GTX 960 is expected to launch next month.

[RussianSensation]

Magic_Carpet,

If I was coming from a nearly 3 year old 670, I'd want/expect at least 75%+ performance increase at $250 since GPUs used to get 2X faster every 18 months, then 2X faster every 24 months and this leveled off at 31-35% faster per year since HD5870 in September 2009 to November 2013's 290X/780Ti:
http://www.computerbase.de/2013-12/grafikkarten-2013-vergleich/10/

You can see 290X is 295% or nearly 3X faster than HD5870. Time span between them is about 4 years and 2 months. That gives us about a 31% annualized GPU performance gain. 670 turns 3 years within months, meaning a good estimate is 2.24X faster than it for $399 by March-April 2015. However, I bumped it down to 75% for a $249-300 level card to make it more reasonable.

The only card that comes close to that 75% faster metric is a 980!
http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/reviews/MSI/GTX_970_Gaming/27.html

This just goes to show just how misaligned the next generation is vs. Historical price/performance technology curve. I think a major correction is due in 2015 and this will happen when 300 series comes out. I don't think a 960/960Ti is even in-line as an upgrade as 670/680's successors are 970/980, not 960/960Ti. I personally don't view 30% or even 40% a great upgrade from a 3 year old card, 50% is Good but not great like 75%-2.25X historical. I recognize GPU speed increases slowed down due to 28nm but NV's pricing is going to be artificially high due to competing against old architecture which can't compete on price/perf of 'newness factor'.

Just my 2 cents on the current market.

 

[It's Not Lupus]

On the nvidia slides, why did they compare it to the older 660 instead of the 760??

 

[tviceman]

On the nvidia slides, why did they compare it to the older 660 instead of the 760??

Because

A) it looks better
and
B) the chip is GM206, which compares directly to GK106 in the product stack family hierarchy.

 

[n0x1ous]

On the nvidia slides, why did they compare it to the older 660 instead of the 760??

660 has the previous same tier chip GK106 to the 960's new GM206

760 was a heavily cut down GK104. Same reason the 980 was compared to 680 instead of the larger chip 780

It used to be clear and straightforward but now with being stuck on 28nm forever we are getting one architecture for 2 series GTX 6xx and GTX 7xx are Kepler.

Likely maxwell is GTX 9xx and GTX 10xx (or whatever they go with)

 

[tviceman]

http://www.techpowerup.com/208934/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960-specs-confirmed.html

These slides shows it is coming in exactly where I predicted it would: between a 770 and 780 in performance, but closer to the 770. $199 wouldn't be a bad price, but 2gb is seriously toting the obsolete line.

 

[AtenRa]

Magic_Carpet,

If I was coming from a nearly 3 year old 670, I'd want/expect at least 75%+ performance increase at $250 since GPUs used to get 2X faster every 18 months, then 2X faster every 24 months and this leveled off at 31-35% faster per year since HD5870 in September 2009 to November 2013's 290X/780Ti:
http://www.computerbase.de/2013-12/grafikkarten-2013-vergleich/10/

You can see 290X is 295% or nearly 3X faster than HD5870. Time span between them is about 4 years and 2 months. That gives us about a 31% annualized GPU performance gain. 670 turns 3 years within months, meaning a good estimate is 2.24X faster than it for $399 by March-April 2015. However, I bumped it down to 75% for a $249-300 level card to make it more reasonable.

The only card that comes close to that 75% faster metric is a 980!
http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/reviews/MSI/GTX_970_Gaming/27.html

This just goes to show just how misaligned the next generation is vs. Historical price/performance technology curve. I think a major correction is due in 2015 and this will happen when 300 series comes out. I don't think a 960/960Ti is even in-line as an upgrade as 670/680's successors are 970/980, not 960/960Ti. I personally don't view 30% or even 40% a great upgrade from a 3 year old card, 50% is Good but not great like 75%-2.25X historical. I recognize GPU speed increases slowed down due to 28nm but NV's pricing is going to be artificially high due to competing against old architecture which can't compete on price/perf of 'newness factor'.

Just my 2 cents on the current market.

Current performance/price should have been two years ago. We should had 960 performance at lower than $200 at the end of 2013. Or we should had 980 performance at ~$300 now.
28nm is the worst period of consumer GPUs for perf/price and i dont see this getting any better in the future.

 

[tential]

I will say $199 and $249 for the 960Ti.

But you're thinking of reasonable pricing. Not what Nvidia could actually get.
I'm betting a staggered release. GTX 960 at $200-$250 (closer to $250 like around $230), GTX 970 at $330, and GTX 980 at whatever price it still is at.

Then, as the GTX 980 TI and GTX 960 Ti to come out when AMD releases something or is close to releasing something (Before because Nvidia knows how important being first to market is), and pushes the GTX 960 down below $200.

 

[psolord]

This seems likely if we look back two gens in history.
GTX560 and GTX 560Ti were both GF104 and GTX 560Ti 448 was the lowest form of GF110.
GTX660 was a full GK106 and 660Ti was the lowest GK104 (until 760 was released).

So, I think we will see something akin to this lineup with GM2xx.

But trends are made to be broken.

reasonable.

thanks!

 

[RussianSensation]

http://www.techpowerup.com/208934/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960-specs-confirmed.html

These slides shows it is coming in exactly where I predicted it would: between a 770 and 780 in performance, but closer to the 770. $199 wouldn't be a bad price, but 2gb is seriously toting the obsolete line.

I agree. Although not all reviews show MSAA/Ultra textures for DAI/Shadow of Mordor/COD AW/Titanfall/Dead Rising 3, 2GB will be a big setback for Skyrim and GTA IV/V modded. Also, can't imagine games continuing to use 2GB at 1080P with AA for the next 2 years. Feels like 3GB is going to be bare minimum really soon. We'll have to see how next gen games like The Division and TW3 hold up. Eventually when it comes time to resell that card to the 2nd owner, I almost feel sorry for anyone buying a used 960 2GB in 2017. Unfortunately there aren't many good choices on the market right now with 285 2GB or 280X that uses way more power.

I still think I'd do whatever ramen noodles it takes to step up to an after-market 290 4GB at $240-260.

Just want people to be aware of the current pricing on Newegg the weekend before 960's launch, hence why I can't be 1 bit excited for a 960 2GB 128-bit at $200.

HIS IceQ R9 290 for $240
Gigabyte Windforce R9 290 for $260

The AMEX $25 off $200 Twitter coupon still works until end of February. I dunno, for anyone with a budget of about $200 not minding buying on Newegg in the US, I'd seriously spend the extra for the R9 290 and get 94% of 970's performance at 1080P, more or less identical performance at 1440P and 4GB of VRAM.

I also don't like that NV is now trying to advertise *effective memory speed* as 33% more efficient than Kepler and bumping 7Gbps to 9.3Gbps. That's some shoddy marketing. NV never did something this misleading ever before. It's not like Maxwell is the first new NV architecture to have more efficient memory bandwidth. Let's get real. Don't like this type of marketing at all.

 

[tential]

Can I stack that AMEX offer RS?
and I think you're worrying a lot about AA. Maybe Nvidia did their marketing research already and realizes that AA isn't something people in that price bracket care about as much.

I know me, AA is one of the first features I turn down/off if my game can't handle it.

 

[Silverforce11]

It's not just about MSAA (SMAA is doing a bang good job). Games at 1080p where this performance class is designed for is starting to have high-res texture options which 770 performance can handle, if it had the vram. The image quality loss from downgrading on texture quality is major.

 

[tential]

It's not just about MSAA (SMAA is doing a bang good job). Games at 1080p where this performance class is designed for is starting to have high-res texture options which 770 performance can handle, if it had the vram. The image quality loss from downgrading on texture quality is major.

Just saying maybe Nvidia's customer base at $200 is willing to turn down AA/Textures from Ultra to just High... or even (Gasp) medium. Because they ain't gonna buy a R9 290 because that would actually do the job efficiently...

 

[SolMiester]

Magic_Carpet,

If I was coming from a nearly 3 year old 670, I'd want/expect at least 75%+ performance increase at $250 since GPUs used to get 2X faster every 18 months, then 2X faster every 24 months and this leveled off at 31-35% faster per year since HD5870 in September 2009 to November 2013's 290X/780Ti:
http://www.computerbase.de/2013-12/grafikkarten-2013-vergleich/10/

You can see 290X is 295% or nearly 3X faster than HD5870. Time span between them is about 4 years and 2 months. That gives us about a 31% annualized GPU performance gain. 670 turns 3 years within months, meaning a good estimate is 2.24X faster than it for $399 by March-April 2015. However, I bumped it down to 75% for a $249-300 level card to make it more reasonable.

The only card that comes close to that 75% faster metric is a 980!
http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/reviews/MSI/GTX_970_Gaming/27.html

This just goes to show just how misaligned the next generation is vs. Historical price/performance technology curve. I think a major correction is due in 2015 and this will happen when 300 series comes out. I don't think a 960/960Ti is even in-line as an upgrade as 670/680's successors are 970/980, not 960/960Ti. I personally don't view 30% or even 40% a great upgrade from a 3 year old card, 50% is Good but not great like 75%-2.25X historical. I recognize GPU speed increases slowed down due to 28nm but NV's pricing is going to be artificially high due to competing against old architecture which can't compete on price/perf of 'newness factor'.

Just my 2 cents on the current market.

Huh?, why a 4 yr period diff for AMD and 3 yr for NV?, the 470/480 was released Mar 2010, how about the performance difference there? Actually, with the 6970 released same period as 480, you should probably use that instead of the 5870.

 

[ocre]

But you're thinking of reasonable pricing. Not what Nvidia could actually get.
I'm betting a staggered release. GTX 960 at $200-$250 (closer to $250 like around $230), GTX 970 at $330, and GTX 980 at whatever price it still is at.

Then, as the GTX 980 TI and GTX 960 Ti to come out when AMD releases something or is close to releasing something (Before because Nvidia knows how important being first to market is), and pushes the GTX 960 down below $200.

At the very least lets try to be real now.

What do u think amd wouldve done if nvidia released the 980 at 300$ and the 970 at 200$

All i see around here is nvidia this and that without any regard to reality. Do you think nvidia wants to undercut amd so much as to run them out of business? The gm204 launched and alroffered better performance for the dollar than anything on the market. Why wasnt you or anyone complaining about AMD prices then? You do realize that there is a market these cards are sold in and nvidia prices directly effect AMD and how they compete. Surely you dont want to see AMD go out of business. Nvidia pricing as you might not know it, allows amd to make the little tiny bit of money they have been. And if u think that the gm204 is so bad priced now, wait till u see AMDs Q4 gpu earnings and tell me you want to see better nvidia pricing. Cause being for real, amd cannot handle nvidia having much better pricing.

If u have an issue with the price of nvidia cards, buy an AMD one. See, that is how it works. It is by design. Amd wouldnt mind it one bit.

People really need to look at the complete picture. Its not that hard. It makes a tech forum worth more than some random, dime a dozen site. We should have a deeper understanding on how things really work.

 

[tential]

At the very least lets try to be real now.

What do u think amd wouldve done if nvidia released the 980 at 300$ and the 970 at 200$

All i see around here is nvidia this and that without any regard to reality. Do you think nvidia wants to undercut amd so much as to run them out of business? The gm204 launched and alroffered better performance for the dollar than anything on the market. Why wasnt you or anyone complaining about AMD prices then? You do realize that there is a market these cards are sold in and nvidia prices directly effect AMD and how they compete. Surely you dont want to see AMD go out of business. Nvidia pricing as you might not know it, allows amd to make the little tiny bit of money they have been. And if u think that the gm204 is so bad priced now, wait till u see AMDs Q4 gpu earnings and tell me you want to see better nvidia pricing. Cause being for real, amd cannot handle nvidia having much better pricing.

If u have an issue with the price of nvidia cards, buy an AMD one. See, that is how it works. It is by design. Amd wouldnt mind it one bit.

People really need to look at the complete picture. Its not that hard. It makes a tech forum worth more than some random, dime a dozen site. We should have a deeper understanding on how things really work.

What was the point of this post?
Seriously, I don't understand what you're addressing of what I said.
I haven't implied anything that you've brought up lol...

 

[Vesku]

Disappointing Nvidia went 128 bit for GM206 and not 192 bit. 3GB of VRAM is just right for a ~$200 card with the current game trends. That "effective memory speed" marketing point is basically an acknowledgement it's a weakness they think can be papered over with the right spin.

 

[SlickR12345]

If this card is anything more than $150 it will officially be one of the worst graphic cards in the history of graphic cards.

I mean are you freaking kidding me? Barely 2GB of memory at 128bit memory bus and barely 1000 shaders.

The GTX 760 has 1152, so this garbage of a card will actually have less shader cores than the gTX 760. This is outrageous.

Even at $150 I would find it really hard to consider, considering there are 270x that cost as little as $170.

I sure hope I'm wrong and this doesn't get released at $200 or $250, but knowing Nvidia it won't surprise me one bit if they price it at $250.

 

[Jon-T]

...... snip....

The GTX 760 has 1152, so this garbage of a card will actually have less shader cores than the gTX 760. This is outrageous.

.... snip....

outrageous? Nerd rage much?

the GTX780 has 2304 shaders. YEA Shaders !

The GTX970 1664
The GTX980 2048

Is it outrageous that the 980 has less shaders than the 780?

Perhaps counting shaders isn't a good metric? Sort of like counting rivits in a WWII fighter plans to decide which was best?

 

[RussianSensation]

Can I stack that AMEX offer RS?
and I think you're worrying a lot about AA. Maybe Nvidia did their marketing research already and realizes that AA isn't something people in that price bracket care about as much.

I know me, AA is one of the first features I turn down/off if my game can't handle it.

Yes, because you can either buy a Newegg gift card for $200+, and if after the coupon the value is less than $200, you should just have some money left over on the gift card. You just have to make sure the after coupon price at checkout is at least $200. For example if after $20 off coupon the card is $201, you checkout with AMEX, you will get a statement credit of $25 on the AMEX. If a 960 is $199, you need a filler item like a USB car charger for $3-5, or a USB cable for $1.99.

Huh?, why a 4 yr period diff for AMD and 3 yr for NV?, the 470/480 was released Mar 2010, how about the performance difference there? Actually, with the 6970 released same period as 480, you should probably use that instead of the 5870.

I am not comparing AMD vs. NV here to try to extrapolate who gained more per year. That's not the point of my post. I chose 4 years and 2 months because the longer time captures more data and skews outliers a bit more. If I used 6970, I would cut more than a year out of the data which would make the gain just as big per year. The point I am making would still stand about average annualized gains per year from either NV or AMD. You also missed the part how I even downgraded the expected 2-2.25X over 3 years to just 75% more (!) and only 980 meets that over the 670. That just shows you how poor price/performance of the 980 is given the timeframe where should trounce the 670 by more than 75% if priced at $550.

You can go back and compare 480 to 780Ti yourself and you'll get a very similar answer if using the timeframe of 3 years and 8 months. The point was an average annualized gain per year and relating it back to today. Based on that 970/980 are way off the mark, and so are 290/290X for a 670 user. That's why I said right now the market is misaligned. It will correct itself as it has done for 15 years consistently. Another reason I haven't upgraded from my 7970s since I did these calculations. Current cards either have to cost way less or be much faster or they are below the Price/performance tech curve trend.

---

Don't forget that Dying Light is coming out this month with big GPU recommended specs. I don't see a 960 coming anywhere near a 290X (~after-market 290 non-X) in performance for brand agnostic next gen games. With 4GB of VRAM, one doesn't have to worry about texture mods at 1080p and ultra textures. Looking at TPU thread, most of their forum keeps defending the card with some people caring more about H.265/VP9 support or it using half the power usage over 7870XT LE for just 10% more performance as instant buy factors. Seems like price/performance and aggregate performance are becoming less and less important at least based on some of those comments. I guess
I'd rather be a part of the "dying" breed as I will choose performance, more VRAM and price/performance over Perf/watt and some fluffy DX12/H.265 features.

 

[Termie]

Latest 3DMark leaks at Techpowerup show this performing identically to a GTX 770. That makes perfect sense - Nvidia typically matches its previous one-tier-higher card with each new release. E.g. 770=680, 760=670. The 970 was an exception, beating the 780, but that was due to AMD pressure (290/290X).

It all comes down to price. At $200, it's a good value for 1080p gaming. Below that it's a steal, badly beating both the cheaper 270X and more expensive 285. Above $200 and the VRAM just becomes too much of a liability. A slightly slower card with more VRAM would have more life in it, i.e. the 280X. And before anyone mentions the 280, I'll just make note that is a very good DISCONTINUED card, and isn't direct competition.

I see the 960 coming in at $200 and AMD dropping the 280X to $200 before rebates to sink this release. Nvidia gambled making it so much slower than the massively-popular 970. It can't ALWAYS win. Note that the 760, which the 960 replaces, never truly got below $200, except during the fire-sale to clear it from inventory. It was a $250 card for over a year, so $200 would already represent a big price cut.

 

[AtenRa]

the 280, I'll just make note that is a very good DISCONTINUED card, and isn't direct competition.

I dodnt know 280 was discontinued .

 

[Termie]

I dodnt know 280 was discontinued .

This happened months ago:

"Seeing this [R9 280] as a model that is being discontinued, we have to take into consideration that the R9 285 and GTX 760 video cards only have 2GB of memory."
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014...issipation_3gb_video_card_review#.VLk7xNLF9rs

"The Radeon R9 285, by virtue of its naming, is designed to replace the Radeon R9 280 from AMD's product stack (which has been declared end-of-life)."
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/R9_285_Dual-X_OC/

 

[RussianSensation]

You can still buy 280/280X in the market. Therefore, for the time being they count, and not just the 285. Also, for the life of me I can't figure out how at $200 the 960 is good value Termie when for $40 there is the excellent HIS ICEQ 290. All the time R9 290 goes down to $240-260. People paid $150 (!) more for just double the VRAM on a 770/780, but spending $40-60 for a card 1 class above that happens to have double the VRAM and supports Mantle isn't worth it?

Also, not sure how an R9 270X is a competitor as those generally sell for $130-170, well below the $200 mark. I see you point that spend a bit more and get a 960, but then I guess I compate 960 against the value leader after-market 290 in the same way and also envision what a $199 300 series card will be like and I don't think the 960 looks so hot. The reviews should be out shortly, and as I expect after-market 960 will be going against 10% slower throttled reference 290 in benches, and will still lose.

It somewhat amazes me how R9 290 had great sales for $200-250 for 3 months since 970/980 but 3 months later a $200 960 is exciting? I guess for those who don't follow the GPU market closely.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I can't see why anyone in the US buys 760, 770, 280, 285, or 280x right now with how cheap the 290 is.

 

[RussianSensation]

At the very least lets try to be real now.

What do u think amd wouldve done if nvidia released the 980 at 300$ and the 970 at 200$

All i see around here is nvidia this and that without any regard to reality. Do you think nvidia wants to undercut amd so much as to run them out of business? The gm204 launched and alroffered better performance for the dollar than anything on the market. Why wasnt you or anyone complaining about AMD prices then? .

1. Because AMD's entire R9 200 lineup had better price/performance from the day they launched all the way until 970/980. I vividly remember R9 290 going for $400-450 when 780 3/6GB was $500-550. 760/770 4GB were not really price/performance competitive with a 280/280X either.

2. 970/980 had amazing value for about 1 month but after AMD lowered prices, we were back to status quo. Based on the overall picture, an after-market 290 held on to price/performance against the 780/970 for longer than 970 did over the 290.

3. It's not really true that no one complained about 290/290X pricing when 970/980 launched because some here voiced their opinion that AMD waited too long to lower prices. It was acknowledged by at least myself and Silverforce that 290 needs to be $249-259 and 290X at $279-299. There are other posters who commented that 290 series needed to be below $300 with a good game bundle too.

Imo, what's killing AMD profits and margins isn't their lower pricing in itself. AMD had unbeatable price/performance for every single generation for the longest periods starting with HD4850/4870 but their desktop dGPU market share didn't even approach 50%, not even when for 5 years mining made every high end AMD card free + made hundreds/thousands of dollars along the way. Frankly, what's killing AMD on the desktop are NV loyal users who only buy NV, poor availability of 200 cards for 6 months due to mining and upgrade cycles of "AMD users" who don't wait for AMD's next cards per say. For example, a 970/980 user might jump to a GM200, but even if 390/390X is just as good or better in price/performance, they will skip it entirely.

What's killing AMD on the mobile dGPU is basically not showing up at all, essentially just giving NV uncontested/automatic design wins. That is horrible execution / client relations with OEMs and not understanding what they want.

What's really moving AMD's market share by +/-20% swings are brand agnostic users switching to NV. The core NV user is too sticky and that's why unless NV just bombs like FX series, you won't see NV going below 50% any time soon.