go by, really go with what ever you can afford, the 6000 series from AMD is pretty good just the 6800 series and above is far more rare to get hold of here.

I don't think DLSS/FSR are selling points when people should just learn how to adjust their settings.

Ray tracing is nice looking for sure but both solutions provide it, Nvidia currently does it better but still not at acceptable performance so point is moot.

I honestly think most people in these forums bring up points that are useless to most people as selling points and do a terrible job at giving advice to the average user.

[Ange]

@Thoriangun
* RTX Voice is allready compared to iZotope RX (1200€) and other VST plugins for AI noise supression that produces studio quality results. Its not for cheap headsets. It lacks settings and some options, but in quality with some mild settings its basicly a 1000€ VST plugin - for free. Keep in mind for VST plugins you would require ASIO audio hardware and thats usually not what gamers/normal consuments use. The alternatives are out of reach and that makes RTX Voice more valuable as it is.

* If you think AMD got the better GPU with RDNA2, thats fine. Data shows that the majority of the PC gaming consuments went for AMPERE this generation. You dont have to like it, wont change the statistics either way.

AMD got with RDNA2 a "true gaming GPU".

OpenCL is basicly deprecated and Blender and other workloads wont even support AMD GPUs for some time, so there is nothing else you can do with the current AMD GPUs and that makes them for sure gaming optimized, because they dropped workload support - again.

OpenCL was called the CUDA killer, just as FSR is called the DLSS killer. What a joke.

As if open source is an option for AMD. They dont have a choice! But without support there is no future for open source and AMD is known for many things, but not support.