Nvidia Profits Tripled In Q4 2016

#5392650 Posted on: 02/14/2017 11:13 AM

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Not randomly. Entry level gaming card is one which is used for minimum requirements of most popular game titles. nVidia x50 range contains entry cards for modern gaming. nVidia x40 and x30 range is for old games. nVidia entry cards (release date - official recommended price, 2017 market price):

nVidia GTS 450 (2010 - $129, 2014 - $65, 2017 - unavailable)
nVidia GTX 750 Ti (2013 - $149, 2014/2017 - $80)
nVidia GTX 950 ($159, 2017 – $127)
nVidia GTX 1050 ($139, 2017 - $109)

Prices from www.videocardbenchmark.net (Amazon, Newegg)
Important note: GTX 950 has similar performance to 750 Ti. Have you noticed that market price for GTX 950 is much higher? One of the possibilities is that nVidia is trying to dry down inventory and control production of new cards in order to reduce supply and keep market prices of new cards high. Which is expected, considering that only 2 major players left on the gaming GPU market.



Makes sense if you are using Russian Rubles or Zimbabwean Dollars. Information above shows that it has little to do with inflation (see the note).



Argument would make more sense if Triple-A titles used Intel GPU for minimum requirements. Intel GPU runs fine older games or games on lowest possible settings.



Don't be smug, unless you made sure that facts are on your side and opponent can't back his arguments with logic and evidence .

Okay, maybe you didn't deserve such a brash response - but you didn't think it through before posting. Even this post, which I'm replying to, is based on false premises.

Firstly, for the love of god DO NOT use that website for comparing GPUs. It's very inaccurate. Instead, use this: http://hwbench.com/vgas/geforce-gtx-750-ti-vs-geforce-gtx-950
And as we can see, the 950 is 22% faster than the 750 Ti in gaming. This automatically dismantles your first argument because considering that both cards were being produced at the same time, it makes sense for the 950 to be more expensive.

And I disagree with x30/x40 is for old games at min details. HD Graphics is significantly slower than a 460 for example (the 460 is more than twice as fast). And you can even play modern games in 720p with those things. Sh!ttily, but you can.
Thus there is still a market for the x30/x40. Just because they don't get the spotlight doesn't mean they completely suck. They're really fine for modern games in 720p. That's the definition of entry level.

Inflation applies to every country out there, not just Russia or Zimbabwe, I don't know what you're getting at. Maybe I didn't catch your point.

And 'minimum requirements' frequently use very old GPUs. If you extrapolate towards iGPUs, you'll see that many modern games will run on them.
Sure, some AAA titles like ROTR will run like cock but others aren't so demanding.

#5392982 Posted on: 02/14/2017 09:53 PM

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I was basing my first comment on my past experience buying cards, and then I backed it up with real numbers, so it can't be called "false premises".



I've used well known site, which collected real data from more that 800,000 Video Cards. Why, for the fictional god's love, I should believe your site, which do not clearly tell where they are getting data? .



Yes, you are right here and I was wrong about performance. When it comes to PassMark scores they are 41% better on 950.



Not enough to dismantle. GTX 750 was released in 2013. One years later its price halved. GTX 950 was released in 2015, but its price dropped very little. There are two major explanations:
a) Manufacturing cost of GTX 750 is very cheap, so it could go down half way easily.
b) nVidia managed to take control on inventory and distribution, so they could control supply in order to increase price/profits on GTX 950. It works, because there are not enough GPU manufacturers to compete properly.
c) Something else...

Both explanations are normal business practice.



In 2013 47% of monitors had resolution 1920x1080 and higher, and we are talking about PC games with gaming cards. x30/x40 cards are for 2-4 year old games and low settings. "Sh!ttily, but you can" is accurate slogan when it comes to these cards and modern games, especially when they are badly ported from consoles.



Agree. Sometimes, I use nVidia GT 740 to play Battlefield 4 on lowest settings 1680x1050 at work .



PC master race is not fine with 720p .



Inflation of US dollar or Euro is too low and could not explain huge price differences inside range of 2-4 years, especially if prices vary ±30%. Not like Zimbabwean Dollar which can be used to explain any price hike next morning.

#5392987 Posted on: 02/14/2017 10:05 PM

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Isn't that statement alone all you need to be paying attention to? It is widely accepted nowadays that a GTX 1050 or a RX 460 are considered entry level for gaming, both of which are drastically better than a 740. As stated by xIcarus, IGPs are now known as entry level GPUs in general (so, not even gaming specific). By today's standards, anything below a 1050 or 460 is not meant for gaming. Their market is for things like low-power home and office PCs, media centers, and healthy upgrades to outdated PCs. They're also good for office-based OpenCL tasks (like spreadsheet calculations).

#5393230 Posted on: 02/15/2017 11:09 AM

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I was basing my first comment on my past experience buying cards, and then I backed it up with real numbers, so it can't be called "false premises".



I've used well known site, which collected real data from more that 800,000 Video Cards. Why, for the fictional god's love, I should believe your site, which do not clearly tell where they are getting data? .



Yes, you are right here and I was wrong about performance. When it comes to PassMark scores they are 41% better on 950.



Not enough to dismantle. GTX 750 was released in 2013. One years later its price halved. GTX 950 was released in 2015, but its price dropped very little. There are two major explanations:
a) Manufacturing cost of GTX 750 is very cheap, so it could go down half way easily.
b) nVidia managed to take control on inventory and distribution, so they could control supply in order to increase price/profits on GTX 950. It works, because there are not enough GPU manufacturers to compete properly.
c) Something else...

Both explanations are normal business practice.



In 2013 47% of monitors had resolution 1920x1080 and higher, and we are talking about PC games with gaming cards. x30/x40 cards are for 2-4 year old games and low settings. "Sh!ttily, but you can" is accurate slogan when it comes to these cards and modern games, especially when they are badly ported from consoles.



Agree. Sometimes, I use nVidia GT 740 to play Battlefield 4 on lowest settings 1680x1050 at work .



PC master race is not fine with 720p .



Inflation of US dollar or Euro is too low and could not explain huge price differences inside range of 2-4 years, especially if prices vary ±30%. Not like Zimbabwean Dollar which can be used to explain any price hike next morning.

What real numbers? You screwed up your argument by using videocardbenchmark which is known to be unreliable, while hwbench is the de-facto standard for comparing CPUs and GPUs.
I'm serious, this is not about 'why should you trust what I post'. Hwbench is pretty much universally accepted as one of the best GPU and CPU comparison web applications today. I warmly invite you to use it.

Since your performance comparison was inaccurate, your price comparison is largely invalid by extension.

The 750Ti had its price cut because it was 'included' in the 900 lineup so-to-speak. The 750Ti was being produced along with the 950 as if they were the same generation of cards (they kind of were, 750Ti is Maxwell).
750Ti was the exception, not the rule. The 950 was completely replaced by the 1050, and thus the 950:
a) didn't get a price cut
b) its production ceased
If you look back through time, what happened to the 950 happens almost all the time. For example the 770 didn't drop in price just because the 970 appeared. It was simply replaced by the 970 - 770 production ceased at that time.
There are also cases like the 290x which got its price cut because of competition.

I feel what you're saying about resolution, however I wasn't referring to the monitor's resolution but the ingame resolution. Sometimes, with a sh!tty enough card, you are forced to drop it lower.
A good amount of people have 4k monitors or TVs, that doesn't mean they all rock GTX1080s to properly play at that resolution. People with x40 cards are usually casual gamers who emphasize web browsing or watching movies and the likes.
Same goes for 1080p. It's the standard today, it doesn't mean everyone can game on it.

And you pretty much proved my point by saying you sometimes game on a 740 at work.

About the inflation talk, I finally understood what you were referring to. I thought you were talking about it long term, like since the 6600GT days or something like that.
Short-term price increase usually happens either when they get new tech into their cards, tech that has consumed a lot of R&D budget, or when they switch to an expensive or immature fab node.
As we all know, these are the first generation of cards on a 16/14 nm process. I'll admit I'm not sure about this, but I recall companies like Samsung saying that 14nm didn't bring a massive decrease in transistor cost. Something about yield rates? This might explain why Nvidia has jacked up its prices this generation. And this also makes me wonder what margins AMD is getting from their cards.

Does not explain why the 950 was so expensive though.

#5393407 Posted on: 02/15/2017 06:49 PM

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Oficially Hwbench.com is owned by LUIS AGUSTIN CIALCETA (LUISG2249@GMAIL.COM) in TRINIDAD, Uruguay, registered in 2015, and receives 7 times less users than PassMark's videocardbenchmark.net site. PassMark is a very well known and reputable software developer whose products are well known amongst professional for 20 years now.



In Trinidad?



No. It just shows that you did not get what I've wrote.



It is not so simple.



Now you are getting somewhere. nVidia is licensing production of their cards to third part manufacturers and probably forcing production ceasing dates on them to limit supply. Don't forget that main question to answer is: "Why entry gaming cards no longer drop in price after 2 years by 50% since release of GTX 750?"



Not exactly. It runs fine 4 year old game, on sub-standard resolution on lowest settings. That card is incapable to run any modern game, like latest two CoDs properly and ruins gaming experience.