GTX 960 is expected to launch next month.

[sontin]

Is this a joke? $270?

http://www.shopblt.com/item/gigabyte-gv-n960wf2oc-2gd-gtx-960-gddr5-2gb/gigmbd_gvn960wf2oc2gd.html

Newegg has a dozen of GTX 960 listings:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=-1&isNodeId=1

MSRP is $199. The Asus Strix with nearly 200MHz more CPU clock costs only $10 more.

 

[RussianSensation]

I would rather have Nvidia price themselves a little on the expensive side for AMD's sake. What people on this forum don't seem to understand (and I'm looking at those that harp on price/perf over a period of years) is the minute that Nvidia prices their products competitively with AMD, AMD loses money.

This is a very similar point that ocre is trying to make on AT forums, but it has a major flaw in reasoning that goes against the rationality of gamers who tend to buy NV most of the time. That is -- NV owners will pay extra to have an NV card, even if it has less performance, or similar performance. What it means is that if 960 is $199 or $249, it would still outsell the R9 280X/290 series, because most of the NV's client base will simply pay more for similar performance or will even accept LESS performance to not buy a AMD card. His and your points would have a lot more weight if NV gamers would switch sides easily due to superior price/performance of AMD, but as HD4000-7000 series showed, this is not true in the slightest. Therefore, AMD's superior price/performance is not a major draw factor for most customers to switch from NV to AMD. Maybe 10-20% of the NV customers would, but the core will remain with NV. They would simply ignore the price/performance of R9 290 series in favour of "NV advantages" like PhysX, CUDA, perf/watt, TXAA, GeForce Experience, "better NV drivers", etc.

How many times have you seen an AMD card owner say: "No NV cards please, will not consider NV, etc."? OTOH, you see this all the time from some NV owners that used NV for 5/10/15 years. Essentially if 390X came out at $549, they would still buy a $549 980, or wait for GM200 should it come out later. You and other people on our forum know this is true. Don't you remember how many people still bought a GTX285/580 when HD5870/7970 came out or simply waited for the NV alternative? Remember how 7970 smashed the 580 and 7970 OC demolished a 580 OC and so many NV owners ripped it apart, but now the same owners gladly paid $550 for a 10% faster 980 over a year old 780Ti. Talk about being hypocrites!

NV knows this because well they created their customer. I was surprised that it took NV that long to start raising prices but as you can see once they started with Kepler GK204, they keep raising prices even more. (Titan $1K, GTX780/780Ti at $650-700 vs. $500 for 480/580, 680 at $499 vs. 980 for $549 -- yet another bump!). I've said it for years that most of NV customers are so sticky and loyal to the brand, NV could raise prices more and more and just keep raking in profits. So why then did NV lower 970 to such a ridiculously attractive $330-350 price? It's to try and convert AMD users to enter the NV eco-system and lock them there during a moment of AMD's architectural / product weakness. NV for sure knew that even if 970 was sold for $400-429, their loyal customers base would buy it regardless over a $350 290X, but they really wanted to convert the AMD gamers. 970's low price wasn't' there to bankrupt AMD, it was there to get an AMD owner to switch and then stick to NV for 5/10/15 years! Brilliant strategy. That's why it's so costly for AMD to be late because their price/performance customers don't wait for AMD, unlike NV's loyal customers. Again, people who work at NV are smarter than me, they know this. Once NV thinks it locked you into their eco-system and you won't leave, they have 0 fear to raise prices or sell mid-range products at high-end prices. Add a sprinkle of marketing and they'll even make you believe a 256-bit mid-range SKU Kepler/Maxwell chip can be sold as a flagship for 8-12 months! Props to NV.

I wouldn't be surprised if 780Ti successor is more than $699. I am not blaming NV as a business but we as consumers ultimately vote against or for such business practices (i.e., selling mid-range chips at high-end prices). Some of us won't accept these business practices, which means we keep waiting for better cards and that's another reason why we think 960 and 285 with 2GB are just another one of those rip-off SKUs from both AMD/NV. BTW, I said it before that the high-end headphone market also experienced this change in the last 5 years as headphone manufacturers raised prices for mid-range and high-end headphones significantly. It seems NV is exploiting their brand name/image and customer loyal to keep seeing just how far can they push their loyal customers in terms of prices. It's not a surprise that there are rumours of Titan-X costing even more than the original Titan.....just NV once again testing just how far can the push their own customers.

AMD doesn't have the brand image to command higher prices and despite the 'oh nvidia is squeezing the consumer AMD is the good guy for lower prices' mentality that seems to be ruling these forums is that AMD is LOSING money doing this kind of thing. Its absolutely terrible from a business perspective.

This is a huge misconception that keeps being repeated. AMD isn't losing $ selling R9 280/280X/290/290X cards. Otherwise it would be better to throw them into a garbage compactor/landfill than sell each one for negative profits (i.e., loss). Such practice of selling their products at a loss would bankrupt AMD. It's that the profits on AMD cards may be not enough to offset the R&D and other expenses, but the cards still make $ on a per unit basis. There are 3 primary ways to raise your profits:

1) Cut expenses - AMD already did as much as possible with layoffs, spin-offs, etc.

2) Raise prices to raise profit margins - You already stated this isn't viable and for the most part while AMD tried rasing prices with 7970 and R9 290X, they are stuck at $549 for single chips as the market isn't willing to pay more without AMD having a solid lead over NV.

3) You increase volumes - you need to sell MORE of your products so that $50 your make per chip is $150 if you sell 3X more. This one point is critical to the discussion because a brand agnostic user would not pay similar price for less performance or pay higher price for similar performance or worse pay MORE and get LESS performance. Unfortunately in the case of AMD vs. NV, the NV buyer would, and DOES.

What's killing AMD more is inability to get higher sale volumes via customer switching and new design wins for OEMs. A lot of it is their own fault (dGPU mobile gaming market share loss by not showing up) but in other cases, it really is irrationality and brand loyalty of the customer base that buys NV like clock work, gen after gen. Chock that one up to amazing NV marketing of 15 years. Remember how 480 used almost twice the power of 5870 but how many NV users left NV's Fermi to AMD? Not many, with NV actually gaining market share during hte entire Fermi generation other than the short initial period where well NV never had any Fermi cards to sell for laptops/desktops

What's more ironic is some of the posters who keep saying that it's better that NV doesn't deliver good price/performance and charges more for NV products, still buy NV. Meaning, they acknowledge that AMD delivers better price/performance but they still choose to pay a premium for NV. In other words, they would still buy NV and defend 960 even if it was priced at $229-249. It's a circular argument and only works if most of the market is brand agnostic which in GPUs it isn't!

These are the same people who somehow believe that AMD is some sort of good guy and will, if they manage to engineer a competitive CPU with intel, will force intel to lower prices - never in a million years will AMD do that, they will raise their prices to match intel.

If AMD's CPUs are again competitive with Intel, of course AMD will rasie prices but instead of lower prices, we as consumers will get some other benefits like higher clocked special binned K parts more often unlike once in a blue moon Devil's Canyon and Intel bringing 6-cores to the mainstream a lot quicker than now. Intel is't going to stop selling i5 at $229-239 and i7 at $329 but an i5 might become quad-core + HT and an i7 will become 6-core. That's the point of wanting more competition.

AMD just had a drop in graphics revenue and that section is operating under a minor gain to net loss (hard to see as GPU and CPU are lumped together. AMD expects further drops in revenue. The last thing AMD wants, the last thing anyone wants who doesn't want a monopoly, is a competitively priced 960.

If NV users currently pay $80-100 more for a 970 with 5-6% more performance over an after-market $250 290 (identical performance at 1440P and above), and $250 more for 20% faster 980, what makes you think NV users would buy an R9 290 at $199 against a $199 GTX960? They wouldn't. The brand image of 200 series is tarnished:

1) The mainstream gamers believe in generalized statements that R9 200 series ALL run hot and loud, and perform worse than NV's advanced Maxwell architecture, that Maxwell is currently the best architecture overall (which it is but that doesn't mean all Maxwell SKUs are better than all GCN SKUs).

2) The only logical conclusion for such a gamer is that a similarly priced Maxwell is always better than a similarly priced GCN 200 series. Since such a gamer is already willing to pay more for NV to begin with, it's logical they would think a $199 Maxwell > $199 GCN and add another $40-50 premium they'd be willing to pay for NV, they would still choose a 960 at $249 over an R9 290, nevermind a $199 960 vs. R9 290.

Forums like ours to cut the marketing BS and educate this "mainstream crowd", but the irony is that the mainstream gamer is unlikely to visit hardware forums as that's not what they typically do. It would be even worse if someone told you that what you bought for 10 years straight was a waste of $ since you are brand brainwashed? Most of them would get offended. That is WHY it's critical for professional reviewers to do OUR job in an unbiased and informed manner.

But, for marketing dollars, PR reasons, product samples, I am pretty sure AT can't rip apart the 960 or NV will be pissed. That's why they'll mostly cover it in great light and cover on some areas they think could be improved with a 960Ti or say GTX1060. It's highly unlikely they will make a big negative recommendation against the 960 when 70% of the market are NV users. That's a lot of marketing influence. Even then, such is the ingrained customer loyalty to some brands, that consumers will ignore negative reviews anyway.

 

[utahraptor]

If someone is going to pay ~$235 for a card it had better at least look heavy. So in other words... "Marketing"

I was close!

 

[Enigmoid]

This is a very similar point that ocre is trying to make on AT forums, but it has a major flaw in reasoning that goes against the rationality of gamers who tend to buy NV most of the time. That is -- NV owners will pay extra to have an NV card, even if it has less performance, or similar performance. What it means is that if 960 is $199 or $249, it would still outsell the R9 280X/290 series, because most of the NV's client base will simply pay more for similar performance or will even accept LESS performance to not buy a AMD card. His and your points would have a lot more weight if NV gamers would switch sides easily due to superior price/performance of AMD, but as HD4000-7000 series showed, this is not true in the slightest. Therefore, AMD's superior price/performance is not a major draw factor for most customers to switch from NV to AMD. Maybe 10-20% of the NV customers would, but the core will remain with NV. They would simply ignore the price/performance of R9 290 series in favour of "NV advantages" like PhysX, CUDA, perf/watt, TXAA, GeForce Experience, "better NV drivers", etc.

How many times have you seen an AMD card owner say: "No NV cards please, will not consider NV, etc."? OTOH, you see this all the time from some NV owners that used NV for 5/10/15 years. Essentially if 390X came out at $549, they would still buy a $549 980, or wait for GM200 should it come out later. You and other people on our forum know this is true. Don't you remember how many people still bought a GTX285/580 when HD5870/7970 came out or simply waited for the NV alternative? Remember how 7970 smashed the 580 and 7970 OC demolished a 580 OC and so many NV owners ripped it apart, but now the same owners gladly paid $550 for a 10% faster 980 over a year old 780Ti. Talk about being hypocrites!

NV knows this because well they created their customer. I was surprised that it took NV that long to start raising prices but as you can see once they started with Kepler GK204, they keep raising prices even more. (Titan $1K, GTX780/780Ti at $650-700 vs. $500 for 480/580, 680 at $499 vs. 980 for $549 -- yet another bump!). I've said it for years that most of NV customers are so sticky and loyal to the brand, NV could raise prices more and more and just keep raking in profits. So why then did NV lower 970 to such a ridiculously attractive $330-350 price? It's to try and convert AMD users to enter the NV eco-system and lock them there during a moment of AMD's architectural / product weakness. NV for sure knew that even if 970 was sold for $400-429, their loyal customers base would buy it regardless over a $350 290X, but they really wanted to convert the AMD gamers. 970's low price wasn't' there to bankrupt AMD, it was there to get an AMD owner to switch and then stick to NV for 5/10/15 years! Brilliant strategy. That's why it's so costly for AMD to be late because their price/performance customers don't wait for AMD, unlike NV's loyal customers. Again, people who work at NV are smarter than me, they know this. Once NV thinks it locked you into their eco-system and you won't leave, they have 0 fear to raise prices or sell mid-range products at high-end prices. Add a sprinkle of marketing and they'll even make you believe a 256-bit mid-range SKU Kepler/Maxwell chip can be sold as a flagship for 8-12 months! Props to NV.

I wouldn't be surprised if 780Ti successor is more than $699. I am not blaming NV as a business but we as consumers ultimately vote against or for such business practices (i.e., selling mid-range chips at high-end prices). Some of us won't accept these business practices, which means we keep waiting for better cards and that's another reason why we think 960 and 285 with 2GB are just another one of those rip-off SKUs from both AMD/NV. BTW, I said it before that the high-end headphone market also experienced this change in the last 5 years as headphone manufacturers raised prices for mid-range and high-end headphones significantly. It seems NV is exploiting their brand name/image and customer loyal to keep seeing just how far can they push their loyal customers in terms of prices. It's not a surprise that there are rumours of Titan-X costing even more than the original Titan.....just NV once again testing just how far can the push their own customers.

That is not exactly true. Some would buy Nvidia regardless of price but a host of others would switch.

I also feel that you are slightly missing the mark. The public in general is concerned about perf/$ but not to the extent that you are. Most people do not do their homework. It may be as simple as changing the selection criteria to "What can I buy for $200" rather than the best perf/$ (many people are at their limit at $200 and will not pay more for a 290 anyway).

This is a huge misconception that keeps being repeated. AMD isn't losing $ selling R9 280/280X/290/290X cards. Otherwise it would be better to throw them into a garbage compactor/landfill than sell each one for negative profits (i.e., loss). Such practice of selling their products at a loss would bankrupt AMD. It's that the profits on AMD cards may be not enough to offset the R&D and other expenses, but the cards still make $ on a per unit basis. There are 3 primary ways to raise your profits:

1) Cut expenses - AMD already did as much as possible with layoffs, spin-offs, etc.

2) Raise prices to raise profit margins - You already stated this isn't viable and for the most part while AMD tried rasing prices with 7970 and R9 290X, they are stuck at $549 for single chips as the market isn't willing to pay more without AMD having a solid lead over NV.

3) You increase volumes - you need to sell MORE of your products so that $50 your make per chip is $150 if you sell 3X more. This one point is critical to the discussion because a brand agnostic user would not pay similar price for less performance or pay higher price for similar performance or worse pay MORE and get LESS performance. Unfortunately in the case of AMD vs. NV, the NV buyer would, and DOES.

What's killing AMD more is inability to get higher sale volumes via customer switching and new design wins for OEMs. A lot of it is their own fault (dGPU mobile gaming market share loss by not showing up) but in other cases, it really is irrationality and brand loyalty of the customer base that buys NV like clock work, gen after gen. Chock that one up to amazing NV marketing of 15 years. Remember how 480 used almost twice the power of 5870 but how many NV users left NV's Fermi to AMD? Not many, with NV actually gaining market share during hte entire Fermi generation other than the short initial period where well NV never had any Fermi cards to sell for laptops/desktops

It makes sense to keep selling even if at a loss simply to retain marketshare as a stopgap. Any inventory should always be sold off, even at a loss otherwise you lose the full production cost (100%) and not the difference between the production cost (100%) and discounted selling price (70%) a loss of 30% on production costs.

Nvidia successfully markets and has marketed its GPUs over the past decade. They have spent a lot more money in advertising and thus reap the benefits. This is reflected in their sales.

 

[WittyRemark]

I don't actually understand about all these arguments about brands, or how brand X is at the mercy of brand Y.
Whichever fills your need buy it, whether you're an enthusiast or an OEM PC grandma, we're just here to give you suggestions, not to shovel it down in your throat.

 

[skipsneeky2]

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-geforce-gtx-960-gaming-oc-review,1.html

MSI Gaming 960 review!

 

[amenx]

That is -- NV owners will pay extra to have an NV card, even if it has less performance, or similar performance.

That applies to me .... but I (and many other Nv buyers I'm sure) would have to draw a line somewhere.

What it means is that if 960 is $199 or $249, it would still outsell the R9 280X/290 series, because most of the NV's client base will simply pay more for similar performance or will even accept LESS performance to not buy a AMD card.

And the line is here. I would take even a 7950 over that 960. The mid to lower mid-range is up for grabs if I were looking at that segment of the market, an area where traditionally AMD is better.

 

[sontin]

A 7950? Wow. this card defines outdated:
No Tiled Ressources Tier 2, no HDMI 2.0, worse DX12 support, worse Tessellation performance, 100W more power consumption, no support for variable refresh rate, worse encoder, worse to none Downsampling support...

The only plus side is the 1GB more memory.

 

[amenx]

A 7950? Wow. this card defines outdated:
No Tiled Ressources Tier 2, no HDMI 2.0, worse DX12 support, worse Tessellation performance, 100W more power consumption, no support for variable refresh rate, worse encoder, worse to none Downsampling support...

The only plus side is the 1GB more memory.

I could have sworn it was around 7950 performance in some of the benches but I guess 7970.

 

[skipsneeky2]

A 7950? Wow. this card defines outdated:
No Tiled Ressources Tier 2, no HDMI 2.0, worse DX12 support, worse Tessellation performance, 100W more power consumption, no support for variable refresh rate, worse encoder, worse to none Downsampling support...

The only plus side is the 1GB more memory.

Would need a quality review showing if a single 7950 really could offer enough performance in todays new games for a user to enable settings that consume more then 2gb.

Only after that i guess people could factor all of the above you mentioned.

 

[RussianSensation]

A 7950? Wow. this card defines outdated:
No Tiled Ressources Tier 2,

Now tell us how this matters for games. By the time games are made for DX12, 960 will be hopelessly outdated.

no HDMI 2.0,

970/980 are somewhat decent for some medium settings at 4K gaming but 960 is hopeless for it. I am pretty sure someone who is going to buy a modern TV with HDMI 2.0 or has a 4K HDMI 2.0 TV can swing $130 for a 970.

For 4K gaming $400 960 SLI is SLOWER than $250 R9 290, and is barely 8% faster than 7970Ghz that can be bought used for $150-170. Horrible.

worse DX12 support,

Now tell us how this matters for games. By the time games are made for DX12, 960 will be hopelessly outdated.

worse Tessellation performance,

This matters how? It's not seen in games.

R9 280 = $150
GTX960 = $200

http://www.sweclockers.com/recension/19925-geforce-gtx-960-fran-asus-gigabyte-och-msi/17#pagehead

Better yet, $50 more buys 45-50% more performance with an after-market R9 290. :thumbsup:

100W more power consumption,

Wrong.

GTX960 = 124W
HD7950 = 149W (25W difference)

30W difference with an R9 280.

no support for variable refresh rate,

Matters to the 3 guys with GSync monitors who can't afford to spend $130 extra for a 970 but can afford to spend $400+ on a new G-Sync monitor. Makes sense.

worse encoder,

Just like 99.999% GPUs in the world not supporting H.265. So they are all junk too then, including 970/980?

worse to none Downsampling support...

LOL! What exactly can a 960 downsample? It runs 38 fps in BF4.

You have 0 argument here since anyone who wants to use Downsampling will pay extra $50 for an R9 290 and get VSR or if they prefer NV, they'd save up for a 970.

Not only that, but VSR IQ > DSR and you'd really want the extra GPU horsepower to use something like that. You might want to think before you post a random NV marketing feature.

The only plus side is the 1GB more memory.

Right because HD7950 isn't $140 in the US and R9 280 isn't $150?

Oh, that 1GB of extra memory, it matters a great deal. Are you suggesting budget PC gamers play the Russian roulette with 2015-2016 games and I am suggesting they spend extra $50-60 for an R9 290 to get 45-50% more performance and NOT have to care about VRAM demands at 1080P.

Anything else you forgot to mention from the NV marketing handbook?

Can you please ask them why GTX560Ti was such a good mid-range card but why the 960 is such a horrible rip-off in comparison?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37104190&postcount=73

That applies to me .... but I (and many other Nv buyers I'm sure) would have to draw a line somewhere.

And the line is here. I would take even a 7950 over that 960. The mid to lower mid-range is up for grabs if I were looking at that segment of the market, an area where traditionally AMD is better.

A lot of posters here can't separate good NV products from overpriced NV garbage. I respect that you like NV products more but can still admit when NV makes an overpriced card with gimped VRAM that's worth skipping and getting an AMD card over it or well paying extra for a 970.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Now tell us how this matters for games. By the time games are made for DX12, 960 will be hopelessly outdated.

The 960 already is hopelessly outdated.

 

[RussianSensation]

The 960 already is hopelessly outdated.

When you enable MSAA, this card bombs. So much for 128-bit bus should be ignored.

Even TPU that has a sweet spot for Maxwell's and Kepler's efficiency over price/performance hinted for gamers to wait for a GTX960Ti.

"...we only see a disappointing 9% improvement over the previous-generation GTX 760, as compared to the GTX 660 (from which a lot of users might upgrade) with a 27% improvement. Personally, I don't think upgrading from a GTX 760 is worth the cost, and upgrading from a GTX 660 Ti probably isn't worth it either. NVIDIA's own GTX 970 is 58% faster than the GTX 960, which suggests that we will definitely see a GTX 960 Ti variant that sits in the middle in both price and performance."
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_960_STRIX_OC/34.html

NV users who hate AMD/don't care for AMD products, well spend the extra $130 for a 970 for wait for a $250 960Ti with 1280 CUDA cores/192-bit bus and 3GB of VRAM. That is what the 960 should have been. :thumbsup:

And, even though GTX960 overclocks to 1.5-1.6Ghz, that's not special either. HD7950 overclocked from 800mhz to 1.15-1.25Ghz, or 44%-56%.
Proof

Overclocked performance sucks too. Crysis 3 nets 960 only 2 fps higher than a stock GTX760.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Even TPU that has a sweet spot for Maxwell's and Kepler's efficiency over price/performance hinted for gamers to wait for a GTX960Ti.

"...we only see a disappointing 9% improvement over the previous-generation GTX 760, as compared to the GTX 660 (from which a lot of users might upgrade) with a 27% improvement. Personally, I don't think upgrading from a GTX 760 is worth the cost, and upgrading from a GTX 660 Ti probably isn't worth it either. NVIDIA's own GTX 970 is 58% faster than the GTX 960, which suggests that we will definitely see a GTX 960 Ti variant that sits in the middle in both price and performance."
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_960_STRIX_OC/34.html

NV users who hate AMD/don't care for AMD products, well spend the extra $130 for a 970 for wait for a $250 960Ti with 1280 CUDA cores/192-bit bus and 3GB of VRAM. That is what the 960 should have been. :thumbsup:

Wow

How can anyone recommend this? I'd like to think this card was only made for people who just show up to Best Buy and pick whichever card has the coolest box art at $200. How can anyone who has seen the benchmarks want this thing, much less the people doing the benchmarks recommend it?

It seems like they edited out the part about the 960Ti in that review now also.

 

[RaistlinZ]

They gotta give glowing reviews if they want to keep receiving product.

I've read a lot of their reviews and they consistently give 90%+ ratings to average products. Most of their ratings are super lax. Even products that disappoint across the board get at least an 80% or better. It's a joke.

 

[blake0812]

They gotta give glowing reviews if they want to keep receiving product.

I've read a lot of their reviews and they consistently give 90%+ ratings to average products. Most of their ratings are super lax. Even products that disappoint across the board get at least an 80% or better. It's a joke.

It truly is. Writers should be giving criticism and that feedback should be going to Nvidia to ensure they make a proper card next time.

 

[Enigmoid]

When you enable MSAA, this card bombs. So much for 128-bit bus should be ignored.

Even TPU that has a sweet spot for Maxwell's and Kepler's efficiency over price/performance hinted for gamers to wait for a GTX960Ti.

"...we only see a disappointing 9% improvement over the previous-generation GTX 760, as compared to the GTX 660 (from which a lot of users might upgrade) with a 27% improvement. Personally, I don't think upgrading from a GTX 760 is worth the cost, and upgrading from a GTX 660 Ti probably isn't worth it either. NVIDIA's own GTX 970 is 58% faster than the GTX 960, which suggests that we will definitely see a GTX 960 Ti variant that sits in the middle in both price and performance."
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_960_STRIX_OC/34.html

NV users who hate AMD/don't care for AMD products, well spend the extra $130 for a 970 for wait for a $250 960Ti with 1280 CUDA cores/192-bit bus and 3GB of VRAM. That is what the 960 should have been. :thumbsup:

And, even though GTX960 overclocks to 1.5-1.6Ghz, that's not special either. HD7950 overclocked from 800mhz to 1.15-1.25Ghz, or 44%-56%.
Proof

Overclocked performance sucks too. Crysis 3 nets 960 only 2 fps higher than a stock GTX760.

There is not enough shader power from MSAA regardless. All of those are pretty much unplayable on the 770/280x

 

[RussianSensation]

Look at Newegg:

Diamond R9 290 - OOS
HIS IceQ R9 290 - OOS
PowerColor R9 290 - OOS
Gigabyte R9 290 - OOS
MSI Gaming R9 290 - OOS

PowerColor PCS+ 290 is $250
XFX R9 290 is $250 after $40 off.

Looks like after-market R9 290s are dropping to $250 and that makes them an absolutely unbeatable gaming value against a 960.

It truly is. Writers should be giving criticism and that feedback should be going to Nvidia to ensure they make a proper card next time.

They could still recommend it with notes like "consider it when it drops to $150 with rebates," etc. Giving Editor's Choice (TPU) and saying at $210, nothing else needs to be considered (Tom's) while ignoring what else sells for $150 (R9 280) or $250 (R9 290) is absolutely insane!

TechReport mentioned R9 290 at $270, implying how AMD is now desperate to slash prices to move product. What are we reading Montley Fool? I am a consumer so if AMD/NV give me more performance for less, that's winning. I am not doing an inventory count or gross margins on their income statement. What do I care if they have to slash prices to move inventory if I get more product for less $ today than 10 days ago?

Then they went on to say how NV improved price/performance of 660 to 960 or 770 to 970 with little change in power usage but completely ignored THIS:

WTH, their own review shows R9 290 > 970 > R9 280X > R9 280 > GTX960 and all they do is make excuses for how supposedly all of AMD's R9 200 series run hot, loud, etc. while Maxwell's power efficiency is the God's saviour to all, and completely downplay absolute gaming performance and price/performance.

TechReport's conclusion is:

" What's not to like?"

^
Way to completely dismiss 2GB of VRAM as a bottleneck for future games. They couldn't even find 1 negative thing to say, really?!

There must be some marketing connection with NV's reviewer's guide and all these sites pushing perf/watt down our throat, replacing the historically more important absolute performance, price/performance and VRAM usage metrics that most gamers used to judge the longevity and value of GPUs! Remember how reviewers actually took the time to talk about 8800GTS' 320MB and X1950XT's 256MB becoming a risky/dangerously low point when we were close to entering the era of 512MB of VRAM as the norm? I see nothing of the sort in these 960 review that hype it up!

If you can't compete on performance at similar price and your products lack VRAM for future games, how else do you sell them?

- "Perf/watt, lower power usage -- everywhere!"
- "But, but, what about FPS, ultra textures, future game performance, MSAA, mods?
- "Nah, those don't matter since you'll upgrade to Pascal in 2016! We are counting on you!"
- "But I can spend just $50 more and double my VRAM, and since I game only 2-3 hours a day, I could set an FPS cap in low demanding games like LoL/DOTA 2/L4D to save power OR choose to have 45%+ more performance when needed"
- "But you won't have NV's 'legendary' drivers"

 

[Carfax83]

I think you guys are being too harsh on the GTX 960. It's an entry level mid range card, and as such, it performs very well. I'm sure NVidia will come out with faster mid range models such as a GTX 960 Ti or some such, which should have 4GB of VRAM and a wider memory bus to fill the gap between the GTX 960 and 970..

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I think you guys are being too harsh on the GTX 960. It's an entry level mid range card, and as such, it performs very well. I'm sure NVidia will come out with faster mid range models such as a GTX 960 Ti or some such, which should have 4GB of VRAM and a wider memory bus to fill the gap between the GTX 960 and 970..

Exactly: it's more an entry level card than a midrange one, but it's selling at a midrange price. $200 is a lot of money to most people.

 

[Carfax83]

Exactly: it's more an entry level card than a midrange one, but it's selling at a midrange price. $200 is a lot of money to most people.

If NVidia can command such a price for it, then who can blame them? It's not like they're putting a gun to peoples' heads..

Reminds me of when I had my GTX 770s. They held their price extremely well over time (until the GTX 970 came out), despite AMD's massive price cuts on their 7970 GHz cards..

The fact is, NVidia cards typically sell for more than their AMD counterparts because people are willing to pay more..

 

[SteveGrabowski]

If NVidia can command such a price for it, then who can blame them? It's not like they're putting a gun to peoples' heads..

Reminds me of when I had my GTX 770s. They held their price extremely well over time (until the GTX 970 came out), despite AMD's massive price cuts on their 7970 GHz cards..

The fact is, NVidia cards typically sell for more than their AMD counterparts because people are willing to pay more..

I'm not blaming them, I'd love if I could get top dollar for underperforming hardware. I'm looking at it from the point of view of someone who needs to make his $200 really count, and they're not going to with the 960 and its 2GB VRAM.

 

[Silverforce11]

AMD is hurting enough as is..

If NV price the 960 at $170 or thereabouts, nobody is going to touch any AMD GPU except for the R290 (until the 960ti!). So really, NV is being generous and leaving AMD a bone.

Also why the hell is Tonga, the R285 priced so high for a 2gb vram card with higher power use? It should be $150.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Exactly: it's more an entry level card than a midrange one, but it's selling at a midrange price. $200 is a lot of money to most people.

In the GPU space $200 is an entry level price point for a gaming card.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

In the GPU space $200 is an entry level price point for a gaming card.

No it isn't. $100-$150 is. R7 260x, GTX 750Ti, R9 270 are all gaming cards. So is R9 280.