[Hexus]Nvidia pulls away from AMD in graphics card market share

[RussianSensation]

Btw, some have said they wouldn't even consider AMD cards for professional applications. However, AMD has worked hard to provide class leading prixe/performance for both single and double precision performance, CAD/Photoshop/OpenCL, etc. performance where they already doubled their market share from 12% in 2010 to 25% now:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6137/the-amd-firepro-w9000-w8000-review-part-1/3

Again, the average professional user probably doesn't even know how competitive FirePro has become in Catia, 3DMax, Cinema3D, Maya, Siemens NX, Sony Vegas:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/amd-firepro-w9100_8.html#sect0

It takes 5-10 years or more for the negative perception and old stereotypes to go away. The idea that Quadro is the gold standard in professional apps is long obsolete but the idea persists.

 

[Abwx]

It takes 5-10 years or more for the negative perception and old stereotypes to go away. The idea that Quadro is the gold standard in professional apps is long obsolete but the idea persists.

The Quadros are biting the dust when it comes to the most desirable feature in those items, that is double precision FP computation, people who buy them over Firepros are buying vastly inferior products, yet AMD got only 25% marketshare, and CUDA has nothing to do with it, why would someone prefer a closed standard over an open one.?.
Actualy it has all to do with brand perception, wrong or right.

 

[Spungo]

What issue exactly? I've had Radeon based cards, both ATI and AMD, consistently since the X1900XT and every generation since. Never had a problem.

The same issue as those people posting negative reviews on newegg - crashes and freezes in games. About an hour ago, my computer locked up when playing Legend of Grimrock. It's not exactly a high end game. It's a confined space game like Eye of the Beholder but with Doom 3 era graphics.
The type of crash I had was one where the screen freezes but it still shows the game. It's not a blue screen or a black screen crash. The sound is stuck in a short loop when this happens.
Only some games have this problem. Grimrock is pretty bad for it. Wolfenstein: The New Order never has a problem. Borderlands 2 is hit or miss.

why would someone prefer a closed standard over an open one.?.

A closed standard is picked if it's better or easier somehow. I would say DirectX is a fairly closed standard, but it's very popular because it's well supported. People would avoid DirectX like the plague if it were closed and it sucked.

 

[ocre]

page 3, post 69

Remember this:

I spent $0 on graphics cards from 2008, but how much has an NV user spent since then? That's all I need to know. I know I made the right decision, if anything should have bought 10X more AMD cards

Then why do you keep going on and on and on-

This is the 2nd time you misinterpret my comments. First you implied that I said all GF8 have failed and you proceeded to link working GF8s on sale. As mentioned by other posters, no one made a claim that all GF8s have failed only that all have inherent defects and can fail at any time.

Now you implied as if I said that anyone who bought NV in the last 5 years is dumb. That's not what I said. What I said is NV users who ignored mining are dumb. Why is that? Because you could use thousands of dollars made by AMD hardware to drown yourself in NV hardware from the proceeds. Your analogy would be if you purchased competing chips and the more you ate them, the more $ you would get to buy up to a lifetime of Doritos. For example your brother could be either gaming on a free 7970 now or could have bought a free 780Ti. Most people in North America ignored mining because:

1) They didn't even know about it (until too late)
2) They thought it was a scam
3) Too risk averse to spend $ to make $
4) Didn't know how to set it up software wise
5) Were too lazy to learn about mining, how to set it up digital wallets and convert to USD/gift cards
6) Loyalty to NV made it impossible to consider buying AMD cards even knowing that AMD cards made $
7) Didn't want to deal with the extra noise and heat. Although this one mostly comes from ignorance because you could have undervolted/underclocked the ASIC and purchased cool and quiet 7900 cards. Even 1 of them could have made $2-5K.
8) Have so much $, they don't care about making $10000-30000 in mining.

However, on our technical forum, I also saw that most loyal NV users who keep buying NV only have also ignored mining. This was shocking to me because most of the points I made above don't apply to them. We had guides on what cards to buy, what settings to run, how to set it all up, how to minimize your power usage, how to maximize Mhash per watt, etc. Guess what? Those who followed our advice are sitting on 4-5 figures of earnings and if they so choose can purchase many next gen cards for "free" over and over. Many experienced NV users put down Bitcoin mining and simply refused to be open-minded. This was not about buying AMD cards for many of us but about using PC hardware to make $ that we can use to buy things in real life, such as more free future PC hardware. Amazing perk and despite that AMD's market share didn't explode since 2008. This shows just how uninformed the average PC gamer is.

If you don't want to use mining as evidence that the average PC gamer is not technically savvy, JHH quoted that 80% of NV users didn't bother adjusting PC game settings/optimizing when he announced GeForce Experience on stage. That is more evidence how little technical knowledge/desire to learn PC hardware and patience the average PC gamer has. You think the same people will spend time reading extensive PC hardware reviews, follow-up reading reviews over time, visit forums such as ours or OCN or overclockers.net? Not a chance. You know 14-17 million AIB graphics cards are sold a quarter! How many of those people know squat about graphics cards vs. brand name?

I think what you are missing from the overall theme are times when NV was clearly the inferior choice. FX5000's horrible DX9 performance and IQ, 7000GTX horrible AA and performance in shader intensive games, Fermi's 6-9 months delays and 10-15% more performance for 80-90% power usage, ignorance of Bitcoin mining. All of these situations highlight how the average PC gamer perceives the NV brand and it helps us gauge his/her general knowledge of hardware - an average level and not much more.

The core NV userbase is very similar to that of any successful brand in how they think. Best selling Beats, Bose, Hondas, Toyotas, NIKEs, Coca Cola, Levis, Taylor Swift, Apple. These are all very strong brands for the average consumer. But it doesn't mean that they don't make crappy products/release poor content/songs from time to time. However, it is NV's brand name and blind consumer following that explain the lack of disastrous market share losses during FX5000 and GF7 eras, as well as during Fermi delays; and well the success of bad but hugely popular products such as FX5200/5500, GTS450, GTX550, GT630-640, 650-650Ti, etc.

Are you trying to justify your own decisions? Is it for self validation?

If you made all this money, be happy about it. Why do you go on and on and on concerning yourself with what other do? Your condescending attitude will have little chance to influence anyone to buy AMD HW.

But it really must bother you..... that so many people you will never meet in person spend their money the way they want to. Its just such a tragedy.......somehow to you.

This isnt even complicated and yet your struggling so hard to grasp. Your frustration causes you to lash out.

But let me tell you something, most people simply do not share your view. They dont mind spending the money they earned. They have money they like to spend, on what they like to buy. Its not your money and it is not your say. People live and enjoy the things they enjoy. They do it their way.

Why are you so concerned with this as to rant over and over and over. Bit coin this, free GPU that, Nvidia is too expensive. bla

What is good for you doesnt have to be good for everyone. Let it go. Its awesome you made some money but apparently that is not enough. The world has to hear you rant and rave to no end......and for what?

I think this thread would be better spent focusing on what AMD can do to improve the situation. Not blasting on the world for buying Nvidia. Not pretending that there is nothing to be concerned with.
And definitely not bringing up bitcoins, 8800gt's, ignorant consumers, Nvidia gouging, bumb gate, and what ever else other than AMD posters can bring up.

 

[Abwx]

I noticed that there s no more an AMD center at AT, no wonder when we read this title :

Win7 Driver Issues? Microsoft, AMD Recommend Uninstalling KB3004394

So as titled it looks to be specificaly an AMD driver problem...

But when looking at the article we can read that :

In AMD’s case what they are finding is that the update prevents the installation of new graphics drivers on affected systems, with both AMD and NVIDIA drivers refusing to install.

Notice the expression "in AMD case" that just get rebuked a few words later when they say that it s also Nvidia case, that is, the Nvidia case is also an AMD case...

I call this deliberate misleading of the general public, unless Nvidia recommend nothing...

 

[Erenhardt]

I noticed that there s no more an AMD center at AT, no wonder when we read this title :

So as titled it looks to be specificaly an AMD driver problem...

But when looking at the article we can read that :

Notice the expression "in AMD case" that just get rebuked a few words later when they say that it s also Nvidia case, that is, the Nvidia case is also an AMD case...

I call this deliberate misleading of the general public, unless Nvidia recommend nothing...

In nvidia's case the fault lies on the microsoft. /sarc

 

[AllanMoore]

I never read negative reviews- they are so depressive!

 

[Enigmoid]

I noticed that there s no more an AMD center at AT, no wonder when we read this title :

So as titled it looks to be specificaly an AMD driver problem...

But when looking at the article we can read that :

Notice the expression "in AMD case" that just get rebuked a few words later when they say that it s also Nvidia case, that is, the Nvidia case is also an AMD case...

I call this deliberate misleading of the general public, unless Nvidia recommend nothing...

Nvidia said nothing (as in the article). AMD and MS recommend an uninstall.

AMD sends word this evening that they are advising users to remove update KB3004394, which was released as part of this week’s Patch Tuesday, due to driver installation issues this update is inflicting.

Title is exactly as it is.

 

[exar333]

I noticed that there s no more an AMD center at AT, no wonder when we read this title :

So as titled it looks to be specificaly an AMD driver problem...

But when looking at the article we can read that :

Notice the expression "in AMD case" that just get rebuked a few words later when they say that it s also Nvidia case, that is, the Nvidia case is also an AMD case...

I call this deliberate misleading of the general public, unless Nvidia recommend nothing...

Good example of looking for issues when there is none.

 

[railven]

I noticed that there s no more an AMD center at AT, no wonder when we read this title :

So as titled it looks to be specificaly an AMD driver problem...

But when looking at the article we can read that :

Notice the expression "in AMD case" that just get rebuked a few words later when they say that it s also Nvidia case, that is, the Nvidia case is also an AMD case...

I call this deliberate misleading of the general public, unless Nvidia recommend nothing...

Reading the title of that article, I just read it as it was written:

"MSFT issue, AMD recommends this fix"

Ie:
There is an issue with an MSFT update, but AMD found a solution. I didn't read it as "this issue is exclusive to AMD."


On topic:
AMD is taking a trashing. At this point they should just sell the GPU patents and focus on their ARM designs. Let someone like Intel bring ATI back to it's former glory!

 

[tential]

I noticed that there s no more an AMD center at AT, no wonder when we read this title :

So as titled it looks to be specificaly an AMD driver problem...

But when looking at the article we can read that :

Notice the expression "in AMD case" that just get rebuked a few words later when they say that it s also Nvidia case, that is, the Nvidia case is also an AMD case...

I call this deliberate misleading of the general public, unless Nvidia recommend nothing...

I understand what you're saying.
When you read the title, it seems like it's only an AMD specific issue.

But the reality is, if effects both vendors, and AMD recommended a fix.

Nvidia's PR team is intelligent enough to know that when there is an issue and it's not their fault, they don't draw any attention to themselves.

Even better if AMD releases a statement, people may think it's only an AMD issue and Nvidia looks even better.

Nvidia thinks far more steps ahead than AMD does.

 

[Abwx]

I understand what you're saying.
When you read the title, it seems like it's only an AMD specific issue.

But the reality is, if effects both vendors, and AMD recommended a fix.

Nvidia's PR team is intelligent enough to know that when there is an issue and it's not their fault, they don't draw any attention to themselves.

Even better if AMD releases a statement, people may think it's only an AMD issue and Nvidia looks even better.

Nvidia thinks far more steps ahead than AMD does.

You are right, Ryan Smith posted this :

Ryan Smith - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

This literally came at the request of AMD, who asked that we inform our users about this. So I am giving them source credit where they are due.

My conclusion is that AMD is customers centric while Nvidia is, well, Nvidia centric...

 

[Ranulf]

You are right, Ryan Smith posted this :

My conclusion is that AMD is customers centric while Nvidia is, well, Nvidia centric...

Well going by their name...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invidia

 

[ocre]

You are right, Ryan Smith posted this :

My conclusion is that AMD is customers centric while Nvidia is, well, Nvidia centric...

For real? That is your actual conclusion?

You would..........
But honestly, I really dont know how some people can come up with this stuff

How bout un-warping this.

Lets get our heads out of the......sky. the most likely scenario:

AMD spent a ton of resources on a major driver update that they have recently been putting great effort in advertizing (Even having their staff post about it on tech forums) and then this update for windows completely screws it up, causing countless people not to be able to install it. The reason AMD reached out is because their reputation is at stake. They made a big deal about it, they advertized spread it across the world and all over the internets and having the driver not install would be a great embarrassment for them. The real answer is simple, AMD's reputation is at stake. It is not cause they care about their customers more and has nothing to do with Nvidia.

AMD set out to advertize this Omega driver with force, trying to reach as many people as they can. Had they ignored the fact that the driver wouldnt install then it would be a major major disaster. AMD had to deal with this, it would have been a nightmare for them if they had not.

There is no reason to make up a bunch of stuff. The situation is actually pretty clear on this one

 

[chimaxi83]

For real? That is your actual conclusion?

You would..........
But honestly, I really dont know how some people can come up with this stuff

How bout un-warping this.

Lets get our heads out of the......sky. the most likely scenario:

AMD spent a ton of resources on a major driver update that they have recently been putting great effort in advertizing (Even having their staff post about it on tech forums) and then this update for windows completely screws it up, causing countless people not to be able to install it. The reason AMD reached out is because their reputation is at stake. They made a big deal about it, they advertized spread it across the world and all over the internets and having the driver not install would be a great embarrassment for them. The real answer is simple, AMD's reputation is at stake. It is not cause they care about their customers more and has nothing to do with Nvidia.

AMD set out to advertize this Omega driver with force, trying to reach as many people as they can. Had they ignored the fact that the driver wouldnt install then it would be a major major disaster. AMD had to deal with this, it would have been a nightmare for them if they had not.

There is no reason to make up a bunch of stuff. The situation is actually pretty clear on this one

What situation? What are you talking about?

 

[Abwx]

For real? That is your actual conclusion?

Actualy it s not even my conclusion, i m only describing behaviours, one brand is informing their customers that Windows wont allow Catalyst drivers to be installed in some situation while the other brand is silent, no matter if their customers are experiencing said issue.

It is obvious from thoses behaviours that the two brands have a different approach of the customers, now you are free to think that AMD has the worse one in respect of the users...

 

[bystander36]

Actualy it s not even my conclusion, i m only describing behaviours, one brand is informing their customers that Windows wont allow Catalyst drivers to be installed in some situation while the other brand is silent, no matter if their customers are experiencing said issue.

It is obvious from thoses behaviours that the two brands have a different approach of the customers, now you are free to think that AMD has the worse one in respect of the users...

That is reading a hell of a lot into one linked article.

 

[Abwx]

That is reading a hell of a lot into one linked article.

I judge things according to each one deeds, what would be your reaction if the tables were turned.?.

That one brand is professional and the other amateurish in matter of customers management..?.

 

[Silverforce11]

On topic:
AMD is taking a trashing. At this point they should just sell the GPU patents and focus on their ARM designs. Let someone like Intel bring ATI back to it's former glory!

Samsung is the only one capable. They have the cash, they got the fabs and they got the need for better graphics in their major market. Their Exynos SOCs is falling behind Snapdragon & Apple, the gap is big and they seem unable to catch up on graphics.

Intel will never be allowed to buy into AMD, it would drive the US anti-monopoly people raving mad.

 

[bystander36]

I judge things according to each one deeds, what would be your reaction if the tables were turned.?.

That one brand is professional and the other amateurish in matter of customers management..?.

You aren't serious about this, I hope.

Nvidia is amateurish, because they didn't notify to its customers, on one website, that MS was to blame for install issues?

If their customer service was all that bad, I doubt very much they'd have such a large lead in sales. Especially considering they charge more for the same performance.

 

[Abwx]

Samsung is the only one capable. They have the cash, they got the fabs and they got the need for better graphics in their major market. Their Exynos SOCs is falling behind Snapdragon & Apple, the gap is big and they seem unable to catch up on graphics.

Intel will never be allowed to buy into AMD, it would drive the US anti-monopoly people raving mad.

Why did you use a forged quote that i never wrote..?..

Is this the way to make some points.?.

 

[TeleBee]

You are right, Ryan Smith posted this :

My conclusion is that AMD is customers centric while Nvidia is, well, Nvidia centric...

Or maybe Nvidia users using cutting edge OS?

apparently been causing havoc on some Windows 7 configurations.

At this point this looks like the update only affects a small number of systems – Windows 8 is not affected

The idea that Quadro is the gold standard in professional apps is long obsolete but the idea persists.

The Quadros are biting the dust when it comes to the most desirable feature in those items, that is double precision FP computation, people who buy them over Firepros are buying vastly inferior products, yet AMD got only 25% marketshare, and CUDA has nothing to do with it, why would someone prefer a closed standard over an open one.?.
Actualy it has all to do with brand perception, wrong or right.

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/01/23/oscar-noms/
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2012/02/27/oscar-goes-to-hugo-rango-nvidia-quadro/
http://www.marketwired.com/press-re...r-best-visual-effects-nasdaq-nvda-1395967.htm
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/10/03/gone-girl-nvidia/

While Quadro earning money, Firepro being... well... open standard.

 

[RussianSensation]

@ ocre,

You missed all the key points of my discussion and why I brought them up:

1) avg. PC gamer isn't tech savvy;
2) avg. PC gamer hardly reads reviews beyond launch reviews;
3) avg. PC gamer doesn't do a lot of research
4) avg. PC gamer sticks to what he knows or believes and rarely changes his mind even if a new product from a competing brand changes the landscape considerably.

Saying things like let others buy what they want is not at all a rebuttal to what we are trying to prove - which is that NV users are extremely brand loyal and will not switch to AMD even when AMD cards are free (hence the Bitcoin example).

The example of your brother is perfect since he is still using outdated GF8, but could have had free 7970s or 7970s that made him $ to buy free 980s. Why didn't he do that? See 4 points above. I am not dictating people like your brother what to buy but simply using logic to deduce what the typical NV buyer is like based on market trends I have noticed over the years.

As others have pointed out, there is a legion of these avg. PC gamers locked into NV, then there are GPU switchers who change due to perf/watt, price/Perf, absolute perf, features, etc. and small fraction of loyal AMD users. The main reason most PC gamers buy AMD cards has nothing to do with AMD's reputation or brand name. Conversely, a lot of NV cards are sold purely based on brand name and reputation. It's a completely opposite style of consumer. If in the future NV released something with great price/perf and overclocking and it met my performance leap criteria, I would buy it. The same is not true for NV users when AMD releases something great. Instead, they'd rather wait longer for NV's response or just buy a slower product for a similar price, or pay a lot more for similar performance. That goes back to the discussion of brand name perception and loyalty such as the 89% iPhone 6 upgraders coming from an iPhone point I made before.

Therefore, AMD's GPU division's greatest problems for the retail consumer are poor/weak brand perception and marketing. When I buy a $350 NV GPU, I could care less if AMD has a hypothetical $1000 fastest flagship. The average consumer for sure thinks that if a 980 is the fastest card, then all 900 series are faster at every price level than competing AMD cards. This is common sense since the average consumer thinks that class-leading high end tech trickles down to class leading low and mid-range tech. But for an experienced PC buyer, they know better since they are more informed.

Again, why do Beats occupy 65% of the headphone market? Almost all of their headphones at nearly every price level are junk. Try telling that to their customer base. Brand name value is everything in the luxury/premium goods sector as it allows you to dictate prices like NV does.

When a user is brand attached, he/she is far more likely to forgive NV card failures, GPU voltage locks, driver issues, higher prices since they feel the brand justifies it. We know there are NV card failures and driver issues but you hear less people complain about them. It makes sense because so many NV users are truly loyal so why would they criticize their favourite GPU maker when they will still buy only NV next round anyway? Why is that when games perform poorly on NV, it's forgiven but when they run poorly on AMD, it's "AMD drivers suck!"?

Do you see NV users saying they will switch to AMD after lackluster performance of Kepler in modern games? Do you see NV users switching to AMD now that CF > SLI, esp in 3-4 way configs? Do you see NV users switching to AMD after NV let them down with VRAM gimped 470/480/570/580/670/680/780? No. That right there is brand attachment. AMD should spend little time getting these users back and instead focus on delivering good products for younger generation/new consumers who are still open-minded and are not brand attached. Also it's critical to get favourable launch reviews as the launch review perception sticks.

 

[mrmt]

Btw, some have said they wouldn't even consider AMD cards for professional applications. However, AMD has worked hard to provide class leading prixe/performance for both single and double precision performance, CAD/Photoshop/OpenCL, etc. performance where they already doubled their market share from 12% in 2010 to 25% now:

For the most expensive CAD applications performance/$ is meaningless, because we're talking about very expensive resources working with very expensive software working on very expensive projects, so the cost of going for the top performer is marginal in the big scheme of things.

The other point is that in some extreme critical applications, what you need is stability above everything else, and here's where Nvidia excel. The company I work for has thousands of Quadro and Tesla cards, if a guy detects a bug Nvidia will take care of it. Our experience with AMD cards wasn't so good, their support was not on par with Nvidia, so in the end it became an official guideline for the company to not to acquire AMD GPU cards.

If what I hear is true in some applications, for less restrictive environments, AMD might be a good deal, but they have an uphill battle to clean they well-deserved tarnished reputation on the professional market.

 

[mrmt]

I would say the market share reflects the average PC gamer well. They are not very knowledgeable, don't understand tech and buy based on brand name / marketing. I spent $0 on graphics cards from 2008, but how much has an NV user spent since then? That's all I need to know. I know I made the right decision, if anything should have bought 10X more AMD cards

What AMD sells is more than hardware, it is hardware + brand + support + ecosystem. If they have a problem in developing the other components of their products, be it for outright incompetence or for lack of proper resources allocated to the task, they can only blame themselves and themselves alone.