Fanboys & GPU's

[Parge]

Hey hey,

Just found an interesting article:

http://www.shoutwire.com/comments/49391/GPU_Fanboys_Hurting_The_Industry

Are some of us really responsible for this?

 

[Valtiel]

It sounds like he's a bit angry at high prices but I agree with him at some points. $600 is a lot for a card and is it really $600 worth of performance? I'm not sure, I don't have the card but what I have heard about this card is that it destroys the competition I guess that could be worth what anyone is willing to pay at this point in time. I'm just hoping that R600 puts some of those prices in their place

 

[prozac26]

Are some of us really responsible for this?

Depends.

If we buy best parts for our money, like all of us should, then we are not responsible. Everyone bitches about getting ripped off, or getting their money's worth, yet some of those people, fanboys, won't get the best they can.

If we always buy best cards for money, this will cause companies to come out with something new, and have competitive pricing, which people like....

Anyway, interesting read.

 

[mpjesse]

Normal competition drives the price down while creating new and innovative products. You can see this kind of competition in action currently with the CPU industry – AMD vs. Intel. Both have driven their prices to quite low levels while the speed and innovation of their products continues to increase.

I guess he forgot that Intel charges in excess of $900 for a X6800 and AMD charges nearly $600 for their FX-62 and fx-74's. why isn't the graphics industry entitled to charge that much for a video card? after all, you do get more for your money. i mean, I don't see AMD or Intel handing out 512 or 768MB of extremely pricey and expensive GDDR3 memory with their products. and cpu's aren't nearly as important in gaming as they used to be. The problem with his article is he's focusing on a very small portion of the market, high end video cards and SLI/crossfire. the vast majority of folks don't use these products. the same is true of CPU's.

i'd bet that the margins in a video card are extremely thin compared to CPU's. all amd and intel has to do is stamp out some silicon, put it in a packaging, and throw a cheap piece of aluminum on it with a crappy fan. video card makers have to include large amounts of high performance RAM, elaborate cooling designs, pcb's, capacitors, AND the chip.

i think $600 is a good and fair price for the 8800 gtx. or maybe i'm just jaded because i paid that much for mine.

all i know is i don't regret my investment. and you'll rarely find anyone who has.

 

[niz]

It sounds like he's a bit angry at high prices but I agree with him at some points. $600 is a lot for a card and is it really $600 worth of performance? I'm not sure, I don't have the card but what I have heard about this card is that it destroys the competition I guess that could be worth what anyone is willing to pay at this point in time. I'm just hoping that R600 puts some of those prices in their place

>> $600 is a lot for a card and is it really $600 worth of performance?

Well, is a Ferrari worth $200,000? Its really just a car... Basically ultra top-end stuff is always overpriced, but there will always be people that want and can afford what is currently perceived to be the best.

>> I'm just hoping that R600 puts some of those prices in their place

False hopes. Top-end AMD & ATI stuff usually cost about the same or sometimes even more than the equivalent nvidia and Intel stuff. Why would their newest product be any different? especially as right now, ATI/AMD need money because their sales are down the pan, because they have had only second-rate products compared to Intel & nVidia for quite a while now.

I expect the R600 will be (slightly) faster than an 8800GTX. If ATIAMD release something that isn't faster than nVidia's card then they're dead in the water again. This means it will cost more than the 8800GTX because it will have the performance crown. They can and will charge more than the cost of an 8800 GTX because it will be slightly faster.

Also ATI/AMD still have a (shrinking) hardcore fanboi crowd who will pay any amount for the latest GPU because it has an ATI badge. ATI will charge a record-breaking amount for the fastest R600 to capitalise on that as they need to get as much money in as they can.

 

[mpjesse]

r600 pricing: i don't know... i certainly see your logic though. unless the r600 significantly outperforms the 8800 gtx, i don't think ATI is going to be able to get away w/ a high price tag. (like $600 or $650)

it's going to be interesting! ;-)

 

[Slava]

video card makers have to include large amounts of high performance RAM, elaborate cooling designs, pcb's, capacitors, AND the chip.

Kudos, man..

 

[caamsa]

Some of it is hype! They make us think we have to have the best in order to keep up with the Jones' It is what makes the world go around.

It is the same for clothes, cars, and a number of other things. In some ways fanboys are just people who want the best but when their product is no longer the best they go into the denial mode.

My uncle always purchased Buicks. Buicks at one time were great cars. Well over time Detroit turned out some real crap but my uncle went right on buying them.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Really looks like something written by a n00b.

He's complaining that because peeople pay the high initial price it drives all prices up. Just like the Buggatti Veyron driving up the price of the CityGolf / Rabbit / Polo, eh !?! :roll:

He also argues that if it weren't for fanbois they'd be releasing less power consuming models. sure but at what time frame? The power efficient models would still come out at the same time, and people who's primary concern is that (I'll include myself there) will buy when that condition is met. But the GF7900/7600 would've come out the same times regardless of what happened with the GF7900GTX/GTX-512, they had to wait for the process shift. 80nm will come when it comes, and if nV waited for the half node change, then you'd only get the GTX/GTS in the spring/summer, not have been able to enjoy it 3 months ago.

He also doesn't understand the difference between a power supply rated at 2KW (@ 20C) and it's ACTUAL draw at the wall socket. These PSUs are rated so high because at 40C (their normal operating environment) they only supply about 600-800W if needed, still far short of a space heater.

These n00bs think that the market would be any different, and magically that without enthusiasts the market would provide miracle performing cheap power concious cards with the speed of a GF800GTX but the power draw of an IGP.

He then derides SLi/Xfire only to finish by saying a dual-Quad rig would be sweet! FAQin' idiot! :roll:
How many layers and how big a card does he think this would involve?

Seriously the products are what they are. Before you have the GF7600, you have to have the GF7800GTX, and the price is whatever the market will bear. nV/ATi can only make so many cards then they sell them at the X dollars they thin they can get for demand=supply.

Thinking the way the author does would give us cards 2 generations ago and refreshes every 3 years, with nowhere near the development/advances we currently enjoy.

He bases all his assumptions based on the C2D which he forgets came after the hot&hungry Prescott. Compared to CPUs like the EDEN the C2D is a power HOGG.

I think the author should stick to playing with graphics cards rather than writing about them, he's obviously ignorant and out of his depth.

 

[Valtiel]

@ niz

No more car analogies :x my head is pounding with them after 2 hours of this forum

And I'll keep my false hopes thank you very much

 

[fredgiblet]

This guy is a retard

"GPU prices have stayed the same"

So have CPU prices at the top end, GPU's have about the same price spread as CPU's, there is just more reason to buy a high-end one.

Their products only increase in performance, but are seriously lacking in innovation

Innovation in GPU's is driven by API's, it makes no sense to design new features into GPU's that are not implemented in games or API's it is wasted time and money

"Fanboy’s always support their favorite company regardless of how well the companies’ products perform"

Since the TNT2 came out there has rarely been a clear cut winner, first nVidia-vs-3Dfx traded places then nVidia-vs-ATI traded places, one of the few times that I can think of where a product line (instead of an individual chip) was poor was the FX series from nVidia, and most nVidia fanboys will admit it.

Anyone with a brain realizes these prices are heavily inflated

Staying on the cutting edge means buying over-priced components, it's a simple fact of life for the computer geek. Some people choose to pay, some people choose to buy a step below the best.

If they did lower their price they could easily make up the difference in quantity

Incorrect, the GFX companies would have to lower their prices to mainstream levels to make up the difference, I am a serious gamer but I'm not going to pay $600 let alone $800 for a video card. To lower the price to where I would be willing to pay they would have to take a serious loss on the hardware, I know lots of people like myself and a lot of people who would consider the amount the I am willing to pay to be too much.

This in turn would allow PC developers to create some great games with higher graphics requirements

I fail to see how this has anything to do with it, the games of today are made to stretch current hardware to the limit but to be available to people with older hardware too, no matter how low the price goes there will always be a spread that will have to be taken into account

Fanboys lack of criticism also causes the company to overlook important factors in their products such as power requirements and thermal issues

The companies in question need to produce the fastest cards they can so that they can stay competitive and play the latest games, they know that the people who demand the highest performance will not care about these issues, they also know that the people who do not demand the highest performance do, thus they make top-end cards that ignore heat and power and mid to low-end that don't

You can see this blatant disregard of power consumption with PCIe - a fairly new format for graphics cards – that is already outdated as the GPU’s draw more power then PCIe can provide – this hurts the motherboard industry as they are forced to implement a new standard

Hmmm...creating a market for new motherboards hurts the motherboard industry? I fail to see the connection.

This is completely out of hand. Computers should NOT be drawing these kinds of currents – and the GPU companies are completely at fault.

See response above the last one

If both companies focused on their power and thermal issues, they could easily implement two of their best GPU’s onto a single card

Wrong, they are limited by the size of the cores and the size of the RAM

Power requirements, thermal issues, and PCB size are all problems that a company can take advantage of once performance is no longer the end all and be all of GPU sales.

Probably not going to happen for a long time

Something is going to give. I just hope it happens soon – this cannot keep up.

Oh, yes it can

Sorry if there is spelling mistakes but I'm at work so I shouldn't really be taking this much time anyway.

 

[sailer]

Hey hey,

Just found an interesting article:

http://www.shoutwire.com/comments/49391/GPU_Fanboys_Hurting_The_Industry

Are some of us really responsible for this?

What do I care? When I build a computer, I want the best card that I can buy so that it will last the longest before becoming outdated. If it costs a few more dollars, then I'm the one that's willing to pay the dollars. What I don't need is some crybaby type that hates the idea that I buy what I want, instead of what he thinks I should have.

But I won't claim to be a fanboy of companies. Though my present card is an ATI product, the previous one was Nvidia. What I am a fanboy about is getting the best card that I can find at the time I set out to buy a card.

 

[mpjesse]

hey guys, keep in mind that this is just a blog. it's not like the dude is publishing articles or has any influence. anyways, he's putting his opinions out there for everyone to see which takes at least a little bravery.

i don't see very many of us doing the same.

not trying to single any one person out or start a flame thread... just pointing out something everyone should think about.

 

[sailer]

Ok, you've got a point. Same time though, just as this guy has an opinion, so do I. And he's got a right to his opinion. I won't argue that. In the meantime, I'll go about my usual ways, and if the next computer I build has a 1000wt psu, then it does. After all, I'm the one who has to pay the bills for it.

One wish that I do have is that the R600 won't have to use a special motherboard if a person wants to use Crossfire. I hate having to pick out a motherboard based on the type of video card I buy.

 

[function9]

and if the next computer I build has a 1000wt psu, then it does. After all, I'm the one who has to pay the bills for it.

But it's Mother Earth who is really paying in the end. :tongue:

 

[flasher702]

Hey hey,

Just found an interesting article:

http://www.shoutwire.com/comments/49391/GPU_Fanboys_Hurting_The_Industry

Are some of us really responsible for this?

This isn't just a problem with high-end GFX cards. This is a problem with the entire gaming PC market.

The price of low-end desktops and laptops has PLUMETED and they are sold cometetively at low margins. They are half the price they were a few years ago and 10x as powerfu (and most of them actually can play games. I read a review for an ultra-portable i was concidering and the reviewer complained that he could only get 35fps out of fear. This was an $800 ultra-portable laptop. I could barely even play Warcraft3 on a full-sized ~$800 laptop 2 years ago). In the meanwhile the price for a decent gaming rig has gone UP. Performance has gone up too, but not nearly as much as it has in the low-end markets, and heat dissipation and electrical requirements have gone up also making it a fairly unattractive package IMHO.

The solution: Enthusiasts need to drop their brand loyalty and be picky about what they buy, demand $/performance and quality. DIY gaming rigs were a lot more fun when you could get a friend started for ~$600 and they could play any game available.

As a community we need telling everyone under the sun that they *must* buy the latest greatest thing or their rig will suck. It's simply not true. You'll almost always get the best bang/buck buy buying something a a few months, possibly even a few generations, old and if that's powerful enough for your application for the next 6-12months that's the way to go no matter how big your budget could potentially be. Consider it a sensible investment in a future upgrade if you must, but a little frugality can go a long way for the entire industry.

Oh, and no more car anolgies plz.

 

[flasher702]

and if the next computer I build has a 1000wt psu, then it does. After all, I'm the one who has to pay the bills for it.

But it's Mother Earth who is really paying in the end. :tongue:
And if there are enough unpicky buyers in the market who buy things based only on hype it leads to fewer "good" products available for consumers. So it even in a clinicly economic sense it is still all of us that pay for having impulse buyers amongst our ranks.

"Choice" doesn't do you much good if most of your choices are the copies of the same crappy overpriced product. And if you want to be at all picky they want to charge you an inflated premium. But when even that inflated premium can't buy you something good (like, say, a GFX card that won't fit in many cases and requires as much power as an entire computer system) it is generally the consumers that are to blame.

You can see this happen in many markets where the consumers have more money than sense (NO CAR ANOLOGIES!) which can make it very difficult to buy a good product on a budget. Enthusiast computing is really no longer the domain of geeks who are impressed with $/performance and tweaks that give more performance for free. The MTV watching SUV driving MySpace posting iPod accessory buying children of the world are firmly among us now and a few things have changed for the worse.

So don't encourage them. When they pre-order the next-gen GFX card and post about it to brag: don't praise them, admonish them for a foolish waste of money (half the time the average Joe won't admit it when there is a problem with their product anyway so it's not like they're giving us good testing info either). Companies shouldn't be rewarded for releasing buggy half-baked products that they rushed to the market in hope that some 2nd-Adolesence loser will snap them up and we shouldn't reward people with praise for buying them. Quickly releasing crappy products does not speed up technology development (prescott? pentium D? FX5000 series?), they divert funds away from projects that are trying to develop and release good products.

There is a difference between spending a lot of money on a system carefully designed to give high performance for a specific tast VS. spending a lot of money on a system just to brag about it and try to avoid having to do the research to carefully design one and then configure it to perform properly instead of cluttering it with spyware and bloated software.

 

[sailer]

If you read my words form a post further up, you'll see I said that I'll buy "the best card that I can find". That means to me that I don't preorder cards that haven't been released. It means that I read about the cards, read their benchmarks, know what they do right and what they do wrong, and then make an intelligently based decision. In other words, no crappy products that are there for bragging rights only.

I may use an AMD system instead of an Intel, but that's not due to fanboyism or bragging, but because it does what I want it to do. I do believe in choice, which means that what someone else wants may be fine for them, but not necessarily fine for me. Another word for it is freedom, and that's one thing that is being denied constantly. It seems that there are way too many people who think their ideas are better than mine, so they want to pass laws to restrict my choices, my freedom. They parade it as being for my own good, but its really Facism in its form.

If I decide to buy a $600.00 video card or two, and a 1000wt psu to power them, then that should my choice. I don't tell anyone that they must do as I do, but let them do as they want. If someone asks me for advice, I'll try to tell them the best answer that I know, based on the question they ask. But I leave the end choice to the other person. After all, just as its my money that buys my computer and its parts, its his money that buys his computer and its parts.

 

[cleeve]

Meh, there are so many things wrong with the reasoning of that article I don't know where to start. I guess I'll talk about what I think iss the most important part.

Entheusiasts drive technology, driven technological advancement get's better faster and moves better technology in the hands of people who don't want to spend $600 for a videocard.

Acceptable midgrade performance used to cost $200, for say the 9500 PRO or Ti4200.
Nowadays, $120 buys a 7600 GT that will do a great job with pretty much every game out there. What the hell is there to complain about?

If the technology wasn't so driven by high-paying entheusiasts, we'd all be forced to pay $600 for bare minimum performance. What does this guy think, that if the technology wasn't moving so quickly we'd all be playing with faster cards that cost less? It's simple ecinomics and it doesn't work that way.

I know everyone's tired of the car analogy but it's so appropriate in this case. This guy probably has a volkswagenand he's pissed off at his neighbor's right to buy a Porche. What he's missing is, that passat wouldn't be nearly as good and would probably cost more if all of the fancy bits weren't first developed on Porches.

 

[Fulmar]

Other than is unsupported opinion - its shoutwire. I've never read anything worthwhile on shoutwire.

 

[lbax]

I believe that this article makes a very valid point with regard to GPU power consumption. We have been all too tolerant of excessive GPU power consumption. Our reward for this tolerance is the opportunity to purchase a 1KW+ PSU for high end systems along with the cooling system to deal with the heat generated. We are responsible for this, because we have continued to embrace performance at any cost.

I for one, am not going to upgrade to the next gen GPUs until I can support the new high end card with my current PSU. I may have a long wait, given the acceptance by Fanboys, of high power & heat tradeoffs.

 

[mpjesse]

I believe that this article makes a very valid point with regard to GPU power consumption. We have been all too tolerant of excessive GPU power consumption. Our reward for this tolerance is the opportunity to purchase a 1KW+ PSU for high end systems along with the cooling system to deal with the heat generated. We are responsible for this, because we have continued to embrace performance at any cost.

I for one, am not going to upgrade to the next gen GPUs until I can support the new high end card with my current PSU. I may have a long wait, given the acceptance by Fanboys, of high power & heat tradeoffs.

agreed. but i do believe eventually ati and nvidia will respond to the need for extremely low power gpu's. as OS's become 3d accelerated, 3d cards are going to be used more... which of course will drive power consumption up.

the market will eventually demand lower powered gpu's, just like it demanded lower power cpu's. there's just not a need for it right now because generally speaking, enthusiasts aren't too concerned about power consumption. it's businesses that really care.

 

[cleeve]

the market will eventually demand lower powered gpu's, just like it demanded lower power cpu's. there's just not a need for it right now because generally speaking, enthusiasts aren't too concerned about power consumption. it's businesses that really care.

Exactly. People vote with their dollars, and as long as people buy them, power consumption isn't going to be a big concern for the manufacturers for top-end cards. No businesses buy gaming cards so their power requirements don't matter, it's the home consumer that drives this market.

 

[Heyyou27]

I can spend my money however the hell I want and some loser on his blog isn't going to change that.

 

[flasher702]

And how, exactly, are they going to make the 8800 not a gigantic card with the power requirements of a small space heater to trickle down into good mid-range components for the masses?

Your car anology sux... and I'm not touching it. Giving an example of something similar is one thing, drawing up an abstract anaology will always be illogical, and I'm really sick of hearing about cars especially since very few people really have the knowlege and appreciation of that industry and technology to make good analogies anyway. Everyone please stop.

IFF enthusiasts buying top-end components was driving innovation and competition you would be absolutely right. I don't think it is. And to give an example from the automobile industy (not an analogy) that is very comperable: GAS MILEAGE. We are all greatly limited towards buying GFX cards and cars with HORRENDOUS energy requirements that are WORSE then previous generations because some people spend their money unwisely and think that it is there FREEDOM to buy crap and brag about it. It may be an individual's money, but it's OUR choices and OUR environment that are negetively impacted by having a large segment of people that buy things not because they are good, but because they are expensive. If top-end components are crap then what trickles down to the mid-range market? When a buggatti veyron gets 13mpg what hope is there for the rest of us who want a fast car but have a much more limited budget (ok, THAT was an anology. Look what you made me do )?

Real technological advancements are better in ALL ways and raise the bar for all segments of an entire industry. When enthusiast invest in cutting edge technological advancements that helps to bring them into the mainstream and trickles down to lower end markets. When enthusiast invest in space heater multi-multi solutions with ungodly amounts of super-fast ram, or just downright bad products, it reshapes the entire market in a way that isn't exactly good for everyone or the environment.

So, for all my freedom, if I want hardware support for all the latest GFX techniques and good speed what are my low-wattage options exactly? At least when Prescott was out people had the option of buying a different top of the line CPU (given the choice a lot of them did). That's a choice, and choice is indeed good. No such options today with GFX cards, and there haven't been for awhile. Some people are starting to get hungry for a GFX upgrade and they don't like the choices they see: they are all high-wattage. No mention of good lower wattage cards coming anytime soon. We have to stop buying crap and stop encouraging other to buy it either because all the leading companies are selling us the exact same crap and there's no freedom of choice in that.

It's time for the GFX cards to get in line with the rest of the industry, but they don't seem to want to do it on their own. And as long as people keep buying it and no one comes out with a competing product the idealism of capitalism and it's promised freedom of choice is an illusion. We're the conusmers, it's our money, and it's our planet, we ought to throw a fit when things like this happen.

For anyone wanting to buy a new GFX card in the next year or so this ought to really strike home. Even if you do have a big PC budget, a great home AC system, and all the money in the world... why buy crap? If you're spending top dollar you should be even more picky then the rest of us.

And since I mentioned it: I have no AC system. It's only hot ~2 months a year where I live, I just open the windows. Why should I spend thousands of dollars on AC to support a GFX card??? That's ludicrus. I didn't need AC before, why should I need it now if this new technology is so good? I can't be the only person in this situation.

Four years ago you would have had trouble spending $600 on a gaming GFX card even if you desperately wanted to (~3.5 years ago you could have done it with a 256mb GDDR2 r9800, but not before then. Correct me if I'm wrong plz). And now GFX cards being released at $800 and stabalizing at $600 is ok and anyone who says otherwise is just a whiner trying to infringe on other people's rights?

Sooner or later they will have to change, let's help them shoot for sooner by refusing to buy crap and refusing to run bloated software that requires it.