Nvidia 4000 series is now officially a waste of sand

[Ringthane]

Nvidia seems to want 1080p gamers to buy a new GPU every time a new series of gpus comes out.

4060 series might be running some titles on ultra today, but as new games come out you will be reduced to awful performance in as little as 12 months.

Crippling the memory was the wrongest choice possible and i sure as heck wont be buying a gpu that barely outperforms its predecessor while having no future proof of any kind.

Nvidia wants games to buy a new card every time they come out with one, whether it's any good or not. And for a long time, people did just that. But then the pandemic happened, and supply issues happened, and people found out that their current cards could play a lot of good stuff just fine, and they were chasing a carrot with a lump of crap at the other end of the stick. And now buyers are more wise, and Nvidia's still pricing the things like the supply shortages are still going on, and everybody's hoarding cards for mining, and so on and so forth, and we're teetering on the edge of a recession, and they're not going to buy a $400 video card when they're having trouble paying their bills.

I should know - I've been a PC gamer since before the first Voodoo3D cards in the 90s. I was using a Radeon R290 card until last year, when it died. I now have an Nvidia 1650. And the only game it won't play well is Far Cry 6. But that's fine, since a) I only play at 1080p, b) I play mostly older games, and c) I don't like Far Cry 6. I'd like to move up to a better card, but I'm not going to spend the money on something I don't really need and which doesn't give me any solid benefit. I'm done chasing that carrot, and I'm not the only one.

[Gaidax]

Nvidia wants games to buy a new card every time they come out with one.

Nvidia right now is just swimming in money to the point they could ditch the whole gamer GPU side hustle.

From Nvidia's standpoint people should say thanks they even give enough damn to pull from expensive and limited fab capacity towards plebeians and quite frankly - they would not be far off there too.

They are making these 4060s and such just out of product positioning for reliable customer base that's not based on far weather hype and they sure aren't going to run charity fully knowing they are THE dominant player in this market. It ain't Intel who practically beg people to buy their GPUs or AMD that are a good generation behind on every modern GPU feature.

The only thing that can fix this is a combination of AI market getting oversaturated with AI focused hardware (good luck with that one next 5 years) or another new bleeding edge fab that can pump orders like TSMC (also good luck with that one next 5 years).

Or, well, competitors waking the fuck up and upping their game - and here AMD is a good year behind and Intel is a good 3 years behind.

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I'd say, in the end - the real issue is TSMC and not because they are greedy or shit like that, but simply because they just can't handle pumping bleeding edge production for half the bloody world alone.

The fact that Intel's Arc is being manufactured by TSMC is showing the hilarity of it all. And this is going to get much worse before it gets better in half a decade from now if that.

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Another solution could be with Nvidia doing what they did in past where high-end SKUs came with new arch/process and mid-low end SKUs were rebrands and/or slight improvements of previous gen GPUs.

This could also result in relief, because as like people here mention 3060Ti is pretty solid as is and they could have upped its game just a tad and offered it as 4060Ti at lower price point. They could have slapped 12/16GB RAM on it, try to squeeze another 100-200 MHz out of it and keep pumping it at certainly cheaper Samsung 8nm fab and offered it for 300 bucks MSRP and people would be happy too.

Of course, people would rage at that too - "omerhgad u offer old gen as new gen product numbering", so maybe they thought about it for a hot sec and then decided that they'd get flack anyway and went for 4060Ti as is.

[bloodkin]

Nvidia right now is just swimming in money to the point they could ditch the whole gamer GPU side hustle.

From Nvidia's standpoint people should say thanks they even give enough damn to pull from expensive and limited fab capacity towards plebeians and quite frankly - they would not be far off there too.

They are making these 4060s and such just out of product positioning for reliable customer base that's not based on far weather hype and they sure aren't going to run charity fully knowing they are THE dominant player in this market. It ain't Intel who practically beg people to buy their GPUs or AMD that are a good generation behind on every modern GPU feature.

The only thing that can fix this is a combination of AI market getting oversaturated with AI focused hardware (good luck with that one next 5 years) or another new bleeding edge fab that can pump orders like TSMC (also good luck with that one next 5 years).

Or, well, competitors waking the fuck up and upping their game - and here AMD is a good year behind and Intel is a good 3 years behind.

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I'd say, in the end - the real issue is TSMC and not because they are greedy or shit like that, but simply because they just can't handle pumping bleeding edge production for half the bloody world alone.

The fact that Intel's Arc is being manufactured by TSMC is showing the hilarity of it all. And this is going to get much worse before it gets better in half a decade from now if that.

- - - Updated - - -

Another solution could be with Nvidia doing what they did in past where high-end SKUs came with new arch/process and mid-low end SKUs were rebrands and/or slight improvements of previous gen GPUs.

This could also result in relief, because as like people here mention 3060Ti is pretty solid as is and they could have upped its game just a tad and offered it as 4060Ti at lower price point. They could have slapped 12/16GB RAM on it, try to squeeze another 100-200 MHz out of it and keep pumping it at certainly cheaper Samsung 8nm fab and offered it for 300 bucks MSRP and people would be happy too.

Of course, people would rage at that too - "omerhgad u offer old gen as new gen product numbering", so maybe they thought about it for a hot sec and then decided that they'd get flack anyway and went for 4060Ti as is.

Well, they could also just market it as it really is, a 16gb 3060ti at a 250 or maybe 300 price range would really be a competitive card and selly really well in the coming 2/3 years even. Ofc, they'd NEVER do such a thing when the 4060 exists with 16gb vram to point at. I don't think that a prev gen card with expanded mem and maybe better clock would be bad for us, but it would utterly undermine the 40 series as they're comparatively a weak follow-up to the 30 series. Hell, the 3070 could've had more mem and people have cooked those up themselves, Nvidia jusr refused to make those, as nobody would even think to buy another card in the next 3y if a 3070 (ti) 16gb existed, thanks to the weakness of the 40 series.

Edit: although I agree that Nvidia's dominance in the market isn't going to change overnight, I do think that their position could be undermined in a reasonable time frame if Intel can catch up, which they're working really hard on, fairing far beter then I gave them at the start. As for AMD, I've never been a fan of their cards (I FFing hate driver issues) but they're just as lazy as Nvidia and could be fwr more competitive if they'd want a larger share of the market. However, this market is exceptionally volatile and reactionary, so letting the competition have the lion's share isn't always bad idea.

[Gaidax]

Well, they could also just market it as it really is, a 16gb 3060ti at a 250 or maybe 300 price range would really be a competitive card and selly really well in the coming 2/3 years even. Ofc, they'd NEVER do such a thing when the 4060 exists with 16gb vram to point at. I don't think that a prev gen card with expanded mem and maybe better clock would be bad for us, but it would utterly undermine the 40 series as they're comparatively a weak follow-up to the 30 series. Hell, the 3070 could've had more mem and people have cooked those up themselves, Nvidia jusr refused to make those, as nobody would even think to buy another card in the next 3y if a 3070 (ti) 16gb existed, thanks to the weakness of the 40 series.

40 series is not weak, it's just pretty damn expensive to make, especially given that every gamer GPU or two made is a professional GPU not made that has insanely higher margins - and there is a bloody hunt for these now. So, it's not only actual cost, but also an opportunity cost there.

It's an awkward time, first there was this crypto BS, now it's AI - and both these areas are MUCH more lucrative than gamer crap WHILE they take away from the same process.

What needs to happen to fix this is another bleeding edge fab that can pump - it does not matter if you have 3 bloody GPU makers or 500 if they all make their shit in TSMC, because it's the only one out there that has the cutting edge tech needed to compete.

[LordVargK]

PCIe 3 is fine? Check https://www.techgoing.com/nvidia-rtx...herboard-test/

It's just about on par with the 3060ti and costs 100+€ more. With DLSS turned off that is.

[Nathasil]

...
Another solution could be with Nvidia doing what they did in past where high-end SKUs came with new arch/process and mid-low end SKUs were rebrands and/or slight improvements of previous gen GPUs.

This could also result in relief, because as like people here mention 3060Ti is pretty solid as is and they could have upped its game just a tad and offered it as 4060Ti at lower price point. They could have slapped 12/16GB RAM on it, try to squeeze another 100-200 MHz out of it and keep pumping it at certainly cheaper Samsung 8nm fab and offered it for 300 bucks MSRP and people would be happy too.

Of course, people would rage at that too - "omerhgad u offer old gen as new gen product numbering", so maybe they thought about it for a hot sec and then decided that they'd get flack anyway and went for 4060Ti as is.

This solution would not help me at all. Sure, i could get a "cheaper" (as in "still not cheap") GPU for 1080p...but since it would just be an overclocked old gen GPU its power efficiency would be horrible compared to current gen while all the "real" current gen GPUs would be in a price+performance range that i simply don't need. I don't need a GPU that can run 1440p or 4k Ultra. I need a GPU that can run 1080p Ultra efficiently.

I really am all for "lower end" current Gen GPUs with all the efficiency and feature benefits but lower clocks+memory, since that is still good enough to run 1080p Ultra. But paying 400$ for that is just too much.

Edit: This solution would leave me in a place where i would "have to" buy a higher end GPU which i don't need just to undervolt it and run 1080p on it. Which i did do in the past....but that does not feel all that great either and it certainly isn't a budget solution.

[Advent]

This solution would not help me at all. Sure, i could get a "cheaper" (as in "still not cheap") GPU for 1080p...but since it would just be an overclocked old gen GPU its power efficiency would be horrible compared to current gen while all the "real" current gen GPUs would be in a price+performance range that i simply don't need. I don't need a GPU that can run 1440p or 4k Ultra. I need a GPU that can run 1080p Ultra efficiently.

I really am all for "lower end" current Gen GPUs with all the efficiency and feature benefits but lower clocks+memory, since that is still good enough to run 1080p Ultra. But paying 400$ for that is just too much.

Edit: This solution would leave me in a place where i would "have to" buy a higher end GPU which i don't need just to undervolt it and run 1080p on it. Which i did do in the past....but that does not feel all that great either and it certainly isn't a budget solution.

You could also just get an Intel card, couldn't you? Especially for 1080p.

[Nathasil]

At MSRP... The 6700 can be purchased for 289 USD currently, with a faster memory bus and slightly more vram. The video you linked shows the limitations of the 4060ti. You can set things to ultra, but they look like crap in recent games and DLSS 3 can't save it from this. That doesn't bode well for future. The 4060ti is not priced well for what it does. Vram cards with 8 gigs and 128 gig bus should be less than 300 if they are released at all.

Regardless, it is your money. Spend it how you wish. Just don't expect the card to hold on to ultra settings for much longer, if it does at all.

The 6700XT has been brought up before as the best value option for a 1080p gamer. I disagree. Even at 289$. Taking the GN review as a source Control at 1080p Ultra+RT WITHOUT DLSS/FSR is 62.3 fps avg on the 6700XT and 75.0 fps avg on the 4060TI. I have so far used 1%low fps for comparison since they are more relevant to me...62.3 fps avg means you are below 62.3 fps 50% of the time - which is not what i want from my GPU. But let's ignore that for now. At those values the 6700XT is 0.22 fps/$ while the 4060TI is 0.19 fps/$ at the full MSRP of 400 bucks.

Repeat: Totally ignoring the 1%lows, not using the superior DLSS3, using a stupidly heavy discounted price of 289$ (which i cannot find a 6700XT at...not even close...like in not even remotely close. That might be a Germany/EU-thing) the 6700XT is ~16% better in fps/$. This is basically the value the AMD marketing department would come up with. It is the absolute best advantage you can compute.

But the 6700XT draws 50 watts more for that performance. So let's say i use both cards for just ONE YEAR...those 50 watts extra cost me 60 dollars more in energy. 60 dollars is a LOT more than the 16% value advantage you can hack together somehow. Using the card for 2 years doubles that advantage, obviously.

So, no: As a 1080p gamer based in Germany the 6700XT is NOT a better budget solution. It just isn't. It would cost you MORE in absolute terms taking energy into account before you can realistically replace it while having worse performance for that time. And a hotter room to boot.

It's just not a better budget GPU for me.

Edit: Just to add some local price reference points from my region for comparison. The cheapest 6700XT i can find is 362€ used (~389 US$). The cheapest 4060TI is 440€ (472 US$). So the 6700XT price for me would be ~35% higher than your numbers (buying a used product) and 4060TI is 18% higher. So this, too, would scew the numbers in favour of the 4060TI for me locally.

Edit2: The 0.33 dollar/kwh i used for electricity cost is also a LOT lower than what i pay personally. For me the energy savings would be closer to 80 dollars per year.

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You could also just get an Intel card, couldn't you? Especially for 1080p.

When i heard that Intel had entered the GPU market i was VERY excited. I anticipated something with good effiency. Sadly, their first generation of Arc GPUs is not that. The 770 draws ~260 watts under full load compared to 165 of the 4060TI while being slightly lower in performance. The performance/power is just not good on that GPU. I hope Intel improves with the next generation. The 750 is worse in performance/power.

[Gaidax]

Intel need another 2-3 years before they even get up to speed with their shit.

If they won't just pull another Intel 740 fail all over again, to begin with.

[Neufab]

I do think that 128-bit memory bus on a XX60Ti GPU with 400 bucks MSRP is a shit thing to do. And 16GB version costing 100 bucks more is a total rip off.

They should have made it a 192-bit bus 12GB one for 400 bucks, then everyone would sing praises to it, because it'd have the memory that ensures it's never bottlenecking that GPU. Yes, it's still shit bus, but at least there'd never be a reasonable case where your frame buffer is fucked for this grade of GPU.

Talking about memory bus width in a vacuum makes as much sense as talking about CPU frequency in a vacuum.

[bloodkin]

Talking about memory bus width in a vacuum makes as much sense as talking about CPU frequency in a vacuum.

128-bit isn't exactly great for modern performance, but the really bad part is that it only uses 8 PCI lanes to begin with. Havinga 16gb version is just icing on the shitcake.

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Intel need another 2-3 years before they even get up to speed with their shit.

If they won't just pull another Intel 740 fail all over again, to begin with.

2-3 years would only take intel one, maybe two generations to catch up entirely. this is feasable and very much good news for consumers if Nvidia keeps fucking over their customers and board partners, and AMD being only marginally better.

I personally still prefer Nvidia cards as I don't like dealing with bad drivers, but as a company they're just bad news for gamers. Pandering to cryptominers, screwing over partners, overinflated prices that just won't drop, no one can defend this shit with any reasonable arguments.

And I still think that the price to performance balance for the 40 series is extremely bad. It's even worse considering that the cards that should sell the best (4060/4070 cards) are the worst deals and really bad in perfomance gain over prev gen compared to other generations. How is it possible to sell a card that's equal in performance or in some cases even worse and act like it's fine (3060 to 4060).

It's an outright scam and nobody deserves to fall for that.

[Neufab]

128-bit isn't exactly great for modern performance, but the really bad part is that it only uses 8 PCI lanes to begin with. Havinga 16gb version is just icing on the shitcake.

Again memory bus width in a vacuum.

What do you think the purpose of cache is?

[Nathasil]

...
And I still think that the price to performance balance for the 40 series is extremely bad. It's even worse considering that the cards that should sell the best (4060/4070 cards) are the worst deals and really bad in perfomance gain over prev gen compared to other generations. How is it possible to sell a card that's equal in performance or in some cases even worse and act like it's fine (3060 to 4060).

It's an outright scam and nobody deserves to fall for that.

If you are living in a country where electricity is very cheap i can understand this sentiment. But here in Germany electricity IS a factor at this price point. 3060TI is 200 watts full load, 4060TI is 165 watts full load at the same (or when using all of the modern features) up to 20% better performance.

A GPU generation is ~2 years. If i buy the 4060TI now it would save me personally where i live, using my personal hours of playtime and my personal energy bills ~117 dollars over the course of this 2 years span. So for me personally the 4060TI is more like a 283 dollar GPU when compared to 3060TI. Which is a REALLY good deal.

I know i am starting to bore the people in this thread still even bothering reading my ramblings about energy consumption but it really IS a big factor for me personally. The 3060TI was also on the efficient side of GPUs of last Gen....so comparing the 4060TI to something else makes it look only better.

Edit: Just to make that one thing clear as well: The saving is still not big enough to justify upgrading if you already own a 3060TI and are happy with it. In this situation there really is no good argument going for it unless eveyting you do is playing Cyberpunk RT. Which i don't. So from the perspective of someone looking for an upgrade from last Gen the 4060TI is not a good product, even for me. But if you want to buy a new GPU right now i DO think that the increase of the 4060TI over the 3060TI is big enough to not be called a scam when taking energy into consideration.

It was a very long time ago when you could be excited over a 1:1 upgrade from one Gen to the next, imho. It would be a lot of work to research the MSRPs of the time, fps of then current games and power consumption...but i am fairly sure that neither the 1060 > 2060 nor the 2060 > 3060 jump was awesome.