Nvidia's Redemption

[Forleb]

Even at the anticipated $1,000 MSRP, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 Ti was still going to be frowned upon a bit; Then they bumped it up to $1,200 and put the nail in their own coffin. On the scale of the entire 30 Series lineup, this decision looks 100% like a ploy for money in these desperate times - which is partially true. However, Nvidia made one grave mistake in their original pricing for these GPUs: The gap between the 3080 and the 3090 is simply absurd, hence why they were able to get away with $1,200 on a 3080 Ti. Except this is not true for everything below the 3080; So now, after utter hell has taken over the PC building market, Nvidia has no choice but to correct their mistakes with one last addition: The 3070 Ti.

 

Though AIBs will obviously work their magic to pull premiums out of every nook and cranny for their models, the Founders Edition 3070 Ti at $600 may actually be the most compelling releases we've had in a while. When the 3080 Ti was in the works, we all expected it to basically be a 3090 with less VRAM, and that became a reality for most use cases, with the 3080 Ti pretty much always closely hugging or even surpassing 3090 benchmarks. With this in mind, we can now recall that the performance gap between the 3080 and the 3090 is fairly narrow, whereas the gap between the 3080 and the 3070 actually justifies the creation of the 3070 Ti. If this new GPU follows the same trend as the 3080 Ti, and stays closer to the 3080 than the 3070, then we might be looking at similar value to the 3070 or even the 3060 Ti, depending on where it lands.

 

Obviously, in current conditions, this all will be a fantasy until things normalize. Many other people will or have already figured all of this out, meaning that the 3070 Ti is almost certainly going to see the harshest shortage of any Ampere GPU yet. In the future, though, the 3070 Ti will hold a very respectable position in Nvidia's 30 Series, and a necessary one at that. Had this GPU not been on Nvidia's docket, it would be a completely different story for their future after the release of the 3080 Ti, and all we can do is hope that this mark of redemption doesn't become necessary again with new generations. The 3070 Ti isn't exactly a budget oriented product, but with projected performance greater than a 2080 Ti at half the cost, I think it's safe to say that a lot of us will still be going after one.

 

Good luck to everyone on the 10th.

[Levent]

11 minutes ago, Forleb said:

put the nail in their own coffin

Nah. Watch them post another record quarter. 

[QuantumSingularity]

I'm still think of placing my bets on AMD. Yes i lose DLSS and Ray Tracing in most games for now, but my gut feeling is telling me their focus on delivering more performance on an entirely AMD based system, might yield much better results than anticipated and especially once DirectStorage API is adopted by the industry. They worked really close to Microsoft on that one and if anyone is gonna have the upperhand at least with the first few generations of hardware it's them. At the moment they give the feeling of a more balanced and focused company, making less mistakes and screw-ups than the rest. Also i like how they battle on 2 fronts - Intel AND nVidia. That said, it's never too late for any company to totally shit itself.

[Jeppes]

We need competition. On gpu:s and on fabs. Open up patents if nothing else works like they did with mobile phones. It was stagnating while Nokia and other oldies owned everything essential and could price others out.

[Chris Pratt]

25 minutes ago, QuantumSingularity said:

I'm still think of placing my bets on AMD. Yes i lose DLSS and Ray Tracing in most games for now, but my gut feeling is telling me their focus on delivering more performance on an entirely AMD based system, might yield much better results than anticipated and especially once DirectStorage API is adopted by the industry. They worked really close to Microsoft on that one and if anyone is gonna have the upperhand at least with the first few generations of hardware it's them. At the moment they give the feeling of a more balanced and focused company, making less mistakes and screw-ups than the rest. Also i like how they battle on 2 fronts - Intel AND nVidia. That said, it's never too late for any company to totally shit itself.

DirectStorage has pretty much nothing to do with the graphics card. Even the CPU doesn't really matter, assuming there's support for PCIe 4.0 (though DirectStorage will still work with PCIe 3.0 drives, as well). It's 100% a software implementation, which means support is entirely dependent on the developer, not AMD, Intel, or Nvidia.

 

DLSS is something you can live without, if you can also live without ray tracing. I'll be the first to admit that ray tracing can make a huge difference in visual quality, but rasterized lighting can amazingly get really close, especially when you look at implementations like UE5's upcoming Lumen. I honestly think RT is just filling a sort of niche, right now, just above where more traditional lighting methods can go currently, but it won't be long before it's probably dethroned.

 

Personally, I still think Nvidia wins this generation, but AMD is primed for a knockout punch next gen. Just look at the trajectory of Zen. First gen, was meh. Second gen made it viable. Third gen made it a force to be reckoned with, and fourth gen decimated Intel. I think you're seeing the same play out in the GPU space now with RDNA.

[SansVarnic]

2 hours ago, Forleb said:

Even at the anticipated $1,000 MSRP,

Me wishing for the days of $500 hardware again. Thats it.

[Forleb]

3 minutes ago, SansVarnic said:

Me wishing for the days of $500 hardware again. Thats it.

Don't we all. Hopefully the $500 margin will swap back to 3070s instead of 1660s eventually...

[Dr0y]

2 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

Personally, I still think Nvidia wins this generation, but AMD is primed for a knockout punch next gen. Just look at the trajectory of Zen. First gen, was meh. Second gen made it viable. Third gen made it a force to be reckoned with, and fourth gen decimated Intel. I think you're seeing the same play out in the GPU space now with RDNA.

I totally hope so ... cause it forces every companies to become better and better ... I can't wait to see some intel gpu in the wild and how they will fare against the others ... hope they will be good and will put even more pressure on amd and nvidia ...

 

also is there some kind of a queue for amd gpu like the evga queue system ? if yes where is it ?