Question GTX 1660, Nvidia's high-to-low release process, etc

[King_V]

Ok, I have to admit, I've been pretty impressed with the GTX 1660Ti, and now, moreso, with the GTX 1660, in terms of price to performance.

I'll admit, what I don't understand is whether Nvidia's "release the high end cards first, then trickle down to the lower cards" process makes sense.

This is what I'm looking for other peoples' thoughts on.

The first Turning cards came out before the holiday season.

I was looking for something to run in my son's PC, 2560x1080 monitor.

I went with an RX 580 8GB because there were amazing deals on them. The one I got was $160 after rebates but before sales tax.

The RX 590 was too pricey for the amount of improvement it was over the 580.

I was not in the market for a high end card. So, had the 1660 come out pre-Christmas, I would certainly have paid around $220 for the performance that offered over the 580. I can't be the only one who would've chosen that way.

But - I'm just one guy. I guess my ultimate question is: overall, does this waiting time before releasing the mid-range cards help Nvidia, or, as it appears to me, does it potentially hurt them?

I highly doubt people in the market for a mid-range card were going to buy, say, an RTX 2070 or higher just because nothing new in the lower tiers was available. Though, I wonder if I'm missing something about this release strategy. I realize I'm also assuming they were capable of releasing the RTX 2060, GTX 1660Ti, and GTX 1660 in late 2018.

 

[13thmonkey]

You get the halo effect, and you don't get the wait and see effect.

If you can afford the big card you can buy the big card knowing that there will not be a bigger card on its way (for some time), and you get those that can't afford the big card gain more and more anticipation about the smaller cards, potentially even springing for the bigger cards.

The other way around and you see a medium card that you think does the job you want, but you know that soon, maybe tomorrow, the bigger card in the series will be released. So under those conditions and knowing that it might drop the prices on medium card that's currently released, do you buy or not? If the future looks better you'll probably wait for the future.

 

[tennis2]

This happens all the time, it's not just Turing and it's not just Nvidia. As Monkey said, the top priority is to capture "the best of the best" with a halo product release.

As far as helping vs hurting... (aside from Vega VII) it's not like Nvidia is working with a different landscape of GPUs now compared to before Christmas. They're still out before AMD Navi GPUs, which gives them market traction at an inflated price point before they have to even think about adjusting pricing for AMD's Navi GPUs.

The benefit of a slow top-down release schedule is it makes people impatient and they buy a more expensive card than they were planning on.

$160 was the lowest I saw an RX580 8GB. That's nothing to be ashamed of. Certainly a better price/performance point than even the GTX1660. The GTX1660 is only 15% better for 40% more $$ than you paid.

 

[King_V]

$160 was the lowest I saw an RX580 8GB. That's nothing to be ashamed of. Certainly a better price/performance point than even the GTX1660. The GTX1660 is only 15% better for 40% more $$ than you paid.

This is true - what I paid for the RX580 is definitely the biggest bang for the buck so far. I just think that the 1660 would be the best deal to consistently manage 60fps at high details given the 2560x1080 resolution of my son's monitor, versus the 1920x1080 that is the RX 580's sweet spot.

But I was REALLY happy with the deal I got on the RX580. Definitely counterbalanced what I paid in Feb 2018 for the GTX 1080 FE - a great deal at the time in terms of getting it straight from Nvidia for MSRP, but not so good given that the cryptocraze has passed.