AMD Gains Market Share in Q1'16 Discrete GPUs

[Lotus]

Honestly I'm surprised AMD was losing market share over the last couple of years and was only able to turn it around recently. Tajiti and Hawaii are still both great cards. Sure Fiji was too expensive to make sense most of the time, but Tajiti has been around for about 5 years now and the HD 7950 still kicks ass even in modern games. It's ridiculous how well that card has held up over time, and Hawaii is looking to be just as long-legged. Meanwhile, those who bought the GTX 680, a newer and more expensive card, have been much worse off.

[Starelementpoke]

1 minute ago, Lotus said:

Honestly I'm surprised AMD was losing market share over the last couple of years. Tajiti and Hawaii are still both great cards. Sure Fiji was too expensive to make sense most of the time, but Tajiti has been around for about 5 years now and the HD 7950 still kicks ass even in modern games. It's ridiculous how well that card has held up over time, and Hawaii is looking to be just as long-legged. Meanwhile, those who bought the GTX 680, a newer and more expensive card, have been much worse off.

Marketing. And the Ref. 290s didn´t help either.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Honestly I'm surprised AMD was losing market share over the last couple of years. Tajiti and Hawaii are still both great cards. Sure Fiji was too expensive to make sense most of the time, but Tajiti has been around for about 5 years now and the HD 7950 still kicks ass even in modern games. It's ridiculous how well that card has held up over time, and Hawaii is looking to be just as long-legged. Meanwhile, those who bought the GTX 680, a newer and more expensive card, have been much worse off.

The thing is, you don't buy computer hardware as an investment. AMD's cards couldn't deliver at was relevant and NVIDIA did. All anyone cares about is how much FPS some hardware delivers on their favorite games.

 

The software development circle may have turned the tide in AMD's favor, but NVIDIA can fix their mistakes in a relatively short amount of time.

[Prysin]

22 minutes ago, That Norwegian Guy said:

 

 

 

I am sorry for anyone who bought a laptop for gaming, period

i feel sorry for anyone who bought a laptop.

 

Tablets are better for casual or school usage these days. Desktops are better at gaming.

 

[Humbug]

29 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Honestly I'm surprised AMD was losing market share over the last couple of years and was only able to turn it around recently. Tajiti and Hawaii are still both great cards. Sure Fiji was too expensive to make sense most of the time, but Tajiti has been around for about 5 years now and the HD 7950 still kicks ass even in modern games. It's ridiculous how well that card has held up over time, and Hawaii is looking to be just as long-legged. Meanwhile, those who bought the GTX 680, a newer and more expensive card, have been much worse off.

'geforce' a has a stronger brand name and more share of mind particularly amongst buyers who don't keep in touch with the hardware industry. This means that in a world where all things are equal (performance, driver quality, price etc) Nvidia will still sell more GPUs. That's a major marketing issue that AMD has.

 

In the last 1 year or so Nvidia has had some bad PR though in terms of GPUs not aging well, DX12, driver issues etc combined with the fact their performance midrange (GTX 960 and 970) began to lose benchmarks to AMD in newer games. AMD users with old GCN 1.0 cards like the 7970 may not support fancy stuff like freesync, but those owners are still very happy with the support and performance optimizations continue to enjoy in new 2016 AAA games. All that talk on Internet forums and subreddits is probably part of the reason AMD was able to get back some market share.

 

It's definitely not to do with the flagship card because GTX 980ti was still the heavyweight champion. And continued to beat the Fury X in most benchmarks.

[Sharkyx1]

4 hours ago, Notional said:

NVidia can't pull their usual crap (like a 100$ premium reference card løl).

I don't follow? Nvidia did that because they didn't want to compete directly with their market partners, they are going to build that reference design for the life of the card so that people who want that metal design can buy it, but if people want a cheaper card the board partners can sell cheaper

[Notional]

4 minutes ago, Sharkyx1 said:

I don't follow? Nvidia did that because they didn't want to compete directly with their market partners, they are going to build that reference design for the life of the card so that people who want that metal design can buy it, but if people want a cheaper card the board partners can sell cheaper

If you drink more of their cool aid you will drown. Come on, you cannot be that naive.

 

There is absolutely no reason for the reference design to be more expensive. Especially not when the vendors make money on those too. The entire point of the vendors own design are additions, like better VRM, higher clocks, lower temps, lower noise, etc. For instance the 1080 power throttles like the Nano. Adding an additional 6/8 pin and better VRM could prevent that on AIB's own designs. THAT is an addition you can charge a premium for, because those are premium features.

[Mew]

4 hours ago, deviant88 said:

and im sorry for everyone who bought a laptop with intel graphics

I would only buy a laptop with Intel graphics. The performance to power consumption is just insane. 

[Mew]

13 minutes ago, Notional said:

If you drink more of their cool aid you will drown. Come on, you cannot be that naive.

 

There is absolutely no reason for the reference design to be more expensive. Especially not when the vendors make money on those too. The entire point of the vendors own design are additions, like better VRM, higher clocks, lower temps, lower noise, etc. For instance the 1080 power throttles like the Nano. Adding an additional 6/8 pin and better VRM could prevent that on AIB's own designs. THAT is an addition you can charge a premium for, because those are premium features.

The reason the reference card costs more than the custom ones is that nVidia doesn't want to compete with their board partners. If they sold it at a lower price, a huge majority would buy that instead and their board partners would be very upset. You being a miniscule vocal minority would buy the aftermarket one, even if it was more expensive, but everyone else will buy the cheaper, more reputable one because it delivers the same performance. Nvidia is probably just selling the gpu itself to their board partners at a lower price than usual (and also lower than the msrp) to enable them to sell at nvidia's suggested price. 

[laminutederire]

5 hours ago, VanayadGaming said:

You mean LiquidVR ? Software that they presented ages ago ? 

 

Also... what is this heresy ?! I read here from a "trustworthy" poster that they are dying and have no possibility of coming back

Except that it's based on speculations on Nvidia's cards being good... You, like the rest of us doesn't know what AMD has to offer against those. Only idiots will buy nvidia's cards before AMD releases both Polaris and Vega GPU's. Polaris won't be as good, we all know it, and AMD doesn't intend for it to be better, they want to make something better on other criterion than raw performance, and right now we don't have a clue about their power efficiency and so on. In the meantime, no one has any idea what Vega will look like. It could very well be a monstruous beast which will own any 1080, or 1080Ti (yeah we all know that it will probably come out very soon as well), or it can suck balls hard. Nobody knows, and any good buyer knows it, and knows that you should wait for AMD to release something better or for nvidia to lower their prices with the release of the 1080Ti. All in all, Nvidia's cards aren't that impressive to be honest with, yeah they're better, but there wasn't any groundbreaking innovation. (For that you'll have to look at IBM).

 

@That Norwegian Guy some of us are poor you know

[Notional]

7 minutes ago, kurahk7 said:

The reason the reference card costs more than the custom ones is that nVidia doesn't want to compete with their board partners. If they sold it at a lower price, a huge majority would buy that instead and their board partners would be very upset. You being a miniscule vocal minority would buy the aftermarket one, even if it was more expensive, but everyone else will buy the cheaper, more reputable one because it delivers the same performance. Nvidia is probably just selling the gpu itself to their board partners at a lower price than usual (and also lower than the msrp) to enable them to sell at nvidia's suggested price. 

No that is just NVidia's BS excuse to charge people more for less.

The AIB's are making money off of the reference card without having to invest anything. It's not costing the AIB's anything. Custom cards are just a way to make better cards and charge more for the privilege. This is just a scam for NVidia to take part of that premium price.

[Doobeedoo]

It's something so it's good. It will start to rise upon new release that's for sure. Polaris will make a great start and Vega to follow with more performance.

[Mew]

2 minutes ago, Notional said:

No that is just NVidia's BS excuse to charge people more for less.

The AIB's are making money off of the reference card without having to invest anything. It's not costing the AIB's anything. Custom cards are just a way to make better cards and charge more for the privilege. This is just a scam for NVidia to take part of that premium price.

They don't intend to sell that many reference cards. What don't you understand about that?

[Sharkyx1]

26 minutes ago, Notional said:

If you drink more of their cool aid you will drown. Come on, you cannot be that naive.

 

There is absolutely no reason for the reference design to be more expensive. Especially not when the vendors make money on those too. The entire point of the vendors own design are additions, like better VRM, higher clocks, lower temps, lower noise, etc. For instance the 1080 power throttles like the Nano. Adding an additional 6/8 pin and better VRM could prevent that on AIB's own designs. THAT is an addition you can charge a premium for, because those are premium features.

It also heat throttles at 83degrees which the card runs at, nvidia isn't hiding the fact that this isn't the fastest card, this is about, if you want the nvidia designed card you can have it, 

 

2 minutes ago, Notional said:

No that is just NVidia's BS excuse to charge people more for less.

The AIB's are making money off of the reference card without having to invest anything. It's not costing the AIB's anything. Custom cards are just a way to make better cards and charge more for the privilege. This is just a scam for NVidia to take part of that premium price.

How is this a scam when there will be cards 100$ cheaper that will perform better?

 

then again you obviously know nothing if you think its BS to claim that undercutting your board partners won't bother them.

 

End of story, nobody has to buy these founders cards if they don't want an expensivie blower that looks nice.

[Valentyn]

10 minutes ago, Notional said:

No that is just NVidia's BS excuse to charge people more for less.

The AIB's are making money off of the reference card without having to invest anything. It's not costing the AIB's anything. Custom cards are just a way to make better cards and charge more for the privilege. This is just a scam for NVidia to take part of that premium price.

NVIDIA couldn't even explain and convince any of the Tech Press at a panel why it's worth the new price. As one Press member points out, they still used a low quality cooler, despite just saying it's a better build with high quality components.

All it is is marked up Reference card, there's nothing special about it. The NVIDIA panel themselves kept referring to it as a reference card as well, where they had to then correct themselves, and each other and state Founders.
 

 

[Notional]

4 minutes ago, kurahk7 said:

They don't intend to sell that many reference cards. What don't you understand about that?

Well they obviously intend to sell more than usual since they are extending the market availability over time with this new card.

2 minutes ago, Sharkyx1 said:

It also heat throttles at 83degrees which the card runs at, nvidia isn't hiding the fact that this isn't the fastest card, this is about, if you want the nvidia designed card you can have it, 

 

How is this a scam when there will be cards 100$ cheaper that will perform better?

 

then again you obviously know nothing if you think its BS to claim that undercutting your board partners won't bother them.

 

End of story, nobody has to buy these founders cards if they don't want an expensivie blower that looks nice.

So it also Thermo throttles? Seriously this card gets worse by the day.

 

For that exact reason: Asking 100$ premium for a subpar card is a scam.

Undercutting them how? The board partners are the ones selling them and taking a nice cut in the process. Why hasn't this been an issue for the board partners before then? They can still make custom cards at a higher premium with their own technologies.

 

The Founders Edition is just a fancy word for a reference card at a ripoff premium price, and people are defending this? It's like people want to be stupid and do thing against their own interests (but then again, that isn't exactly a new thing).

[tbake0155]

23 minutes ago, kurahk7 said:

I would only buy a laptop with Intel graphics. The performance to power consumption is just insane. 

It's been shown that laptops with a dGPU last just as long as laptops with just a iGPU when the dGPU is not in use.  You usually will have to put the laptop into high performance mode to get the dGPU to turn up to any substantial frequency. 

 

Also it's being marketed that intel iGPUs and amd dGPUs will work together.

 

Poor AMD lol!

[tbake0155]

Also if the AMD APU equipped laptops had better memory bandwidth (the major limitation of AMD's modern APUs), then they would make intel's iGPUs look terrible.  Clearly they are the better choice for a iGPU solution, but they are hampered by low memory bandwidth.  This is just as true on desktops.

 

 

[Sharkyx1]

1 minute ago, Notional said:

Well they obviously intend to sell more than usual since they are extending the market availability over time with this new card.

So it also Thermo throttles? Seriously this card gets worse by the day.

 

For that exact reason: Asking 100$ premium for a subpar card is a scam.

Undercutting them how? The board partners are the ones selling them and taking a nice cut in the process. Why hasn't this been an issue for the board partners before then? They can still make custom cards at a higher premium with their own technologies.

 

The Founders Edition is just a fancy word for a reference card at a ripoff premium price, and people are defending this? It's like people want to be stupid and do thing against their own interests (but then again, that isn't exactly a new thing).

It's not even defending, its just a barely relevant card. it thermal throttles to its base clock in Techpower ups testing, at 1607. Overclocked it ran at 2060mhz for TPU and 2025 for PCPer at that same 83degrees, its just the way nvidia choose their fan profile

i had a friend who wanted to buy a 970 with ref cooler last year and he couldn't find a single one. this is there for him, the people who want that reference design.

 

you are mad about them having an uplevel priced model, when the ones people are gonna buy will be the same price as advertized

The Titan is a scam, 100%, this isn't. locking GPUs behind 1000$ pricetags with no aftermarket coolers, when 600$ cards that are overclocked are faster

[Nineshadow]

2 hours ago, Humbug said:

In the last 1 year or so Nvidia has had some bad PR though in terms of GPUs not aging well, DX12, driver issues etc combined with the fact their performance midrange (GTX 960 and 970) began to lose benchmarks to AMD in newer games. AMD users with old GCN 1.0 cards like the 7970 may not support fancy stuff like freesync, but those owners are still very happy with the support and performance optimizations continue to enjoy in new 2016 AAA games. All that talk on Internet forums and subreddits is probably part of the reason AMD was able to get back some market share.

Yup, it's definitely the AMD fanboys and the "missteps" of Nvidia that had a huge involvement in AMD's recovery.

[Notional]

2 minutes ago, Sharkyx1 said:

It's not even defending, its just a barely relevant card. it thermal throttles to its base clock in Techpower ups testing, at 1607. Overclocked it ran at 2060mhz for TPU and 2025 for PCPer at that same 83degrees, its just the way nvidia choose their fan profile

i had a friend who wanted to buy a 970 with ref cooler last year and he couldn't find a single one. this is there for him, the people who want that reference design.

 

you are mad about them having an uplevel priced model, when the ones people are gonna buy will be the same price as advertized

The Titan is a scam, 100%, this isn't. locking GPUs behind 1000$ pricetags with no aftermarket coolers, when 600$ cards that are overclocked are faster

Sorry allow me to elaborate: SOME people are defending this thing, and I don't get it.

 

The issue is not that the reference card is available throughout the product lifecycle, I actually like that. The issue is that they are charging a 100$ price premium for a subpar edition of the card.

[Sharkyx1]

1 minute ago, Notional said:

Sorry allow me to elaborate: SOME people are defending this thing, and I don't get it.

 

The issue is not that the reference card is available throughout the product lifecycle, I actually like that. The issue is that they are charging a 100$ price premium for a subpar edition of the card.

I guess the only issue i have with it is that they are frontloading the release with them, obviously, so if you want one day one its not really 599$

 

but again, its not that the cooler is sub par, if you turn up the fans it can run 2100mhz and cool it fine, just like nvidia had it running at 2100 at 61c, i just think they were trying to make it too quiet and we end up with the first nvidia card in a while that runs at base clock in some titles, note: i looked at some other reviews and they didn't have to card dropping to the base clock like TPU did, PCPer said it ran around 1750-1650 depending on the title

[Citadelen]

Yet I seem to remember "Industry analysts", predicting that their share would reach an all time low this quarter, I'm glad to see that this wasn't the case.

[Mew]

7 minutes ago, Notional said:

Sorry allow me to elaborate: SOME people are defending this thing, and I don't get it.

 

The issue is not that the reference card is available throughout the product lifecycle, I actually like that. The issue is that they are charging a 100$ price premium for a subpar edition of the card.

Think of it as incentivizing people to buy the better, cheaper, custom cards. 

[Citadelen]

1 minute ago, kurahk7 said:

Think of it as incentivizing people to buy the better, cheaper, custom cards. 

So they're keeping their more expensive and worse card on the market as an incentive for people to buy the cheaper card? Even though those cards would be the only cards on the market if Nvidia didn't keep them there.

There's a simple answer here, it's that Nvidia wants to make a bit more money, and to push their brand.