This matches the previous pattern of their latest releases: Geforce gaming GPUs are growing gangbusters. In their last quarter, revenue from geforce GPUs grew by a stunning 50% year over year. Now we see this.
Yes, they are probably stealing (some) thunder from AMD but most analysts agree that PG gaming as a whole is growing healthily. This is why I put little faith "dGPUs are doomed, doomed I tell you!" meme. Most non-gaming entry level dGPUs are getting butchered by iGPUs from Intel, which is why we're seeing overall declines but this masks the rise of PC gaming.
This is also in a perverse way good for all PC gamers. NV as a company is trying to diversify, but what we're seeing is that outside of their promising yet tiny automotive business, they are actually becoming MORE reliant on PC gaming.
I mean their Tegra business was supposed to be their insurance option, yet for all intents and purposes, it's a losing business in the tablet space and NV has given up altogether in the smartphone space.
So this is good, in a sense. Because it means that NV now has no choice but to focus laser-like on PC gaming because this is not just their legacy business - it's actually the business that is growing fast for them. Their diversification strategy has failed, by and large, and we're going to reap the benefits of that.
The problem is AMD isn't competitive enough with pricing. Take the R9 380 vs the GTX 960. They're identically priced, yet the 960 is usually faster with nearly half the TDP.
People make a big deal about the memory bus but AMD's architecture calls for a wider bus because it can saturate it, NVidia's Maxwell architecture has incredibly strong image compression so even 4GB VRAM on a 128-bit bus can be mostly utilized (most people say it realistically caps out around 3GB though.)
Fans can throw virtual fists back and forth all they want, but the numbers prove who the real winner is. AMD could succeed if they just priced their cards realistically, which would mean cutting all of them from top to bottom, including the Fury, around 20%. Now, the holiday season, would be a good time to do it too because NVidia wouldn't be able to react with a price drop or new incentive until after Christmas.
LOL, do you care to provide graphs where this mythical R9 380 is 10-20% faster than a GTX960? 20% faster would make it as fast as a GTX 780. All the benchmarks I've seen show the R9 380 is practically on-par with the R9 280, which isn't a surprise because its the same damn GPU clocked higher. It's important to point out the R9 285 and even the R9 280X are both faster than the R9 380, which is just embarrassing, even more so than NVidia's GTX 960's 128-bit memory bus. The saving grace of the GTX 960 is Maxwell's texture compression does a decent job of filling up over 3GB of the 4GB models VRAM. Yes, Tonga fills more memory with textures and can run higher resolutions than GTX 960's Maxwell, mostly due to the 256-bit memory bus, but at the end of the day, Maxwell is a far more efficient GPU and can really stretch its legs to show superiority. It isn't more powerful, but it doesn't have to be because its more balanced.
But as I said, they take blows all day long between games, resolutions, and who's benchmarking them. But one thing can't be disputed. GTX 960 is cheaper, and it uses a LOT less power.
"The big question, should you chose NVIDIA GTX 960 4GB or AMD R9 380 4GB? Honestly, they trade blows in performance, one is faster here, and the other is faster there. You will have to look closely at the games you play to differentiate between one or the other. The MSI GTX 960 GAMING 4G has a lot of overclocking potential. When overclocked the GTX 960 and R9 380 perform more similar than not. If you are wondering which one is more "future proof" both will be able to run DX12 games in Windows 10. The key factor to look at is pricing and the factory overclock you get out of the box. Take your time, do some research and chose the one that is priced better at the time, and has a high factory overclock."
Wow JesseKramer you are just full of excuses now. You cherry-picked a single review or simply ignored the fact that the reviewed card was overclocked.
Listen, you can be an AMD fanboy all you want here, it doesn't matter. But facts are facts, NVidia is killing AMD at a rate where AMD will be bankrupt if they don't do something soon. And that is bad for everybody.
Not arguing either of those points, I'm brand agnostic. nvidia certainly has all the market share
Possibly good advice, though I'd argue AMD has always pulled the price lever, and it hasn't seemed to have helped.
But I stand by my statement, the 380 is faster than the 960.
I'm certainly not cherry picking, I'd argue you are.
And you've changed your stance.
First it was "yet the 960 is usually faster"
Then it was "they take blows all day long"
And you made a couple of other statements that are just plain wrong
"R9 285 and even the R9 280X are both faster than the R9 380"
Sure the 280x is faster than the 285 (as it should be it has a bunch more processors) But the 380 is faster than the 285.
"20% faster would make it as fast as a GTX 780"
No, it would take about 35-40% more performance for a 960 to equal a 780
"R9 380 is practically on-par with the R9 280, which isn't a surprise because its the same damn GPU clocked higher."
They are not the same GPU. Tahiti vs Tonga isn't the same as Hawaii vs Granada. 380 is GCN 1.2, 280 is GCN 1.0
You are also ignoring that the HardOCP review is from four months ago. Four months of driver updates and games patches later, perhaps the landscape has changed somewhat, no?
But go right ahead, throw the fanboy term around, ad hominem all you like. it doesn't strengthen your argument, it actually undermines it.
>"R9 285 and even the R9 280X are both faster than the R9 380"
"Sure the 280x is faster than the 285 (as it should be it has a bunch more processors) But the 380 is faster than the 285."
Do you care to explain how the R9 380 is faster than the R9 285 when they are IDENTICAL? The R9 380 is just a rebadged card. The only difference is the clock speed, something easily rectified in 30 seconds.
I'm going to go on record here and say I have an MSI R9 285 and an Asus GTX 960, both running 1920x1080 monitors on overclocked Core i5's, and the GTX 960 is faster in Battlefield 4 (a game optimized for Radeon GPU's) and the R9 285, mildly overclocked to 1020MHz (a clockspeed the R9 380 ships at in many cards I believe) is faster in Bioshock.
If you want to throw overclocking into the mix, the GTX 960 will beat the R9 285/380 in just about everything, because it can clock beyond 1400MHz in some cases. I've gotten mind to 1425/8000 and although it seems to throttle sometimes, it still bests the R9 285 by a few FPS.
Just because the R9 285/380 has more was FP performance and a 256-bit bus doesn't make it faster. That memory bus actually causes more power consumption and is mostly underutilized. Probably explains why AMD is shipping a R9 380X next week with hand-picked chips to clock it higher. Then the GTX 960 won't be as relevant, unless of course AMD actually ships the card for $250 as is rumored. That'll be insulting to the GTX 970, which can be had for $270-$280.
@Samus: "Do you care to explain how the R9 380 is faster than the R9 285 when they are IDENTICAL? The R9 380 is just a rebadged card. The only difference is the clock speed, something easily rectified in 30 seconds."
This is what you should have said earlier. A 5.6% increase in clock speed with no other changes is not going to be more than 5.6% faster. That's at best going from 30 fps to 31.5 fps. More likely a lot less than that. Also, as you said, easily rectified by a R9 285 in 30 seconds. Again, I'll skip the nVidia vs ATi comparison. It doesn't interest me at the moment. Probably be more interested when ATi's next gen HBM architecture and Pascal hit.
I've used the 380 in all it's incarnations thru the years.. and I also own a 4G960. I purchased the 960 because it doesn't run as hot and it doesn't use as much power but there's no way it's as fast as the 380..
Depends on your 380 and depends on your 960. If your 380 is overclocked from factory (most are) then you might want to overclock your 960 (some are, and those that are, its very mild)
On a level playing field, the 960 is generally faster mostly because more games favor NVidia. Even if its the weaker GPU, it's irrelevant if the engines are not optimized for it. We all thought this would change when AMD secured design wins for all the next-gen consoles, but it hasn't.
No Samus.. I have one of the fastest clocked 960s (from MSI) and I've used many different variants on what's now called the 380 and speed wise? It's not as good.
@Samus: " All the benchmarks I've seen show the R9 380 is practically on-par with the R9 280, which isn't a surprise because its the same damn GPU clocked higher."
I'm not interested in arguing the performance aspect, but the R9 380 is definitely not the same GPU as the R9 280. GCN 1.2 vs GCN 1.0. 256bit memory bus vs 384bit memory bus. Tonga vs Tahiti. I'll source this information right here at anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9387/amd-radeon-300-...
@Samus: " It's important to point out the R9 285 and even the R9 280X are both faster than the R9 380" See the link above. The R9 380 is the same silicon as the R9 285 (Tonga) with a higher clock rate. Now I'm not going to argue the merit of a paltry 52MHz, and you could argue it isn't faster, but faster is definitely not slower.
It's actually based off the 285.. Reviewers loved it but criticized it's 2G memory.. and the fact that it really didn't have a place at the time with the 280X being better. But it brought all the goodies to the table (feature wise) introduced in other products.
The last AMD financial statement revealed their margins are too low, and they're bleeding money because of it. Now you're suggesting they FURTHER reduce prices, so they can increase market share.
EXCELLENT! They'll lose money with negative margins, but make it up in volume....
Economies of scale? You mean that thing that makes Apple earn way less cash than any other smartphone/computer manufacturer because the others are cheaper and have a bigger market share? :)
Economies of scale only work _after_ you’ve reached a ginormous market share, _and_ you have a product that is not worse than what you competitors offer, _and_ your margins are high enough that the total of sales puts you in the black.
AMD is losing money. They compete in a market that completely changes the product lines every few years, and one where they might or might not actually have a product that the people want to buy. What if nvidia brings out a product that is simply faster, period? Then AMD would sell _less_ and with _smaller_ margins—going for "economies of scale" is suicide in such a scenario.
I don’t think webdoctors is the one who needs to take a class.
I honestly think AMD needs a way stronger marketing scheme. AMD itself as brand wasnt as respected as ATI in the video market. then, theres Nvidia mentions and logos EVERYWHERE. You hardly see AMD ads.
No surprise everyone goes to Nvidia despite the 970 fiasco and AMD card performing very well.
AMD generally wins in the midrange and loses on the low end and high end.
But the range from the nvidia 960-980 has amd beating nvidia in the performance per dollar category. The halo products of the 980 ti vs the fury x is where that is flipped and amd has the same price for a bit less performance.
But the midrange technical wins vs sales losses cannot be underestimated. Look at the amazon sales rankings.
The 970 is far and away the most popular single gpu card, that is in the 300-350 dollar price band. That is followed by a 960. Amd has cards that beat both in terms of performance per dollar with a 380 and 390, and it is NOT being translated into sales.
The problem therefore is perception and people getting distorted information on the internet about terrible drivers damping amd sales. The 970 should not be the most popular card anymore based on merit, but merit is not what drives these sales.
NVIDIA does know how to play the PR game in the GPU space better than anybody else. Esp. the whole FUD/astroturfing business. The amount of "review" sites that basically copy-pasta the NV PR package they're given directly from corporate is fascinating.
"Take the R9 380 vs the GTX 960." :) Funny, somebody replied before me...what on Earth ?!? R9 380 is a really good card, full 4GB that actually are usable, yet everybody keeps buying the GTX960 or GTX950 for gaming...pathetic. GTX980ti and GTX980 are good cards, even money wise are OK purchase, but anything down the stream of NVidia offers is just terrible deal, yet people buy.
Ever since the Titan SC, their HPC side is doing quite decently as well. Especially now with the U.S. president's initiative to get his country back at the top of the global supercomputer ranking. Rumor has it that Nvidia has got its finger in that pie.
I would say that their diversification strategy has failed just yet. AFAIK they are not planning to drop Tegra and the simple fact is that they started DECADES behind some of the other players. With each iteration they managed to close the gap a little, it isn't far fetched that given continued development it could be successful in the future and with overall financial results like this they can afford to do just that.
Not to be a party pooper, but desktop gpu sales are not likely to be the result of these numbers. I'd wager that the fact that pretty much any laptop with a dgpu has an nvidia. After all, Maxwell was a huge push to fit good performance into a smaller tdp. I'm no market expert and haven't done much research except to find desktop gpu sales have been in decline up to at least Q2 2015 where it hit a 10 year low (http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/an... If you factor in that 80% of gpu's for pc are nvidia, then that means 80% of the profit from gpus is also going to nvidia. Its not necessarily a sign that gpu sales in general are on the rise, its that they have money coming in now that used to go to amd.
Or I'm completely wrong and the time where everyone ditches consoles for super powerful pc's is nigh! XD
Gaming notebook sales are not gonna push these kinds of numbers. The market just isn't that big. Desktop GPU's are a huge market, production studio's to esports gaming houses, they all are using nvidia desktop.
True, gaming notebook sales won't push those numbers up, but notebooks for the general public will, which is exactly my point. Amd gpus can (rarely) be found in gaming notebooks, but try and find just a regular old $600-$800 laptop with an amd gpu (not counting apus, which there's not much of those either.) Sure pc gaming and esports are on the rise, but everyone buys laptops, and most of those either just have an intel cpu with igpu or an intel cpu with an nvidia gpu. Tegra and maxwell shows how badly Nvidia is going after that mobile market (I mean they got the full sized gtx980 into laptops, that doesn't happen by accident). It's not to say they are abandoning desktop gpus, but they want non-gamers' money too. Kids going to college buy laptops, laptops are common birthday presents, laptops are in every home. Laptops can run league of legends, dota 2, hearthstone, heroes of the storm, smite, call of duty and many other games which are free to anyone who just so happens to get said laptops. Therefore most games are run on nvidia because they've penetrated outside their original hardcore market, where amd is losing ground in every place BUT the gaming market (I'm assuming console sales somewhat balance out their less than exciting products as of late in the hardcore pc gaming world.) I'd love to see an actual chart on laptop gpu sales vs desktop gpu sales for both amd and nvidia as I'm only speculating but I think the gap between nvidia's laptop sales and amd's laptop sales is much larger than in the desktop market.
Note about the growth of nVidia stock value... this was quite expected given how Fury X wasn't able to beat nVidia flagship and ends up on-par at best. But I wouldn't expect THAT big growth.
It says in the article that Nv is buying back their stock and paying out $1B to shareholders, both these things directly raise stock value quite aside from any other performance metric.
I think the recent rise un NVIDIA's stock price mught have to do with investors finally becoming convinced of two things. Firstly and most importantly is that the PC gaming market has insulation from the overall PC market and that the softness in the latter does not necessarily portend softness in the former. Secondly is that NVIDIA seems to have pulled in front of AMD noticably, enough so that the old expectation that as soon as one company gets ahead it won't be long before the other leapfrogs them has diminished.
Various companies have various weird fiscal years... like starting in July, first Q being Q1, others have "Q"s marked by calendar layout (so the first one can be Q4), some mark fiscal year number by first day of fiscal year, some by last... I have no clue how nVidia counts it though...
If this is the 3rd quarter then there is still a quarter of their financial year to go which means their financial year will end in 2016 making this their 2016 financial year.
It's a very basic accounting practice and is how companies label their financial year.
Each financial year is labelled when the year ends not when it starts or by calendar year it is being reported in.
Fiscal years are "named" by the year of the ending date. Nvidias fiscal year is from ~26th of January until 25th of January next year. Therefore, the currently running fiscal year is FY2016 and they start their 2017Q1 around 26th of January 2016 or roundabout there.
The so called gaming segment is misleading. Some low price points that used to be in the OEM segment, get better in perf over time and become good enough to be counted in the gaming segment. That natural transition enables them to inflate the gaming numbers and the far more relevant segment is the entire PC GPU segment. Tegra outside auto at just 50 million included their own devices (tablet, TV box) that retail at high ASP. So volumes for both the chip and their own devices are very very low and they need to stop making their own devices or make much better devices that actually sell.
This is exactly what AMD said would happen. They would lose gamers to NVIDIA when miners were depleting all the stock. As soon as mining died they would be left in a financial crisis and NVIDIA would make off with their business.
Unless you need to upgrade now, I'd wait till next year when we get 14/16nm gpu's. That's the double performance upgrade we've been waiting years for... Buying any of the current gpu's (unless you have to) seems like a waste to me.
While I wanted a 560Ti (my last card before that being a 460) Nvidia priced itself way out there and when it came time to buy.. the AMD alternative was way better. The 760/70 were on par products with what AMD offered as well.. so it simply came down to pricing and what people wanted.
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Mondozai - Thursday, November 5, 2015 - link
This matches the previous pattern of their latest releases: Geforce gaming GPUs are growing gangbusters. In their last quarter, revenue from geforce GPUs grew by a stunning 50% year over year. Now we see this.Yes, they are probably stealing (some) thunder from AMD but most analysts agree that PG gaming as a whole is growing healthily. This is why I put little faith "dGPUs are doomed, doomed I tell you!" meme. Most non-gaming entry level dGPUs are getting butchered by iGPUs from Intel, which is why we're seeing overall declines but this masks the rise of PC gaming.
This is also in a perverse way good for all PC gamers. NV as a company is trying to diversify, but what we're seeing is that outside of their promising yet tiny automotive business, they are actually becoming MORE reliant on PC gaming.
I mean their Tegra business was supposed to be their insurance option, yet for all intents and purposes, it's a losing business in the tablet space and NV has given up altogether in the smartphone space.
So this is good, in a sense. Because it means that NV now has no choice but to focus laser-like on PC gaming because this is not just their legacy business - it's actually the business that is growing fast for them. Their diversification strategy has failed, by and large, and we're going to reap the benefits of that.
Samus - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
The problem is AMD isn't competitive enough with pricing. Take the R9 380 vs the GTX 960. They're identically priced, yet the 960 is usually faster with nearly half the TDP.People make a big deal about the memory bus but AMD's architecture calls for a wider bus because it can saturate it, NVidia's Maxwell architecture has incredibly strong image compression so even 4GB VRAM on a 128-bit bus can be mostly utilized (most people say it realistically caps out around 3GB though.)
Fans can throw virtual fists back and forth all they want, but the numbers prove who the real winner is. AMD could succeed if they just priced their cards realistically, which would mean cutting all of them from top to bottom, including the Fury, around 20%. Now, the holiday season, would be a good time to do it too because NVidia wouldn't be able to react with a price drop or new incentive until after Christmas.
C'mon AMD, JUST DO IT.
JesseKramer - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
"R9 380 vs the GTX 960. They're identically priced, yet the 960 is usually faster with nearly half the TDP."What on earth?
R9 380 is faster than a GTX 960 by 10-20%
Samus - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
LOL, do you care to provide graphs where this mythical R9 380 is 10-20% faster than a GTX960? 20% faster would make it as fast as a GTX 780. All the benchmarks I've seen show the R9 380 is practically on-par with the R9 280, which isn't a surprise because its the same damn GPU clocked higher. It's important to point out the R9 285 and even the R9 280X are both faster than the R9 380, which is just embarrassing, even more so than NVidia's GTX 960's 128-bit memory bus. The saving grace of the GTX 960 is Maxwell's texture compression does a decent job of filling up over 3GB of the 4GB models VRAM. Yes, Tonga fills more memory with textures and can run higher resolutions than GTX 960's Maxwell, mostly due to the 256-bit memory bus, but at the end of the day, Maxwell is a far more efficient GPU and can really stretch its legs to show superiority. It isn't more powerful, but it doesn't have to be because its more balanced.But as I said, they take blows all day long between games, resolutions, and who's benchmarking them. But one thing can't be disputed. GTX 960 is cheaper, and it uses a LOT less power.
JesseKramer - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
I notice you aren't backing your claims up with any sources either.http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=3779490...
380 is faster than 285 and 960.
380 and 280 are not the same GPU. Tahiti vs Tonga isn't the same as Hawaii vs Granada.
380 is GCN 1.2, 280 is GCN 1.0
2GB video cards are a terrible idea, even with great compression and only at 1080p. It is becoming a real bottle neck in current games.
JesseKramer - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
"Take the R9 380 vs the GTX 960. They're identically priced""GTX 960 is cheaper"
Which is it?
The 960 certainly uses less power, ~70watts less in average gaming load. But it is slower.
defaultluser - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
I'm sorry, but you're wrong. This review compared two factory-overclocked cards:http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/08/04/msi_gefo...
The result? They perform EXACTLY THE SAME.
"The big question, should you chose NVIDIA GTX 960 4GB or AMD R9 380 4GB? Honestly, they trade blows in performance, one is faster here, and the other is faster there. You will have to look closely at the games you play to differentiate between one or the other. The MSI GTX 960 GAMING 4G has a lot of overclocking potential. When overclocked the GTX 960 and R9 380 perform more similar than not. If you are wondering which one is more "future proof" both will be able to run DX12 games in Windows 10. The key factor to look at is pricing and the factory overclock you get out of the box. Take your time, do some research and chose the one that is priced better at the time, and has a high factory overclock."
JesseKramer - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Sure, if you look at a review from the 4th of August which only contains five games.The TPU chart I linked to is from the 28th of October and averages fifteen games.
Samus - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
Wow JesseKramer you are just full of excuses now. You cherry-picked a single review or simply ignored the fact that the reviewed card was overclocked.Listen, you can be an AMD fanboy all you want here, it doesn't matter. But facts are facts, NVidia is killing AMD at a rate where AMD will be bankrupt if they don't do something soon. And that is bad for everybody.
My advice was simply to drop their prices.
JesseKramer - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
Not arguing either of those points, I'm brand agnostic. nvidia certainly has all the market sharePossibly good advice, though I'd argue AMD has always pulled the price lever, and it hasn't seemed to have helped.
But I stand by my statement, the 380 is faster than the 960.
I'm certainly not cherry picking, I'd argue you are.
And you've changed your stance.
First it was "yet the 960 is usually faster"
Then it was "they take blows all day long"
And you made a couple of other statements that are just plain wrong
"R9 285 and even the R9 280X are both faster than the R9 380"
Sure the 280x is faster than the 285 (as it should be it has a bunch more processors) But the 380 is faster than the 285.
"20% faster would make it as fast as a GTX 780"
No, it would take about 35-40% more performance for a 960 to equal a 780
"R9 380 is practically on-par with the R9 280, which isn't a surprise because its the same damn GPU clocked higher."
They are not the same GPU. Tahiti vs Tonga isn't the same as Hawaii vs Granada.
380 is GCN 1.2, 280 is GCN 1.0
You are also ignoring that the HardOCP review is from four months ago. Four months of driver updates and games patches later, perhaps the landscape has changed somewhat, no?
But go right ahead, throw the fanboy term around, ad hominem all you like. it doesn't strengthen your argument, it actually undermines it.
Samus - Sunday, November 8, 2015 - link
>"R9 285 and even the R9 280X are both faster than the R9 380""Sure the 280x is faster than the 285 (as it should be it has a bunch more processors) But the 380 is faster than the 285."
Do you care to explain how the R9 380 is faster than the R9 285 when they are IDENTICAL? The R9 380 is just a rebadged card. The only difference is the clock speed, something easily rectified in 30 seconds.
I'm going to go on record here and say I have an MSI R9 285 and an Asus GTX 960, both running 1920x1080 monitors on overclocked Core i5's, and the GTX 960 is faster in Battlefield 4 (a game optimized for Radeon GPU's) and the R9 285, mildly overclocked to 1020MHz (a clockspeed the R9 380 ships at in many cards I believe) is faster in Bioshock.
If you want to throw overclocking into the mix, the GTX 960 will beat the R9 285/380 in just about everything, because it can clock beyond 1400MHz in some cases. I've gotten mind to 1425/8000 and although it seems to throttle sometimes, it still bests the R9 285 by a few FPS.
Just because the R9 285/380 has more was FP performance and a 256-bit bus doesn't make it faster. That memory bus actually causes more power consumption and is mostly underutilized. Probably explains why AMD is shipping a R9 380X next week with hand-picked chips to clock it higher. Then the GTX 960 won't be as relevant, unless of course AMD actually ships the card for $250 as is rumored. That'll be insulting to the GTX 970, which can be had for $270-$280.
BurntMyBacon - Monday, November 9, 2015 - link
@Samus: "Do you care to explain how the R9 380 is faster than the R9 285 when they are IDENTICAL? The R9 380 is just a rebadged card. The only difference is the clock speed, something easily rectified in 30 seconds."This is what you should have said earlier. A 5.6% increase in clock speed with no other changes is not going to be more than 5.6% faster. That's at best going from 30 fps to 31.5 fps. More likely a lot less than that. Also, as you said, easily rectified by a R9 285 in 30 seconds. Again, I'll skip the nVidia vs ATi comparison. It doesn't interest me at the moment. Probably be more interested when ATi's next gen HBM architecture and Pascal hit.
just4U - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
I've used the 380 in all it's incarnations thru the years.. and I also own a 4G960. I purchased the 960 because it doesn't run as hot and it doesn't use as much power but there's no way it's as fast as the 380..Samus - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
Depends on your 380 and depends on your 960. If your 380 is overclocked from factory (most are) then you might want to overclock your 960 (some are, and those that are, its very mild)On a level playing field, the 960 is generally faster mostly because more games favor NVidia. Even if its the weaker GPU, it's irrelevant if the engines are not optimized for it. We all thought this would change when AMD secured design wins for all the next-gen consoles, but it hasn't.
tamalero - Thursday, November 12, 2015 - link
You know, its funny that you accuse someone else of using excuses.You're doing wild in the comments with excuses.
just4U - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
No Samus.. I have one of the fastest clocked 960s (from MSI) and I've used many different variants on what's now called the 380 and speed wise? It's not as good.BurntMyBacon - Monday, November 9, 2015 - link
@Samus: " All the benchmarks I've seen show the R9 380 is practically on-par with the R9 280, which isn't a surprise because its the same damn GPU clocked higher."I'm not interested in arguing the performance aspect, but the R9 380 is definitely not the same GPU as the R9 280. GCN 1.2 vs GCN 1.0. 256bit memory bus vs 384bit memory bus. Tonga vs Tahiti. I'll source this information right here at anandtech:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9387/amd-radeon-300-...
@Samus: " It's important to point out the R9 285 and even the R9 280X are both faster than the R9 380"
See the link above. The R9 380 is the same silicon as the R9 285 (Tonga) with a higher clock rate. Now I'm not going to argue the merit of a paltry 52MHz, and you could argue it isn't faster, but faster is definitely not slower.
just4U - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
It's actually based off the 285.. Reviewers loved it but criticized it's 2G memory.. and the fact that it really didn't have a place at the time with the 280X being better. But it brought all the goodies to the table (feature wise) introduced in other products.webdoctors - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
The last AMD financial statement revealed their margins are too low, and they're bleeding money because of it. Now you're suggesting they FURTHER reduce prices, so they can increase market share.EXCELLENT! They'll lose money with negative margins, but make it up in volume....
Samus - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
Take a macroeconomics class and you'll understand precisely how economies of scale work.xype - Sunday, November 8, 2015 - link
Economies of scale? You mean that thing that makes Apple earn way less cash than any other smartphone/computer manufacturer because the others are cheaper and have a bigger market share? :)Economies of scale only work _after_ you’ve reached a ginormous market share, _and_ you have a product that is not worse than what you competitors offer, _and_ your margins are high enough that the total of sales puts you in the black.
AMD is losing money. They compete in a market that completely changes the product lines every few years, and one where they might or might not actually have a product that the people want to buy. What if nvidia brings out a product that is simply faster, period? Then AMD would sell _less_ and with _smaller_ margins—going for "economies of scale" is suicide in such a scenario.
I don’t think webdoctors is the one who needs to take a class.
tamalero - Thursday, November 12, 2015 - link
I honestly think AMD needs a way stronger marketing scheme.AMD itself as brand wasnt as respected as ATI in the video market.
then, theres Nvidia mentions and logos EVERYWHERE. You hardly see AMD ads.
No surprise everyone goes to Nvidia despite the 970 fiasco and AMD card performing very well.
Jon Irenicus - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
AMD generally wins in the midrange and loses on the low end and high end.But the range from the nvidia 960-980 has amd beating nvidia in the performance per dollar category. The halo products of the 980 ti vs the fury x is where that is flipped and amd has the same price for a bit less performance.
But the midrange technical wins vs sales losses cannot be underestimated. Look at the amazon sales rankings.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/pc/284822/ref...
The 970 is far and away the most popular single gpu card, that is in the 300-350 dollar price band. That is followed by a 960. Amd has cards that beat both in terms of performance per dollar with a 380 and 390, and it is NOT being translated into sales.
The problem therefore is perception and people getting distorted information on the internet about terrible drivers damping amd sales. The 970 should not be the most popular card anymore based on merit, but merit is not what drives these sales.
medi01 - Monday, November 9, 2015 - link
960 is slower than R9 380.R9 380 consumes about 7-30w more power IN GAMES.
But you outlined the problem right, FUD does count and nVidia fuds well.
koko4kaka - Saturday, November 14, 2015 - link
NVIDIA does know how to play the PR game in the GPU space better than anybody else. Esp. the whole FUD/astroturfing business. The amount of "review" sites that basically copy-pasta the NV PR package they're given directly from corporate is fascinating.Ananke - Monday, November 9, 2015 - link
"Take the R9 380 vs the GTX 960.":) Funny, somebody replied before me...what on Earth ?!? R9 380 is a really good card, full 4GB that actually are usable, yet everybody keeps buying the GTX960 or GTX950 for gaming...pathetic.
GTX980ti and GTX980 are good cards, even money wise are OK purchase, but anything down the stream of NVidia offers is just terrible deal, yet people buy.
D. Lister - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Ever since the Titan SC, their HPC side is doing quite decently as well. Especially now with the U.S. president's initiative to get his country back at the top of the global supercomputer ranking. Rumor has it that Nvidia has got its finger in that pie.http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/obama-signs...
squngy - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
I would say that their diversification strategy has failed just yet.AFAIK they are not planning to drop Tegra and the simple fact is that they started DECADES behind some of the other players. With each iteration they managed to close the gap a little, it isn't far fetched that given continued development it could be successful in the future and with overall financial results like this they can afford to do just that.
Dirk_Funk - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Not to be a party pooper, but desktop gpu sales are not likely to be the result of these numbers. I'd wager that the fact that pretty much any laptop with a dgpu has an nvidia. After all, Maxwell was a huge push to fit good performance into a smaller tdp. I'm no market expert and haven't done much research except to find desktop gpu sales have been in decline up to at least Q2 2015 where it hit a 10 year low (http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/an... If you factor in that 80% of gpu's for pc are nvidia, then that means 80% of the profit from gpus is also going to nvidia. Its not necessarily a sign that gpu sales in general are on the rise, its that they have money coming in now that used to go to amd.Or I'm completely wrong and the time where everyone ditches consoles for super powerful pc's is nigh! XD
Morawka - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
Gaming notebook sales are not gonna push these kinds of numbers. The market just isn't that big. Desktop GPU's are a huge market, production studio's to esports gaming houses, they all are using nvidia desktop.Dirk_Funk - Sunday, November 8, 2015 - link
True, gaming notebook sales won't push those numbers up, but notebooks for the general public will, which is exactly my point. Amd gpus can (rarely) be found in gaming notebooks, but try and find just a regular old $600-$800 laptop with an amd gpu (not counting apus, which there's not much of those either.) Sure pc gaming and esports are on the rise, but everyone buys laptops, and most of those either just have an intel cpu with igpu or an intel cpu with an nvidia gpu. Tegra and maxwell shows how badly Nvidia is going after that mobile market (I mean they got the full sized gtx980 into laptops, that doesn't happen by accident). It's not to say they are abandoning desktop gpus, but they want non-gamers' money too. Kids going to college buy laptops, laptops are common birthday presents, laptops are in every home. Laptops can run league of legends, dota 2, hearthstone, heroes of the storm, smite, call of duty and many other games which are free to anyone who just so happens to get said laptops. Therefore most games are run on nvidia because they've penetrated outside their original hardcore market, where amd is losing ground in every place BUT the gaming market (I'm assuming console sales somewhat balance out their less than exciting products as of late in the hardcore pc gaming world.) I'd love to see an actual chart on laptop gpu sales vs desktop gpu sales for both amd and nvidia as I'm only speculating but I think the gap between nvidia's laptop sales and amd's laptop sales is much larger than in the desktop market.Dirk_Funk - Sunday, November 8, 2015 - link
Idk why I put call of duty there. It's not free but I guess laptops can run it lol.HollyDOL - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Note about the growth of nVidia stock value... this was quite expected given how Fury X wasn't able to beat nVidia flagship and ends up on-par at best. But I wouldn't expect THAT big growth.squngy - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
It says in the article that Nv is buying back their stock and paying out $1B to shareholders, both these things directly raise stock value quite aside from any other performance metric.Yojimbo - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
I think the recent rise un NVIDIA's stock price mught have to do with investors finally becoming convinced of two things. Firstly and most importantly is that the PC gaming market has insulation from the overall PC market and that the softness in the latter does not necessarily portend softness in the former. Secondly is that NVIDIA seems to have pulled in front of AMD noticably, enough so that the old expectation that as soon as one company gets ahead it won't be long before the other leapfrogs them has diminished.djmcave - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
I must have skiped a year ? 2016 Results ?HollyDOL - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Various companies have various weird fiscal years... like starting in July, first Q being Q1, others have "Q"s marked by calendar layout (so the first one can be Q4), some mark fiscal year number by first day of fiscal year, some by last... I have no clue how nVidia counts it though...Essence_of_War - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
For some inexplicable reason Nvidia's fiscal year one-year ahead of the calendar year.Don't ask. You won't get a sensible explanation :)
jimbo2779 - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
If this is the 3rd quarter then there is still a quarter of their financial year to go which means their financial year will end in 2016 making this their 2016 financial year.It's a very basic accounting practice and is how companies label their financial year.
Each financial year is labelled when the year ends not when it starts or by calendar year it is being reported in.
djmcave - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
I have noticed it before , but usually its Q1 starting in Fall/End of summer.Having Q3 at this time, let me to believe it was a typo or something.
zepi - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Fiscal years are "named" by the year of the ending date. Nvidias fiscal year is from ~26th of January until 25th of January next year. Therefore, the currently running fiscal year is FY2016 and they start their 2017Q1 around 26th of January 2016 or roundabout there.jjj - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
The so called gaming segment is misleading. Some low price points that used to be in the OEM segment, get better in perf over time and become good enough to be counted in the gaming segment. That natural transition enables them to inflate the gaming numbers and the far more relevant segment is the entire PC GPU segment.Tegra outside auto at just 50 million included their own devices (tablet, TV box) that retail at high ASP. So volumes for both the chip and their own devices are very very low and they need to stop making their own devices or make much better devices that actually sell.
variform - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
This is exactly what AMD said would happen. They would lose gamers to NVIDIA when miners were depleting all the stock. As soon as mining died they would be left in a financial crisis and NVIDIA would make off with their business.jeffry - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
Nvidia is printing money. Their financial performance is god damn good.....zlandar - Sunday, November 8, 2015 - link
My last three video cards have been Nvidia: 570, 770, and 980ti.AMD can't compete except by cranking up the wattage and heat. Nvidia has better driver support and updates IMO.
Price gap is not enough for me to switch.
Need AMD to stick around to keep Nvidia from raising prices but I'm not going to buy their cards out of pity.
andrewaggb - Monday, November 9, 2015 - link
Unless you need to upgrade now, I'd wait till next year when we get 14/16nm gpu's. That's the double performance upgrade we've been waiting years for... Buying any of the current gpu's (unless you have to) seems like a waste to me.tamalero - Thursday, November 12, 2015 - link
die shrinking doubling performance is a myth.koko4kaka - Saturday, November 14, 2015 - link
It does work for massive parallel designs like GPUs.just4U - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
While I wanted a 560Ti (my last card before that being a 460) Nvidia priced itself way out there and when it came time to buy.. the AMD alternative was way better. The 760/70 were on par products with what AMD offered as well.. so it simply came down to pricing and what people wanted.