A History of Nvidia GeForce

[railven]

You seem too eager to bring up this point of AMD fans bashing the HD 7970 at launch, without going into the details as to why it was the case. Here, let me quote from the AT review:

The 7970 was a clear deviation for AMD's product positioning from previous two generations(I count two because the HD 6000 series was an evolution of HD 5000). So of course it received a backlash, especially when the GTX 680 retook the performance crown just over three months later, while being much more efficient. With the launch of Kepler and Tahiti, AMD and NVIDIA basically swapped positions when it came to small-die, high efficiency vs. large-die low efficiency. Tell me why the backlash isn't justified.

As someone who bought and defended the HD 7970, I'm well aware of why it was criticized. It's the same criticism NV faced when they essentially rolled out the GK104 as the $500 GTX 680. The issue is one company was slammed worse than the other by it's home base. NV was praised by all reviewers and it's fan bought it up. Even around here the GTX 680 got recommended by some of the more "consumer" conscious Pro-AMD posters over the HD 7970, of course until it got price cut and bundled with 6 games. My point is when AMD did try to make money with a superior product, everyone including their pro-posters weren't happy.

As the AT review says, we got spoiled by it. And when people expect something, they sure do bite the hand that fed them.

We actually got Zen 8C/16T at 300$. Rumored plans for HBM-equipped APUs exist as enterprise-oriented devices.

I should have specified, top AMD Ryzen for $300.

Nowhere was it claimed that Polaris would give GTX 1080 performance at half the price. The only place where these two are mentioned together is a misleading E3 demo with Crossfired-RX 480s up against a GTX 1080 in Ashes of the Singularity. What was hyped up was the achievable clock speeds, with claims like 1400MHz being 'easily attainable'.

It wasn't AMD making these claims. It was some of our more prolific posters that kept posting it. As a once strong AMD supporter, those claims always stuck for me. It wasn't until I stopped supporting AMD exclusively that I realize these posters. Ironically, finding out one is an AMD vendor is the icing on the cake.

Just look at the Vega launched. Up until the very end the notion of drivers covering the spread didn't fizzle out. These posters are what gives AMD a bad rep in some forums. Stroll through the Polaris/Vega threads and you'll see them.

 

[tajoh111]

As someone who bought and defended the HD 7970, I'm well aware of why it was criticized. It's the same criticism NV faced when they essentially rolled out the GK104 as the $500 GTX 680. The issue is one company was slammed worse than the other by it's home base. NV was praised by all reviewers and it's fan bought it up. Even around here the GTX 680 got recommended by some of the more "consumer" conscious Pro-AMD posters over the HD 7970, of course until it got price cut and bundled with 6 games. My point is when AMD did try to make money with a superior product, everyone including their pro-posters weren't happy.

As the AT review says, we got spoiled by it. And when people expect something, they sure do bite the hand that fed them.



I should have specified, top AMD Ryzen for $300.



It wasn't AMD making these claims. It was some of our more prolific posters that kept posting it. As a once strong AMD supporter, those claims always stuck for me. It wasn't until I stopped supporting AMD exclusively that I realize these posters. Ironically, finding out one is an AMD vendor is the icing on the cake.

Just look at the Vega launched. Up until the very end the notion of drivers covering the spread didn't fizzle out. These posters are what gives AMD a bad rep in some forums. Stroll through the Polaris/Vega threads and you'll see them.

The problem for AMD is they attempted to raise the pricing on products simply because they got to the finish line first with their product. They didn't take into account the performance of their card very well and their brand in the marketplace.

If we look at Anandtech's review, the 7970 was mid teens faster than a gtx 580. Not only that, it was also 10% more expensive. The problem with this is this didn't move price to performance very far at all which was across all of AMD's lineup. The 7950 and 7870 were even worse in some ways. AMD was charging 350 dollars for a tiny die sized pitcairns which is smaller than todays polaris 10. AMD was charging high end pricing for what were midrange and mainstream chips. The 7970 pricing parallels gtx 1080 launching in many ways. However Nvidia did this when their competition was 16 months from launch, not 3 months.

When you want to bring forward pricing at price points people are not used to paying, you need a significantly stronger product and more performance vs last gen. Because of the midrange sized die of Tahiti(352mm2), the performance jump was simply not enough to justify AMD attempt to shift pricing where it became the premium brand. As we know from Pascals launch, launch a midrange size die vs last gen's large die flagships aren't going to yield the most impressive improvements.

When Nvidia did a power move and tried to become the premium brand by raising the price of videocards during the 8800 gtx generation to 600 and up, people accepted this pricing because the product justified it's pricing because of it's performance. It was more expensive than last generations cards but it also improved performance by 100% therefor increasing price to performance at the high end. Much of the reason for this is because not only only it have a new architecture, it also used a truly big die at 484mm2.

Because of AMD brand disadvantage and the small performance jump initially from Tahiti, people didn't accept the premium prices of the 7970. With competition nearing, people put their faith on Nvidia and waited for their product. This is unlike when Nvidia tried to pull the same move because although the gtx 8800 was $100 more vs the $500 gtx 7900 and ATI 1950 xtx, it was 100% faster than those cards and people had no problems buying it at that price. At the time, Nvidia was more or less a brand equal with ATI so the move was accepted more readily as well. AMD charging $50 more than last gen's gtx 580 while being only 15% faster was not going to end well from the get go. Considering their brand positioning in the marketplace, it just was not a good move. It caused people to wait on the fence, they lost support and made it possible for gtx 680/670 reviews to have such a positive outcome.

If AMD launched their true large monolithic card first(hawaii), people would have accepted AMD's attempt to raise pricing on their own videocards much easier. The card would have sold like hotcakes, people would have accepted AMD as the premium brand and they would have improved their image.

 

[railven]

The problem for AMD is they attempted to raise the pricing on products simply because they got to the finish line first with their product. They didn't take into account the performance of their card very well and their brand in the marketplace.

Well aware of this. However, this was AMD's attempt to get more margins. Historically AMD was basically giving consumers 85-90% of NV's top card for 20-30% less cost. This had to stop at some point if AMD were to actually make money.

Selling a good product for a lot less, HD 5870 was faster than GTX 285 and still cost $380!, isn't going to sustain them.

If AMD launched their true large monolithic card first(hawaii), people would have accepted AMD's attempt to raise pricing on their own videocards much easier. The card would have sold like hotcakes, people would have accepted AMD as the premium brand and they would have improved their image.

They didn't even accept it when Fury X was the same price as GTX 980 Ti and gave it a good run for it's money. Again, you can count the number of posters here that bought Fury X/Fury before the price fell out. Some of the most vocal Nano supporters don't even own one.

At this point I find myself rehashing 2012 all over again. AMD is a corporation. Consumers voted with their wallets. And market share numbers show just how much AMD lost moving forward. EDIT: What I mean, basically NV did the same thing, and their marketshare exploded!

EDIT #2: @ the bold - exactly! Essentially AMD would have had to sold a much faster card justify that price increase. NV releases a card barely faster than HD 7970 for $50 less, second coming of Jesus.

 

[tamz_msc]

Well aware of this. However, this was AMD's attempt to get more margins. Historically AMD was basically giving consumers 85-90% of NV's top card for 20-30% less cost. This had to stop at some point if AMD were to actually make money.

Selling a good product for a lot less, HD 5870 was faster than GTX 285 and still cost $380!, isn't going to sustain them.



They didn't even accept it when Fury X was the same price as GTX 980 Ti and gave it a good run for it's money. Again, you can count the number of posters here that bought Fury X/Fury before the price fell out. Some of the most vocal Nano supporters don't even own one.

At this point I find myself rehashing 2012 all over again. AMD is a corporation. Consumers voted with their wallets. And market share numbers show just how much AMD lost moving forward. EDIT: What I mean, basically NV did the same thing, and their marketshare exploded!

EDIT #2: @ the bold - exactly! Essentially AMD would have had to sold a much faster card justify that price increase. NV releases a card barely faster than HD 7970 for $50 less, second coming of Jesus.

AMD had some of their highest market share during the times of the HD 4870/5870. Weren't they making money then?

Fury X wasn't even remotely similar to the 7970. It never held the fastest GPU crown, which the 7970 did, even if it was for a short period of time. The fact that NVIDIA has always gone after the fastest GPU crown has an enormous effect all the way down and only strengthens their dominant position in the market by contributing to their mindshare. The only ways AMD could have countered them were to either keep offering 85-90 percent of the performance of the best NVIDIA chip at 20-30 percent lower prices or consistently deliver the fastest GPU in each generation, neither of which has happened since the 7970.

Being in the position that AMD has always been in, they need to significantly undercut their competitors in order to make people take notice. Do you think that Ryzen would have been successful if the 1800X was 800$ - would it have appealed to people who had already set their mind on buying a 1000$ Intel CPU?

 

[railven]

AMD had some of their highest market share during the times of the HD 4870/5870. Weren't they making money then?

Go take a look at their revenue numbers. And remember HD 5870/5850 was price gouged by vendors. There was no mining back then. Demand by gamers drove it price up to $50-100 over MSRP.

EDIT: Actually AdoreTV covered this. I believe in the GPU War is over video. AMD with a good product stack was still making pennies.

Fury X wasn't even remotely similar to the 7970. It never held the fastest GPU crown, which the 7970 did, even if it was for a short period of time. The fact that NVIDIA has always gone after the fastest GPU crown has an enormous effect all the way down and only strengthens their dominant position in the market by contributing to their mindshare. The only ways AMD could have countered them were to either keep offering 85-90 percent of the performance of the best NVIDIA chip at 20-30 percent lower prices or consistently deliver the fastest GPU in each generation, neither of which has happened since the 7970.

My comparison for Fury/Fury X was only that when AMD put out a product that could rival NV's top product, they got backlash for pricing it too close to their competitor. The FineWine arguments seem to only matter when the cost of entry is cheaper. Again, HD 7970 @ $550, laughed at. HD 7970 GHz for $500 with 6 games - lord and savior. I had an HD 7970 Ghz back in February 2012.

Being in the position that AMD has always been in, they need to significantly undercut their competitors in order to make people take notice. Do you think that Ryzen would have been successful if the 1800X was 800$ - would it have appealed to people who had already set their mind on buying a 1000$ Intel CPU?

I remember during my Pentium 4 days I was jelly of the $1,000 AMD CPUs. Again, these are corporations. The only reason AMD is in this situation is because for years they were marketing to budget buyers. Do you not remember the viral marketing tactic of "buy an X2/X3, unlock 3rd/4th core!" These were the people supporting AMD! When the price went up, good chunk abandoned AMD! You can toss me in that group. When I couldn't get a Fury X I just settled for the 980 Ti. Same price, what do I got to lose?

 

[Ghost of Cyrix]

They didn't even accept it when Fury X was the same price as GTX 980 Ti and gave it a good run for it's money. Again, you can count the number of posters here that bought Fury X/Fury before the price fell out. Some of the most vocal Nano supporters don't even own one.

The bolded never happened. This is what actually happened:

Custom AIB 980 Tis at stock beating the Fury X by ~23% or so and having 50% more VRAM to boot while costing only like 5% more (if even that). Stock 980 Tis or basic AIB designs at the same price as the Fury X... with like 25-30% OCing headroom (compared to the Fury X's 5-10% max). The only thing the Fury X gave the 980 Ti was a big laugh as it effortlessly reduced the Fury X to a pointless footnote in GPU history. The Fury X, in hindsight, does seem more competitive with Nvidia given Vega's special level of lackluster performance, but let's not kid ourselves here. The Fury X wasn't even close to a match for the 980 Ti (the real 980 Tis people largely used and considered in their decision-making). tamz_msc is completely right, the Fury X was nothing like the 7970. That's an insult to Tahiti's memory.

 

[slashy16]

I used to own a 8500 because it was a Canadian product and I felt like supporting ATI. I bought a 9700pro because it was absolutely the best graphics card you could own and I didn't mind putting up with ATI(AMD) shitty drivers and terrible support. Fast Forward 15 years and I have separated feelings from purchases and look only to performance numbers to base my decision. That's why I own a 1080ti and will most likely own a pair of 8700k machines once that chip launches. I bought my 1080ti when it launched and was concerned AMD would release a better performing card at a cheaper price within months of that purchase. Then AMD came out with VEGA and it appears my 1080ti will be faster than anything AMD can muster for at least another 2 years. I wish ATI could have been purchased by a company not intent on driving the brand into the ground.

 

[Ghost of Cyrix]

I used to own a 8500 because it was a Canadian product and I felt like supporting ATI. I bought a 9700pro because it was absolutely the best graphics card you could own and I didn't mind putting up with ATI(AMD) shitty drivers and terrible support. Fast Forward 15 years and I have separated feelings from purchases and look only to performance numbers to base my decision. That's why I own a 1080ti and will most likely own a pair of 8700k machines once that chip launches. I bought my 1080ti when it launched and was concerned AMD would release a better performing card at a cheaper price within months of that purchase. Then AMD came out with VEGA and it appears my 1080ti will be faster than anything AMD can muster for at least another 2 years. I wish ATI could have been purchased by a company not intent on driving the brand into the ground.

Agreed wholeheartedly. AMD's purchase of ATi was a huge mistake and not just for ATi's well-being either. ATi were once Nvidia's fierce and respectable competitor. Now they've simply been sucked dry by the figurative leech that is AMD's historically-troubled CPU division and history of failed management while the Radeon brand has been turned into a synonym for "cheap", underpowered, and ridiculously inefficient. All due to a lack of funding that instead went to pay for AMD's mistakes (ex. purchasing ATi for the price they did + bulldozer).

If Zen ultimately turns out to be as successful as it has the potential to, I do hope much of the profit will be reinvested into RTG. Not that it would be easy to catch up to Nvidia's momentum now anyway. :/

 

[tajoh111]

Go take a look at their revenue numbers. And remember HD 5870/5850 was price gouged by vendors. There was no mining back then. Demand by gamers drove it price up to $50-100 over MSRP.

EDIT: Actually AdoreTV covered this. I believe in the GPU War is over video. AMD with a good product stack was still making pennies.



My comparison for Fury/Fury X was only that when AMD put out a product that could rival NV's top product, they got backlash for pricing it too close to their competitor. The FineWine arguments seem to only matter when the cost of entry is cheaper. Again, HD 7970 @ $550, laughed at. HD 7970 GHz for $500 with 6 games - lord and savior. I had an HD 7970 Ghz back in February 2012.



I remember during my Pentium 4 days I was jelly of the $1,000 AMD CPUs. Again, these are corporations. The only reason AMD is in this situation is because for years they were marketing to budget buyers. Do you not remember the viral marketing tactic of "buy an X2/X3, unlock 3rd/4th core!" These were the people supporting AMD! When the price went up, good chunk abandoned AMD! You can toss me in that group. When I couldn't get a Fury X I just settled for the 980 Ti. Same price, what do I got to lose?

Adore like to exaggerate things when they suit his narrative. Nvidia is the bad guy.

It's okay for AMD to charge $550 for a 7970(351mm2 die) and $350(212mm2 die), but some how eludes that Nvidia should be charging $499 for 500-600mm2 dies and $300 for 314mm2.

http://quarterlyearnings.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1413673&highlight=

Their revenue numbers were not bad back then at all. They were still making 400+ million quarterly in revenue from the graphic division and making 50 million dollars or so in net profit. This is actually pretty good from a pure gaming company. What was more impressive was this was also almost all through direct to consumer sales, Oems did not use AMD very much because of driver support and branding and AMD had no acceptance in the mobile market(laptops) because their drivers were so bad. Look at Anands review for their laptops performance and they underperformed vs Nvidia for the last decade.

These numbers are close to what AMD graphic and consumer products did quarterly together until the release of ryzen.

This net profit is money left over after all expenses had been paid which includes things like R and D, cost of production and other things.

Take Nvidia's recent quarters and even with their gaming divisions doing 1.1 to 1.3 billion in revenue, with 800 -900 million dollars cost of good sold, 400 million dollars in R and D expense and 200 million on remaining staff, it not enough money to be a profitable company.

Meaning if Nvidia only had a gaming revenue(AMD's professional line just doesn't have any marketshare), even with their fantastic numbers, they might be making 50-100million after all expenses are covered and cost of production scaled down slightly along with a lower R and D expense. Nvidia has a much more expensive ship to run.

AMD has not been super profitable like Nvidia because they have not cultivated their professional market. Why Nvidia was able to sell such big dies for cheap in the past while still making money was their professional cards which shared the same dies as their flagship dies was generated 200+ million dollars in revenue without any additional R and D output. Because of their massive margins on professional products, the cost of production vs revenue creation is minimal. Also, because most of the expenses are covered by gaming revenue, this additional revenue on top of this translated into mostly profit. Without this segment, Nvidia would have been losing money selling such big dies for so little. Right now, nvidia is wildly profitable because they have 700-800 million in revenue coming from professional segments on top of their gaming revenue.

For what is primarily a gaming division and without a professional market, AMD's numbers were great. AMD because of their lower R and D expense and efficient expenditure, their graphic division was profitable even with a lower price on their products which enabled them to get a sale. High price does not mean more profit if this is offset by volume.

As far as Vega vs gtx 980 ti, Vega was objectively worse in terms of performance, efficiency, overclocking than a gtx 980 ti, particularly when you add AIB gtx 980 tis, while the cost was similar.

When you have worse, performance vs the competition, at similar cost while being the worse brand, of course your going to be outsold. Particularly with a scarlett letter of 4gb of memory attached to it. AMD has to be better than Nvidia to match their sales. That is the luxury of having the premium brand on the marketplace. If a Hyundai genesis was the same price as a lexus while having the same feature stack, which card you expect to sell better. The underdog has to try harder to get the same sale.

BTW, AMD only started bundling games for never settle in October of 2012.

https://www.engadget.com/2012/10/22/amd-never-settle-bundle-gives-radeon-hd-7000-buyers-free-games/

Similarly, the 7970 ghz edition didn't come out till june 2012. So I doubt you purchased a 7970 ghz edition in February of 2012 for 500 dollars.

 

[railven]

Similarly, the 7970 ghz edition didn't come out till june 2012. So I doubt you purchased a 7970 ghz edition in February of 2012 for 500 dollars.

HD 7970 Ghz was basically OC'd HD 7970. Mine hit max Overdrive clocks on stock voltages. My temps/power numbers were alot better than the actual HD 7970 Ghz.

 

[tamz_msc]

Go take a look at their revenue numbers. And remember HD 5870/5850 was price gouged by vendors. There was no mining back then. Demand by gamers drove it price up to $50-100 over MSRP.

Actually I have, but if you had seen them too, you wouldn't have made it seem like their financials were hurting.
http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=quarterlyearnings
Q4 2009 Graphics, Revenue: 427 million, Operating income: 53 million
Q4 2008 Graphics, Revenue: 270 million, Operating loss: 10 million

Look at their gross margin: 41%, 8% higher than what it's today. So indeed AMD graphics was doing very well, and overall AMD wasn't doing too bad either.

I remember during my Pentium 4 days I was jelly of the $1,000 AMD CPUs. Again, these are corporations. The only reason AMD is in this situation is because for years they were marketing to budget buyers. Do you not remember the viral marketing tactic of "buy an X2/X3, unlock 3rd/4th core!" These were the people supporting AMD! When the price went up, good chunk abandoned AMD! You can toss me in that group. When I couldn't get a Fury X I just settled for the 980 Ti. Same price, what do I got to lose?

I meant to say AMD Graphics, their CPU business didn't suffer the same image problem as their GPU division, at least not until Bulldozer. Yeah they were caught off guard by Conroe, then screwed up with their Phenom, but quickly came back and put out a decent fight against die-shrunk Penryn with Phenom II. Intel doubled down with Nehalem, but AMD were still offering a 6C CPU for 300$. During this time, AMD graphics was doing fairly well for themselves, being the perpetual underdogs that they've been in the shadow of NVIDIA.

 

[Omar F1]

Geforce 5800 Ultra vs ATI Radeon HD 2800, which was the 'biggest loser' of the two...
Beside the huge performance gap between Geforce 8600GT and 8800GTS, I still remember the 'out of stock' status of 8800GT until I gave up and continued using the 8600.

 

[railven]

Actually I have, but if you had seen them too, you wouldn't have made it seem like their financials were hurting.
http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=quarterlyearnings
Q4 2009 Graphics, Revenue: 427 million, Operating income: 53 million
Q4 2008 Graphics, Revenue: 270 million, Operating loss: 10 million

Now imagine if AMD actually price their cards to a better position. They had the performance, but they'd rather sell it cheaply. My main argument is that it didn't work in their favor. Again, the HD 5000 series followed the same overall strategy. It got gouged by vendors (money AMD could have claimed).

If these numbers are considered healthy when your two rivals are making exponent greater - you know your business isn't trying to win, it's just trying to survive.

I meant to say AMD Graphics, their CPU business didn't suffer the same image problem as their GPU division, at least not until Bulldozer. Yeah they were caught off guard by Conroe, then screwed up with their Phenom, but quickly came back and put out a decent fight against die-shrunk Penryn with Phenom II. Intel doubled down with Nehalem, but AMD were still offering a 6C CPU for 300$. During this time, AMD graphics was doing fairly well for themselves, being the perpetual underdogs that they've been in the shadow of NVIDIA.

I'd argue AMD's GPU division saw a huge hit just from simply changing to AMD. You had a brand name that was well respected (ATI) saddled with the baggage of a brand known to cater to budget buyers (by this point). So the budget branding stigma spread to ATI/GPUs. Roll out HD 7970 when you're trying to make money on your products and it burns you.

Overall, what I'm arguing and it seems people in this thread are either against it or don't understand my argument - AMD has had damn good products they've undervalued when compared to their competitor. This created a perception of their product that they struggled to shake. Unfortunately for them, beside their return to CPU performance, in the GPU side it's even worse then it was before. Now they still carry the budget stigma but are forced to compete with products of higher perceived value. Had they capitalized on their advantages with previous products, perhaps this current situation of a shoe string budget may have been adverted (granted we got the anchor of AMD CPU still in the works, so ultimately who knows.)

 

[amenx]

LOL.. seems like Adored has gone off his rocker. The vega fail seems to have pushed him into aggressively fishing for any Nvidia fails he can come up with .

Nvidia - Getting Away With (GPU) Murder

 

[railven]

LOL.. seems like Adored has gone off his rocker. The vega fail seems to have pushed him into aggressively fishing for any Nvidia fails he can come up with .

Nvidia - Getting Away With (GPU) Murder

Yeah, really seems like the Vega launched broke him. Kind of hard to take him at face value when he spins the numbers. He took a slice of market share but doesn't factor in over all sales for the Vista numbers.

Welps, one less vlogger too watch. He had great Vega/Ryzen coverage, but like all people - got to go for the clicks.

 

[Ranulf]

LOL.. seems like Adored has gone off his rocker. The vega fail seems to have pushed him into aggressively fishing for any Nvidia fails he can come up with .

Nvidia - Getting Away With (GPU) Murder

Yawn, vega fail indeed. Like I need Adored to tell me what I've already known for years. Nvidia has skated by on a lot of things over the last decade or so. The AMD driver thing has grinded my gears since 2010 when I went to using them for gaming after years of nvidia. I've only had actual annoying problems in the past year with some amd drivers and win7.

 

[DooKey]

LOL.. seems like Adored has gone off his rocker. The vega fail seems to have pushed him into aggressively fishing for any Nvidia fails he can come up with .

Nvidia - Getting Away With (GPU) Murder

It's all about clicks, but remember many of the faithful here hang on his every word. Dude is a hack.