4070 reviews thread

[psolord]

I wouldn't mind if the market was more competitive. The current GPU market is not functioning well and regulators should intervene, IMO.

Wow, when I said that in these forums, some four years ago, some people called me a leftist and told me to go back to my backwater communist country, where I came from! I live in Europe anyway.

Four years later, you tell the same people that 8GB vram is not much a problem, because you are not getting married to the damn thing and you will change the card after two years anyway, and they are like woooo you right wing capitalist! xD

 

[coercitiv]

Four years later, you tell the same people that 8GB vram is not much a problem, because you are not getting married to the damn thing and you will change the card after two years anyway, and they are like woooo you right wing capitalist! xD

IIRC what you read as "right wing capitalist" was expressed as "older cards with 8GB are fine for what they are, we're telling you that new cards capable of more than 1080p high should have more vram". Case in point, the 4060Ti doesn't need 16GB and a diamond wedding ring, but it definitely could have used a chip design with 160 bit bus and 10GB.

The discussion in the 8GB thread was never about this amount of VRAM on any card, it was always considered in the context of card compute vs. VRAM vs. price. There is consensus that even in 2023 there is a place for 8GB cards, only lower in price than GPU makers would like. There is also consensus that $400+ 8GB cards are a bad choice today.

Last but not least, if GPU progress seen in this generation is the new norm, I have great news for you: you're kinda' engaged to that 4070Ti! Whoo-hoo! xD

 

[Aapje]

Wow, when I said that in these forums, some four years ago, some people called me a leftist and told me to go back to my backwater communist country, where I came from! I live in Europe anyway.

Four years later, you tell the same people that 8GB vram is not much a problem, because you are not getting married to the damn thing and you will change the card after two years anyway, and they are like woooo you right wing capitalist! xD

There is nothing leftist or anti-capitalist about fixing market failures.

The conflicts between left and right tend to resolve more around trying to achieve other goals than fixing market failures through regulation. Not seldomly, regulation to achieve other goals actually results in market failures.

A classic example is price controls, which improve the ability for people with less money to afford the thing, but destroy the ability of the market to match supply with demand.

 

[Dribble]

Healthcare is a topic where people tend to become utterly irrational and extremist, resulting in all kinds of stupid decision making by governments and regulators as they try to appease irrational demands.

Anyway, these cards just stopped being gaming toys and became the future of computing. So this is exactly the moment for regulators to step in and prevent one company from becoming too dominant. They can do that without setting prices, which is a very dumb way to regulate markets. For example, they could force Nvidia to make CUDA an open standard and force them to license certain patents for free or a cheap price.

You would have a case if Nvidia was actively stopping anyone else developing their own AI or CUDA like solutions, but they are not. We had OpenCL for example and that failed because no one was willing to spend enough on RnD to keep up with CUDA, and while AMD made a lot of noise for a while they never made much effort to get their cards to actually support it. It's the equivelent of forcing the class nerd who did his homework to give you a copy because you were to lazy.

In AI there are plenty of competitors - most phones have some AI hardware in. Google have invested a lot, and their bard AI bot is probably running on their hardware and software not Nvidia's. Apple are probably also heavily invested. Just because Intel and AMD are failing miserably doesn't mean that Nvidia has a monopoly.

 

[Aapje]

You would have a case if Nvidia was actively stopping anyone else developing their own AI or CUDA like solutions, but they are not.

It doesn't matter at all whether a monopolistic situation resulted from nefarious behavior or not. Governments typically give regulators the power to apply whatever remedy they and the courts deem reasonable to restore balance to the market.

This can indeed result in companies being 'punished' for being too good compared to their competition, but otherwise the customer gets punished by the company being able to exploit them because of their monopolistic powers.

In AI there are plenty of competitors - most phones have some AI hardware in.

Those are not used for training, just for inference. And even then it's a specific kind of inference, not the kind used in ChatGPT.

 

[Heartbreaker]

This can indeed result in companies being 'punished' for being too good compared to their competition...

Not really. Simply having a dominant position is not enough to get punished. They pretty much have to abuse their monopoly position. BTW, not giving whiny entitled PCMR members discounts on their toys, doesn't count as abuse.

See the big monopoly trial: US vs Microsoft. Microsoft was doing all kinds of really anticompetitive shady abuse with their monopoly power, like making PC builders pay for windows on every PC they sold, even it they didn't include Windows. This made it impossible for an alternative like OS/2 to make any headway, because if you wanted OS/2, you need to pay for OS/2 and still pay Microsoft for Windows. This trial was a big topic at work because it was a complete circus of Microsoft abuses. Even after mountains of evidence, MS got a slap on the wrist.

 

[Ranulf]

The only regulation one needs for the gpu market is to not buy their over priced products.

 

[Dribble]

It doesn't matter at all whether a monopolistic situation resulted from nefarious behavior or not. Governments typically give regulators the power to apply whatever remedy they and the courts deem reasonable to restore balance to the market.

This can indeed result in companies being 'punished' for being too good compared to their competition, but otherwise the customer gets punished by the company being able to exploit them because of their monopolistic powers.


Those are not used for training, just for inference. And even then it's a specific kind of inference, not the kind used in ChatGPT.

Google Bard is a direct competitor to ChatGPT which clearly has had training. It uses google hardware and google software, no input from Nvidia as far as I know.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Google Bard is a direct competitor to ChatGPT which clearly has had training. It uses google hardware and google software, no input from Nvidia as far as I know.

Alphabet recently announced its A3 supercomputers, purposedly built for AI workloads, powered by Nvidia's GPUs and Intel's CPUs.
Google is among the largest buyers of Nvidia GPUs on the planet

 

[Dribble]

Alphabet recently announced its A3 supercomputers, purposedly built for AI workloads, powered by Nvidia's GPUs and Intel's CPUs.
Google is among the largest buyers of Nvidia GPUs on the planet

I think bard runs on Google TPU's (hardware) obviously also using google software: https://analyticsindiamag.com/forget-chatgpt-vs-bard-the-real-battle-is-gpus-vs-tpus/

 

[jpiniero]

There is nothing leftist or anti-capitalist about fixing market failures.

The market failure is really AMD's inability to get people to buy their GPUs unless it's a fire sale.

 

[Saylick]

The market failure is really AMD's inability to get people to buy their GPUs unless it's a fire sale.

This is unfortunately true. AMD squandered many opportunities to be more competitive in the market.

I do wonder, however, if AMD were to hypothetically back out of the consumer GPU market entirely, leaving Nvidia and Intel left, at what point would any regulatory body step in? If Intel also backed out, would the Feds step in?

I wouldn't be surprised that if AMD publicly announced they were getting out, Lisa Su would immediately get a phone call from Jensen where Jensen would try to convince AMD to remain in the market.

 

[sandorski]

They could do it right now, NVidia left the door wide open. They have the same issue as NVidia though, their Silicon is more profitable elsewhere. Intel also has an opportunity, but they need a leap yet. Their Driver team should be getting better, hopefully they try for a few generations and can release competitive Cards without major issues.

 

[beginner99]

They could do it right now, NVidia left the door wide open. They have the same issue as NVidia though, their Silicon is more profitable elsewhere. Intel also has an opportunity,

I mean intel took the opportunity by pricing their cards very low and thereby at least selling them?

AMD fugged it once again by pricing the 7900XT(X) too high. Prices have come down for both of them much more than 4080s or 4070Tis. Should have priced them lower from the start for mindshare. And yes Nvidia is giving them a huge break with their stupid vram limitations. without that I would be a no-brainer for me to go NV (for that sweet playing around with AI locally).

I feat 7800 XT will be priced similarly or higher than 4070s thereby being absolutley 0 perfomance/dollar improvment over previous gen.

 

[coercitiv]

So the gaming market should not be regulated because we're talking about toys (I happen to agree, but not for this reason), and being vocal about GPU pricing makes one a "whiny entitled PCMR member". Nvidia did not abuse their market position, and yet the market has failed. And the culprit is AMD. Let's repeat this with fewer words: you're whiny and entitled if you complain about prices in a failed market that is not being abused by the dominant player. The real culprit is the smaller player.

One more time, just the bare bones: This was a functioning free market with players playing by the rules, so market failure must be the fault of the weaker player.

This forum has some really bright people, but some are so bright that they set themselves on fire.

 

[Heartbreaker]

So the gaming market should not be regulated because we're talking about toys (I happen to agree, but not for this reason), and being vocal about GPU pricing makes one a "whiny entitled PCMR member". Nvidia did not abuse their market position, and yet the market has failed. And the culprit is AMD. Let's repeat this with fewer words: you're whiny and entitled if you complain about prices in a failed market that is not being abused by the dominant player. The real culprit is the smaller player.

One more time, just the bare bones: This was a functioning free market with players playing by the rules, so market failure must be the fault of the weaker player.

This forum has some really bright people, but some are so bright that they set themselves on fire.

That is different comments from different people.

I'll address my part.

Yes it comes across as entitled whining, when day after day we get endless complaining, that GPU performance/$ isn't improving as fast as it used to.

This isn't about perf/$ getting worse. This is just whining that it isn' t improving fast enough...

This is during a time when a large swath of the population is struggling with LARGE actual increases in the cost of housing/fuel/food, IOW, the basic necessities of life.

So yeah the endless complaining about GPU prices comes across as entitled whining to me.

As far as the call for government intervention. Wow, that is peak entitled whining. This one is funny, I'm picturing Mr. Burns trying to get the government to lower prices of solid gold back scratchers...

Even if NVidia was the only maker of discrete GPUs, the government wouldn't intervene unless they actually did something to abuse their monopoly position. Having a monopoly is not illegal. Abuse is.

Not all monopolies are illegal. For example, businesses might legally corner their market if they produce a superior product or are well managed. Antitrust law doesn’t penalize successful companies just for being successful. Competitors may be at a legitimate disadvantage if their product or service is inferior to the monopolist’s.

But monopolies are illegal if they are established or maintained through improper conduct, such as exclusionary or predatory acts. This is known as anticompetitive monopolization.

Simply not lowering prices to your liking is not abuse of market position.

If NVidia abuses it's market position, then by all means they should face government sanction. Governments have sanctioned many PC component makers for collusion and price fixing in the past, like RAM, LCD and optical drive makers.

 

[coercitiv]

we get endless complaining, that GPU performance/$ isn't going down as fast as it used to.

This isn't about perf/$ going up. This is just whining that they aren't going down fast enough...

You're not making much sense here, maybe try again?

This is during a time when a large swath of the population is struggling with LARGE actual increases in the cost of housing/fuel/food, IOW, the basic necessities of life.

Is this a thread about the current ongoing economic crisis? Or about the war in Ukraine? Or about many other atrocities going on in the world?

No, it's a thread about GPUs, where people come to discuss things that are different than news that stress or sadden many of us. You didn't seem to have any issue praising and marveling at the Apple's Vision Pro, you were not concerned in that thread about other people's necessities of life. On the contrary, you were talking about Apple augmenting our world with a $3500 device. What happened, what changed your world view so drastically in just a few days?

Or could it be that you're using people's struggle during these times as an emotional straw man in a discussion where you lack any other decent argument?

 

[fralexandr]

I found out something weird, or not so weird, but what is even more weird, is that I will ask about it in the 4070 reviews thread and it concerns the 4070ti, but I guess they are the same family right, so it should be somewhat relevant for the 4070s too?

Anyhoo, my 4070ti did not work on the Asrock P67 extreme6. I mean the system does not even post. Ok noone is going to use such cards on such systems, still some questions have arisen. I mean why wouldn't the system even post? It has a uefi bios after all. It even detected a nvme drive, attached to a pcie adapter (for testing only). Also the 3060ti works fine. So why not the 4070ti hmmm....

I had issues with my rx 480 on my i7 860 evga h55 (I think this was always uefi) after a driver update, where it caused a whole bunch of issues, but changing to my old asrock p55 (this one started out non-uefi but was updated to uefi if I remember correctly. I might be wrong though, it was a long tine ago) fixed it.
I guess it's just a risk of using extremely old platforms with modern gpus...

AMD driver killing input devices in windows?

For some reason when I went to update my AMD graphics drivers upon restart all of my input devices failed to work in Windows. Furthermore, sometimes the computer would fail to recognize inputs and not enter bios, after which Windows would fail to load. I tried 18.6 at this time. Windows 10...

forums.anandtech.com

 

[Heartbreaker]

You're not making much sense here, maybe try again?

Fixed.

 

[psolord]

I had issues with my rx 480 on my i7 860 evga h55 (I think this was always uefi) after a driver update, where it caused a whole bunch of issues, but changing to my old asrock p55 (this one started out non-uefi but was updated to uefi if I remember correctly. I might be wrong though, it was a long tine ago) fixed it.
I guess it's just a risk of using extremely old platforms with modern gpus...

AMD driver killing input devices in windows?

For some reason when I went to update my AMD graphics drivers upon restart all of my input devices failed to work in Windows. Furthermore, sometimes the computer would fail to recognize inputs and not enter bios, after which Windows would fail to load. I tried 18.6 at this time. Windows 10...

forums.anandtech.com

Thanks for your answer.

Yeah incompatibilities can creep up for whatever reason, especially on older hardware. It just seems weird though, since even the previous gen worked fine. I'd wager, at that point in time, two video cards that are two years apart, the 3060ti and the 4070ti, would have the exact same prerequisites. Anyhoo, it doesn't matter, since the 4070ti will never be a testing subject for my sandies. As things get upgraded it will reach up to the 8600K and it works fine there.

 

[Ranulf]

If I remember right the general consensus became that nvidia worked fine with older mobos up through pascal but after that some cards could get funky. AMD it started with R9 200 generation and especially polaris cards hating anything not uefi. Maybe when I do a rebuild of my intel setup I'll test the 2060S on my old 2500k which is on a P67 chipset.

 

[Mopetar]

The market failure is really AMD's inability to get people to buy their GPUs unless it's a fire sale.

This is just another way of saying that customers (the people who actually make the purchases) just want NVidia products. There really isn't anything that AMD can do if this were the actual case. It's hard to claim there's a market failure if the problem is customers behaving like addicts.

Additionally the gaming market is part of a larger market for silicon. Suppose there were a sudden and massive spike in demand for yogurt for whatever reason and that people who previously ate it are buying about three times as much and that there a some people who never bought it before who have started and are buying a lot as well. What do you think would happen to the prices of milk and cheese in this case? Of course they'd go up because the raw material to produce all of the products is in higher demand from yogurt consumers.

There is no market failure because the simply truth is that there's a massive amount of demand for cutting edge silicon wafers, but there are people who want that silicon a lot more than gamers are willing to pay a lot more for it. It's not much different than the mining craze. In the past we got cheaper cards because we were the people who were willing to pay the most. Now someone else is wanting to pay more.

At some point the demand from the AI companies will level out and gamers will generally be the customers willing to spend more than others, but until then gamers are getting outbid.

 

[Aapje]

This is just another way of saying that customers (the people who actually make the purchases) just want NVidia products. There really isn't anything that AMD can do if this were the actual case. It's hard to claim there's a market failure if the problem is customers behaving like addicts.

Brand loyalty is not something permanent, but something that can change. There is a reason why big companies like Coca Cola keep making ads that produce unconscious positive feelings towards the brand. They have to keep the brand loyalty strong.

What AMD can do is not make the same mistakes that Nvidia is making and creating wins for themselves, for instance by putting strong features in their cards. For example, the 6700 (XT) has been getting a lot of positive press since the 10/12 GB on the 6700 (XT) looks very attractive compared to the 8 GB on the 4060 Ti.

Imagine an alternate reality where AMD actually released a 7700 (XT) with better price/performance and still that 10/12 GB of RAM.

There is no market failure because the simply truth is that there's a massive amount of demand for cutting edge silicon wafers, but there are people who want that silicon a lot more than gamers are willing to pay a lot more for it. It's not much different than the mining craze. In the past we got cheaper cards because we were the people who were willing to pay the most. Now someone else is wanting to pay more.

What I'm actually hearing from insiders is that fab utilization is quite low, but lead times are still very long. This suggests that there is still something broken in the supply chain.

 

[Heartbreaker]

There is no market failure because the simply truth is that there's a massive amount of demand for cutting edge silicon wafers, but there are people who want that silicon a lot more than gamers are willing to pay a lot more for it. It's not much different than the mining craze. In the past we got cheaper cards because we were the people who were willing to pay the most. Now someone else is wanting to pay more.

I'm in the no Market Failure camp. Despite everything going on, we still get more GPU perf/$ today, than anytime in the past. The improvement are slowing down, but they are still coming, and they won't be evenly delivered.

 

[Aapje]

I'm in the no Market Failure camp. Despite everything going on, we still get more GPU perf/$ today, than anytime in the past. The improvement are slowing down, but they are still coming, and they won't be evenly delivered.

That doesn't mean that there is no market failure. Monopolies and oligopolies often do still provide improvements, but it is no longer dictated by what is possible, but what they consider optimal to maximize their profits.