Is NVIDIA desperate (or scared)?

[Riccardo Cagnasso]

I know that everyone is screaming at the new ultra powerful nvidia 3*** series. And I understand that the hype is high and they will sell a ton of cards in the next months.

But I speculate that this is some desperate move or at least done by fear. We know that this choice is no due to some unexpected technological breaktrough. Nvidia kept back the power creep of their gpus in the last years and now they decided not to and to put these incredibly more powerful cards on the market. From their perspective this means that they spent an asset that they had in the form of "kept back" technology.  Why did decide to do that?

A possiblity is that they know that AMD has something big in the workings. Or maybe they don't know that but they fear that it might be a credible possibility due tue the fact that AMD has likely received a lot of resources by the Ryzen success and skyocketing of stokcs.

Think about this. AMD has the best consumer CPUs and the best server CPUs. We know that they can create good professional GPUs, even if they need to work on support by software and features. What if they can, even for a single release, put out better gaming GPUs? AMD could basically own the whole computing market and turn into a titan with near infinite resources. This will be a nightmare scenario for Nvidia.

[Guest]

Are they desperate or scared?

Market cap says nah.

 

They're simply doing what a company does and releasing a new product line.

One that is only as interesting as it is because they played their cards right last gen and did nothing major because they had no reason to.

[Shimejii]

This is a pointless post. Nvidia isnt afraid, the 2000 series sold pretty bad,(and yet AMD still had pretty much no answer) so they actually made better cards that do a better job for the price although still a bit more pricey than i would have liked to see. AMDS gpus pose 0 threat as they havent been able to accomplish a high end GPU to be a flagship in half a decade.

[Semper]

Desperate?
Not even within sight of the realm of a thought of a potential possibility. (I.E. no, no desperation of any kind)

Scared?
No. Keeping an eye on AMD? Perhaps, but they have been dominant for so long, they've nothing to worry about. Even if AMD upsets the market with something that's actually competitive (which is still an unknown, mind you), Nvidia hasn't taken the Intel approach. They've continued to evolve and progress their technologies, at great expense to both them and their consumer market. It's unlikely at best that performance and features will meet or exceed what they currently have.

[DailyProcrastinator]

I don't think they are desperate or scared, I think they just want to outright humiliate AMD and get ahead of the console launches. Which is just a smart business decision. Seemed to me that Jensen was sticking it to Microsoft and Sony, not so much AMD (even though I realize the consoles have AMD hardware). And the price point of Ampere is more of a response to the fact that this past gen was overpriced and sales were not as strong as Pascal. 

 

My predictions is that if we do not hear anything about AMD GPU's prior to the retail launch of these new Ampere cards is that Big Navi is not a direct competitor. If Big Navi can compete they would want that info in the wild ASAP to hold back potential buyers from Nvidia, even if this means they launch a month or two later they want that info out there. If AMD stays quiet I would think that means they do not have a competitive product with the high end Nvidia cards as per usual.

[Riccardo Cagnasso]

21 minutes ago, Den-Fi said:

Are they desperate or scared?

Market cap says nah.

Market cap said nah on Intel also a couple of years ago

[Guest]

47 minutes ago, Riccardo Cagnasso said:

Market cap said nah on Intel also a couple of years ago

Yes and Intel is having process node problems.

Nvidia is not, so I don't see the correlation, lol.

[Tristerin]

1000 series vs RX 580/590 with previous Fury/X from previous gen on par with a 590.  2000 series drops, the answer from AMD, after is keeping up with the 2070.  I doubt AMD kept a bunch of GPU horsepower in their back pocket like NVIDIA did.

[Moonzy]

1 hour ago, Riccardo Cagnasso said:

A possiblity is that they know that AMD has something big in the workings.

this, or they just want to silence radeon once and for all by making their next gen product having no sense to be released because it might be worth more in raw materials.

seeing how last gen AMD pranced around because nvidia sold their cards for a premium, this could be it.

[Riccardo Cagnasso]

31 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

1000 series vs RX 580/590 with previous Fury/X from previous gen on par with a 590.  2000 series drops, the answer from AMD, after is keeping up with the 2070.  I doubt AMD kept a bunch of GPU horsepower in their back pocket like NVIDIA did.

Yes. Correct. But now Nvidia probably doesn't have much horsepower in the pocket anymore.

The thing is, yeah, RX 5XXX series wasn't really competing with NVidia power-wise. But you get the feeling that AMD is working on GPUs. Driver support went waaaaaaay better in these years.  The problem is "what happens if AMD manages to release better or better priced cards than Nvidia"? Now it probably can't happen, but Nvidia burned a lot of reservers to make sure of that.

[Energycore]

1 hour ago, Den-Fi said:

Are they desperate or scared?

Market cap says nah.

 

They're simply doing what a company does and releasing a new product line.

One that is only as interesting as it is because they played their cards right last gen and did nothing major because they had no reason to.

Spoiler

What happened in 2018? I guess if there's no fundamentals it's just NVDA had been way overbought for a long time.

[Warin]

1 hour ago, Moonzy said:

this, or they just want to silence radeon once and for all by making their next gen product having no sense to be released because it might be worth more in raw materials.

seeing how last gen AMD pranced around because nvidia sold their cards for a premium, this could be it.

The idea that AMD is just going to exit the GPU biz because of Ampere is almost laughable.  Will Big Navi outperform Ampere? probably not.  But I suspect the price to performance will sell Radeon cards still. 

[Reytime]

AMD needs to rebrand Radeon. Ryzen rebrand helped a lot to give their CPUs a better image (not saying their performance didn’t back it up, because it did).

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, Den-Fi said:

Are they desperate or scared?

Market cap says nah.

 

They're simply doing what a company does and releasing a new product line.

One that is only as interesting as it is because they played their cards right last gen and did nothing major because they had no reason to.

I think they don’t know what AMD has and they saw what happened to intel and they don’t want it to happen to them, so they unleashed the kraken.  They want to keep the crown and they will do what it takes to keep it.
 

 Intel was too haughty to do that.  They had AMD with 9th gen.  They had faster stuff.  They refused to price it competitively though because they “don’t ever reduce prices” so they got smacked.  If they released their unlocked 6/12s at even $50 more a chip than AMD’s 3600 they would have wiped the floor with AMD in 2019.  This 10850 thing implies they are at least learning.
 

So Nvidia let slip the dogs of war.  Or at least mostly did.  It’s not totally impossible there’s a little tiny bit of space left above the 3090 for just in case. 
 

I don’t know what AMD has.  Maybe what Nvidia had wasn’t enough (in which case Tis and supers will come out in order to create price drops) Maybe it was way more than enough (in which case Nvidia prices will go up) Time will tell.

 

That apparently apparently ‘Tis and supers are being tested but not publicly talked about implies they aren’t sure.  There are a few kind of interesting entrants there.  Apparently there’s a 3070 with 16gb of ram floating about. 

[DaRk0]

Didn't AMD state their Big Navi will compete against 3070?

What would Nvidia be scared of?

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, DaRk0 said:

Didn't AMD state their Big Navi will compete against 3070?

What would Nvidia be scared of?

I don’t know.  I didn’t see that.  You may have better information than me.  All I got which isn’t much, as it came from what amounts to a gossip columnist, is what came off “Moore’s law is dead” some time ago which is that AMD at its absolute worst couldn’t less than double the 5700xt. If all they got is double the 5700xt, then that’s about right.  AMD is going to be an “also ran” in GPUs for the next few years.  If they got 2.5 times though they are going to beat Nvidia.

[IAMABOSS]

I have been watching a lot of Buildzoid's content, GamesNexus has him do the PCB breakdowns of motherboards and GPUs, really knowledgeable person, and he has done some assumptions on Big Navi based on Xbox series X APU.  The Series X has 56 CU GPU portion of the APU, and supposedly has similar teraflops to a 2080ti. The Xbox also uses a power cable that has a maximum wattage of 275W, so we know the APU in the series X is going to be VERY efficient. So based on that he has worked out that Big Navi could be around double 5700XT performance with a 80 CU variant. This would make it around 3080 levels of performance, at a lower power. Do I think this will happen, No, it will likely be between 3070 and 3080 levels of performance, at a lower power from a better manufacturing process (TSMC N7 Enhanced, which is far better than Samsung 8NM)

But this is nothing more than speculation. I have heard Linus talking about how word gets around between the tech companies, and I would bet that Nvidia has a better idea of Big Navi's performance than we do, and launched the 3000 series accordingly, especially with both Xbox and PS5 using the same hardware, and probably sending dev kits out to game developers, some who may, just may have a relationship with Nvidia. I think that Nvidia's aggressiveness in this launch and pricing is directly linked to the fact that they know AMD will be more competitive than they ever have been in recent times. So they have gone for the throat, and gave it there best shot at ensure they do not loose the performance crown by throwing everything they have at the 3090, which set a bar AMD cannot match. They have also conveniently left room for a 3080 Super/TI, and/or 3090 12GB, should AMD really be that good this generation. 

 

So, to sum it up, Big Navi could be anywhere in performance, BUT, it will BEAT the 2080ti at the very least IMO. Please take all this with a grain of salt, as it is pure speculation.

[Bombastinator]

11 minutes ago, IAMABOSS said:

I have been watching a lot of Buildzoid's content, GamesNexus has him do the PCB breakdowns of motherboards and GPUs, really knowledgeable person, and he has done some assumptions on Big Navi based on Xbox series X APU.  The Series X has 56 CU GPU portion of the APU, and supposedly has similar teraflops to a 2080ti. The Xbox also uses a power cable that has a maximum wattage of 275W, so we know the APU in the series X is going to be VERY efficient. So based on that he has worked out that Big Navi could be around double 5700XT performance with a 80 CU variant. This would make it around 3080 levels of performance, at a lower power. Do I think this will happen, No, it will likely be between 3070 and 3080 levels of performance, at a lower power from a better manufacturing process (TSMC N7 Enhanced, which is far better than Samsung 8NM)

But this is nothing more than speculation. I have heard Linus talking about how word gets around between the tech companies, and I would bet that Nvidia has a better idea of Big Navi's performance than we do, and launched the 3000 series accordingly, especially with both Xbox and PS5 using the same hardware, and probably sending dev kits out to game developers, some who may, just may have a relationship with Nvidia. I think that Nvidia's aggressiveness in this launch and pricing is directly linked to the fact that they know AMD will be more competitive than they ever have been in recent times. So they have gone for the throat, and gave it there best shot at ensure they do not loose the performance crown by throwing everything they have at the 3090, which set a bar AMD cannot match. They have also conveniently left room for a 3080 Super/TI, and/or 3090 12GB, should AMD really be that good this generation. 

 

So, to sum it up, Big Navi could be anywhere in performance, BUT, it will BEAT the 2080ti at the very least IMO. Please take all this with a grain of salt, as it is pure speculation.

The thing is though the design of the apu in the XboxX is old.  It’s design was finalized BEFORE  it was sent off to developers.  So multiple years old.  This is why it’s a minimum.  If AMD has done nothing in that intervening time this is what they got.  

[IAMABOSS]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

The thing is though the design of the apu in the XboxX is old.  It’s design was finalized BEFORE  it was sent off to developers.  So multiple years old.  This is why it’s a minimum.  If AMD has done nothing in that intervening time this is what they got.  

I am sure that there could be minor improvements to the big Navi cards from the Xbox variant, but probably not much, I think they will keep somethings for RDNA 3 in late 2021/ early 2022. I have a feeling that AMD wants to do to Nvidia what they did to Intel, the only difference is Nvidia is not sitting around like Intel did. They continue to innovate, and increase prices. But I am starting to think it may be to little to late, with Nvidia taking the lead with the feature set they offer with their cards RTX, DLSS, NVENC, RTX IO, I could just keep going. I don't really see a path forward unless AMD and TSMC lock Nvidia out of 5nm and 3nm availability, and Nvidia gets stuck on Samsung, just like Intel has been stuck with 14nm.  

[Moonzy]

2 hours ago, Warin said:

The idea that AMD is just going to exit the GPU biz because of Ampere is almost laughable.  Will Big Navi outperform Ampere? probably not.  But I suspect the price to performance will sell Radeon cards still. 

not saying they are going to exit the GPU market entirely, but if the cost of producing their GPU is higher than what they can sell it for, then they might've been screwed this time around.

think their profit margin for last generation cards weren't high? or that was cards with HBM.

 

I'm interested to see what they pull out of that hat nonetheless. I don't like the idea of no competition in the market.

[Bombastinator]

17 minutes ago, IAMABOSS said:

I am sure that there could be minor improvements to the big Navi cards from the Xbox variant, but probably not much, I think they will keep somethings for RDNA 3 in late 2021/ early 2022. I have a feeling that AMD wants to do to Nvidia what they did to Intel, the only difference is Nvidia is not sitting around like Intel did. They continue to innovate, and increase prices. But I am starting to think it may be to little to late, with Nvidia taking the lead with the feature set they offer with their cards RTX, DLSS, NVENC, RTX IO, I could just keep going. I don't really see a path forward unless AMD and TSMC lock Nvidia out of 5nm and 3nm availability, and Nvidia gets stuck on Samsung, just like Intel has been stuck with 14nm.  

Rtx has been a bust so far, but that could change.  AMD built the console apus though, so if the consoles don’t have useful ray tracing I don’t see it getting far.  Dlss2 is nice, and so is Nvenc.  The one that intrigues me most I don’t know the name for. Might be that rtx io. It’s the bit that allows low latency storage transfers.  That bit might turn out to be real important.   If Nvidia can do low latency storage transfer and the consoles can do low latency storage transfers but AMD can’t, theyre hosed.  If AMD can but not better than Nvidia it’s another “ optimized for” fight where gpu manufacturers bribe devs to lock the other gpu out.   That’s one Nvidia will likely win.  They’ve got more money.   If AMD can do it and the consoles can do it, but it’s less work for devs to do it AMD’s way, the one who is hosed is going to be Nvidia. 

Edited September 5, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Warin]

5 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

not saying they are going to exit the GPU market entirely, but if the cost of producing their GPU is higher than what they can sell it for, then they might've been screwed this time around.

think their profit margin for last generation cards weren't high? or that was cards with HBM.

 

I'm interested to see what they pull out of that hat nonetheless. I don't like the idea of no competition in the market.

I don't disagree.  But I would also point out that building the APU for both the Series X and the PS5 is a whole lot of income.  They can afford to have some thin margins in the GPU biz.  And hey, who knows what big navi is going to bring to the table.  There should be something announced really soon now.

[IAMABOSS]

1 minute ago, Warin said:

I don't disagree.  But I would also point out that building the APU for both the Series X and the PS5 is a whole lot of income.  They can afford to have some thin margins in the GPU biz.  And hey, who knows what big navi is going to bring to the table.  There should be something announced really soon now.

I really don't know what AMD's intentions are in the GPU market. If its more profitable to have TSMC make more Ryzen wafers, then they may just tank Big Navi (I don't think thats going to happen). I do know they have the GPU architecture for big Navi, and will probably let it go as far as it can this generation. I think they will keep the GPU division innovating so they can keep the console market.

One thing to note, that Buildzoid said, is if we do not hear big Navi before the 30XX series is released, then it is a non competitor, because if it beats the 3080, they would want people to know before people buy 3080s. If we hear nothing until after release of the 30XX series, than don't worry about big Navi more than likely. So Yes, I think an announcement will be coming really soon, at least I hope so.

[IAMABOSS]

18 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Rtx has been a bust so far, but that could change

RTX changed about 3 days ago, when the 30XX series was announced, which makes the 2080ti price drop to 500$, that made RTX matter, with how many people are going to buy a 3070, RTX and DLSS will be in nearly every major game because the user base just got 10x bigger, now that "affordable" cards that can actually run it will be out there. Personally, I would not buy a GPU without RT support at all right now, and I bought a 5700XT thinking RTX was stupid early this year, that was last months thing, this month, it matters. 

[Bombastinator]

12 minutes ago, IAMABOSS said:

RTX changed about 3 days ago, when the 30XX series was announced, which makes the 2080ti price drop to 500$, that made RTX matter, with how many people are going to buy a 3070, RTX and DLSS will be in nearly every major game because the user base just got 10x bigger, now that "affordable" cards that can actually run it will be out there. Personally, I would not buy a GPU without RT support at all right now, and I bought a 5700XT thinking RTX was stupid early this year, that was last months thing, this month, it matters. 

The capacity of rtx changed sure.  The problem is that games are written for consoles first. In order for rtx to really kill it’s got to be part of the game planning. What makes ray tracing potentially special is it can be used INSTEAD of regular shading which is a whole lot simpler for devs.  They don’t have to worry about where things are.  Chiro scurio goes out the window. They can just drop a shape in a field and say “light that puppy” and lo it is done.  Faster to build.  Less to think about.  If ray tracing is easy things that don’t have ray tracing are hosed. If it’s NOT that way though ray tracing actually gets in the way.   If they have to build games for non ray tracing ray tracing loses much of its power. DLSS2 though (it’s 2 now) that I can see. I still hold ray tracing as a conditional maybe. 
 

The difference I guess is I think that AMD got a bigger bonus from building the console GPUs than anyone thought.   This may or may not play out as true.