Paratus
Lifer
- Jun 4, 2004
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Ridiculous. Not a single person said the pricing of the Radeon 5700 and 5700xt were acceptable initially much like Turings.
A company should not be thanked for doing something that a company has to do to make money. That is release products. It comes down to pricing and how it moves the market forward if we are talking about consumer benefit.
At the pricing AMD launched the 5700 and 5700xt, it was basically the maximum AMD could really charge much like Nvidia with initial turing launch. Considering the AMD brand and its value, Nvidia didn't have to do anything and their brand would ensure the marketshare loss would be minimal. Additionally, there is a strong likelihood once legacy games are thrown into the mix that the 5700xt would have been the same performance as a rtx 2070. And we both know at the same performance, Nvidia can charge 10% more because of the NV brand, the game bundle and RTX. Add some nvidia marketing and Nvidia could mostly maintain the marketshare it has.
The difference between this and the super launch is Nvidia is pricing themselves below what they have to price their product. When the superior brand is purposely launching cards with better price to performance than the value brand, the value brand is near absolutely forced to drop prices or incur severe consequences. After the GTX 680 was released under 7970 pricing, AMD card stopped selling which forced AMD to drop the price of their cards 150 dollars, overclock it and toss in 2 or 3 triple AAA games. Nvidia doesn't need to act nearly as aggressively because of mindshare. There is a tremendous difference when a value product under prices their products and the premium product.
E.g if RC cola came out with a new formulation and raised the price of their product to near coca cola prices, would Coca Cola need to do anything with their prices? Probably not.
However if Coca Cola, lowered there pricing just below this new RC cola, what would RC cola have to do to make their new product a success? Drop prices.
When the premium brand does something in terms of price drops, it means much more to the market. Although not technically a price drop in naming, the RTX 2070 super is 95% of a RTX 2080 for atleast 200 less and the RTX 2060 super is effectively a RTX 2070 for 100 less.
For AMD to effectively change the market, they need to severely undercut the competition as was the case with the 4870 and 5870. Nvidia could have sat on their hand with Navi pricing but they did not. This is because they are an aggressive company unlike Intel. If AMD priced their products at say 279 and 349 initially, I would say we have AMD to thank. But with the launch of super, it was Nvidia that officially kicked off the price war. Either way we should not be thankful to either company. The launch of super was simply a strategic business decision to capitalize on the lost goodwill of Navi's high price, gain good will in the process and to cause the Navi launch to fail. Nonetheless, the latter helps consumers and could potentially start a price war. What AMD did with the Navi launch is simply what would be necessary to initiate price fixing.
Without Navi finally releasing NV would have happily continued to sell you a midrange GPU - TU106 in the guise of the 2070 for an eye watering $500+.
Instead you now get a much better cut down TU104 for $500 and a $400 5700XT.
So thank AMD for finally releasing some cards and thank competition for at least slightly improving price to performance on both sides.