AMD Navi Discussion

Where it "went wrong" is they both discovered that people would pay more and as a result they are now making the cards using process nodes in and around the cutting edge rather than a cheaper older one which was the norm until now. The 600 mm^2 4N 4090 die at $1600 for the complete card actually looks cheap to me when you start to compare die sizes to the AM5 cpus and even cheaper compared to Raptor Lake :-o

Just the 300 mm^2 die of the 7900 cards is already larger than all the dies of say a 7950X and with the relationship of yields to die sizes being as it is I don't think you can complain about their pricing if you aren't frothing at the mouth at the prices of the cpus?

Of course the 7900XT and 4080 both look horribly priced when compared to their flagships but until they know for sure they can't sell them they've no incentive to turn down profit.

Well tbh I wish they would go back to using a less advanced more affordable process note if that's the case, I had zero issues with how much performance we used to get every generation, particularly the fantastic value that used to be at the xx60 level cards for like 300euro.

Before I begin let me be clear, the 4080 and 7900XT are both truly horrible at their prices when put beside the 4090 and 7900 XTX. The naming and pricing is all about marketing games. nvidia didn't quite get away with the 4080 12GB but am I a cynic to say it helped them get the 4080 over the line?

A 6600 or 3050 are both in and around €300 now and what you are looking for and so is a 2060 which is pretty much exactly what you are asking for.

Looking at the naming scheme's to decide what level a card is at is basically playing into their marketing hands and how they have made people feel the need to spend more. If they kept following the very linear path (in raster performance Vs time) from the 560, 660, 760, 960 the 3050 would be nicely ahead of the curve and in fact the 1650 was only just a hair behind!

Take away all the names and look at die sizes and performance (and price if you want) and the 3050 is clearly part of the line going 560->660->760->960->1060->1660->3050. The 1060 (I'm talking about the 6GB to keep it a little simpler) was a bit of an outlier in terms of the fact it made a bigger leap forward in performance (when they went from 28nm to 16nm) despite going to the smallest die but it also saw the price back at the highest end of those cards instead of the lowest.

Now there are two new lines moving at a faster pace than before though I presume they will both revert unless they are willing to outbid Apple for the absolute bleeding edge node. One line is the 1050->1650->3050 and the other the 960->1060->2060->3060.

Despite all the above, the $249 for a 760 in 2013 is about $305 in 2022 so in real terms the 3060 at MSRP is less than 10% more expensive despite being maybe 50% ahead of the projected path from 560->960, or put the other way the $249 MSRP for the 3050 lands between the $199 for the 560 in 2011 and 960 in 2015.

Don't get me wrong, the 4080 is close enough the same size as the 560 (largest *60 until the 2060) and I'd love it if I could buy it for the inflation adjusted $250 but given that 560 was on a refinement of a 7 year old node the equivalent would at very best be 360mm^2 of TSMC's 12nm node (16nm refinement) used on the 16/20 series so in between a 1660 and 2060 (or between a 1080 and 1080ti on the unrefined TSMC 16nm might be closer really). Funnily enough a 3050 happens to fall right in there in terms of performance with the extra bit of ram and lower power consumption.

TLDR; how would we be any better off if nvidia had just announced an upcoming €300 4060 identical to what was actually released as a 2060 and the 4090 was somewhere between a 2080 and 2080ti in terms of performance, whether or not that was at a "bargain" 580 equivalent price of maybe $625 or 690 equivalent of maybe $1250? Hint, a €500 3060ti is in that 2080 to 2080ti zone as is the €400-€450 ish 6700 or 6700xt.

This is all far too complicated.

At the end of the day we need a 1080p card, a 1440p card and a 4k card. It needs to be that simple so that game developers can have a reasonably constrained set of capabilities to work with over, say, three generations of card in the marketplace at once, with players turning down the quality settings as their cards age.

Those core cards could be priced at (say) 300, 600, and 1000 euros, inflating over time, and ought to be released together and in large volumes so that people aren't "forced" to buy a card out of their budget due to timing or availability.

It's fine for there to be halo cards above that for niche applications like VR and triple screen SIM racing, or for people with more money than sense, but the normalisation of €1500+ cards in the public debate is not healthy.

Relatedly, I don't even understand why partner cards still exist. I like shopping but roll my eyes when presented with page after page of arbitrarily unique products, it's a tyranny of choice. Just engineer the products to be cool and quiet and make loads of them.

Don't know if any XTX went on sale today but the XT still freely available. I wonder who'll blink first on a price drop, AMD for that or Nvidia on the 4080

TBH yeah, I don't think any of the manufacturers will bother with lower-budget offerings.

Very insightful video. I'm interested in his and others follow-up. Definitely going to hold off purchasing for the time being (not like I can anyway) until things are cleared up.

How are the 7900xt cards holding up? Are they suffering the same design flaws as the xtx? About the only GPU bar the discounted 6950s that are tempting me to move from a 1080ti.

Saying that the 7900xt is still overpriced, wonder will they cut the price anytime soon.

I like hardware unboxed, they're the only people who break out performance comparisons like this in a readable graph.

Debauer said it was the reference card/cooler which does effect AIB's but usually the "cheapest" ones.

Debating getting an aib 7900xtx, once I've sold my current gpu I can get it down closeish to the 1k mark which is what I choose to limit myself to.

My issue is which card to get, I can get an xfx Merc 310 for 1350 on Amazon, but the others (red devil, gigabyte, nitro etc) are all coming in at around 1500 on overclockers when accounting for 23% vat. Are they worth spending more, or is the xfx a good card.

is it just the xfx cards giving trouble? (are they building all reference cards for all manufacturers?) or is it all reference cards?

I wonder would a 6800xt red devil (can be got at around 700) be a nice upgrade over my old 1080ti @ 1440p ultrawide, the thought of spending over 1k for either of the 7900 or 40xx cards is not sitting right, suppose the 4070ti is probably a better buy even though that price makes me even sicker 😔

I wonder what the 6700 xt/6750 xt performs like at 1440p in comparison to a 1080ti. If it's at or greater than 50% increase I'd definitely consider it. Would leave a bit if money to upgrade my old Intel 6700k

That's my thinking really, instead of spending stupid money on a gpu get a whole system upgrade with a reasonable (if that's even possible anymore) GPU, if I was to go something future proof would am4 be the best option? 7600x a good cpu?

was looking at 6900 xt's for the craic, priced at €900 and far above, why would anyone buy that, same situation for the 3080 really

Unless I'm being dumb that link says 19% average at 1440p and that's with the cpu change. Apples to apples with a 12900k they say 106 for the 1080ti, 125 for the 6700xt, 181 for a 6800xt and 192 for a 3090 (my guess at the best reasonable but maybe slightly conservative proxy for the 4070ti and 7900xt). I wouldn't take their numbers as gospel but bang per buck (ignoring ray tracing anyway) the 6800xt for €700 strikes me as the best choice if you aren't happy with your 1080ti and don't care about RT, DLSS3, media encoders or anything else which might try and convince you to splurge on the latest cards.

For a 7600X you meant AM5 not AM4 and yes the 7600x is fine for gaming and if you really want to throwmoney at future proofing I'd certainly go with AM5. Ignoring future proofing though the difference between a 7600X and 5600 with board and ram is so wide now though that if you are trying to talk yourself down from a 4070ti/7900xt to a 6800xt then you should probably talk yourself down to the value platform also ;)

The non-X and X3D AM5 chips were announced yesterday but no 7600X3D. Clocks are "interesting" for the X3D cpus and no prices for them yet either.

If you can get a 6800xt for €700 you can probably get a 5600, B550 board, 16GB ram and 6800xt for around the same price as a 7900xt/4070ti. They don't have a 5600 on that comparison site only a 5600X but that's a very small difference so they say (on ultra) you would get 94 now, 104 with just the 5600X change, 150 with just the 6800xt change and 177 if you do both.

https://www.gpucheck.com/en-usd/compare-multi/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-vs-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-vs-amd-radeon-rx-6800-xt-vs-amd-radeon-rx-6800-xt/intel-core-i7-6700k-4-00ghz-vs-amd-ryzen-5-5600x-vs-intel-core-i7-6700k-4-00ghz-vs-amd-ryzen-5-5600x/ultra-vs-ultra-vs-ultra-vs-ultra

Drop to high and it's 149, 163, 221 and 254.

https://www.gpucheck.com/en-usd/compare-multi/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-vs-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-vs-amd-radeon-rx-6800-xt-vs-amd-radeon-rx-6800-xt/intel-core-i7-6700k-4-00ghz-vs-amd-ryzen-5-5600x-vs-intel-core-i7-6700k-4-00ghz-vs-amd-ryzen-5-5600x/high-vs-high-vs-high-vs-high

If your not gaming, a 6 year old mid spec system is overkill for most things.