Well AMD needs to get a handle on their drivers. What enhancements work on gcn 1.1 cause issue for 1.0 cards. Most of the newest 14.x drivers break stuff in 6 and 7xxx cards or cause issues in other games. It's becoming quite annoying actually.
He specifically said kepler. I don't care that much for a few watts, however I just had to mention the data doesn't support his statements. Maxwell will be competing with GCN 2.0 too.
To even happen, AMD must show something working as well as Optimus.If AMD gains market share in the mobile dGPU space, I would say, they could even afford to lose the single desktop GPU performance crown by 20% if their top card is $450-499 like R9 290X right now but NV can continue selling GM210 for $650-700. That would be fine for many PC gamers too. But, since Maxwell has shown such outstanding performance/watt improvement over Kepler on 28nm, I feel like next generation AMD will get owned in the mobile dGPU space.
I sure hope so, Nvidia have done everything they can to avoid releasing a full product refresh, the 700 series is straddled between 2 generations of technology, I'm not buying into another video card until they stop this messing about and release a new line with new tech that's not some re-spin of old stuff, the increases since the GTX5xx range have been lots of small and inconsequential upgrades one after another and it's driving up the price of innovation, to actually buy into a decent enough upgrade past something like a 580 you're forced into this brand new category of $1000 GPUs which is rubbish.
I'm not dropping my GTX580's until they stop messing about, buying a 2nd 580 for SLI was by far and away the best upgrade path for me and I don't regret it at all.
Gamers have shown over the past few years (has it been a few since the Titan came and completely destroyed pricing? I don't even remember anymore) that for the best gaming GPU, they'll spend whatever it costs to get it. Gaming GPU's aren't just a piece of technology it's a bragging right and a status symbol online. As well as the ability to not only play on "maxed out settings" but to tell everyone that you do so. And for that right, Nvidia has realized that gamers won't just pay 400-600 dollars. They'll pay beyond $1000 easily for it.
It's not going away anytime soon. The second people bought into Titan, GPU pricing has and will be significantly changed forever.
Hopefully Crossfire/SLI performance continues to improve across games though because SLI/Crossfire usually approaches the $1k card for $300-500 from AMD/Nvidia. Sucks since neither are consistent across titles but that's what the GPU world has come to.