Right Now Is a Terrible Time to Buy a Graphics Card

[cryoburner]

Dollar for dollar they already are . The "ultra-high end" is such a small market, that AMD (at this point) doesn't really care, and correctly see it as a pointless pissing contest. An RX 5700XT pushes about as many pixels as an RTX 2070 Super - both firmly in the "high-end" GPU category. Cards above that price bracket have an absolutely minuscule market-share that isn't economic and thus not worth pursuing outside of bragging rights on review websites like this one.

Steam Hardware & Software Survey

While I agree that the "ultra-high end" is probably not that meaningful of a market for them and the vast majority of those shopping for a graphics card, I wouldn't really say that the current Radeon lineup is as competitive as their Ryzen lineup has been.

With Ryzen, AMD has been offering significantly more cores for the money, while still maintaining competitive per-core performance, and Intel has only started catching up on mainstream core counts recently. And Ryzen does offer ultra-high end options, while still being really competitive at the lower end. Ryzen is also currently more energy efficient, includes better stock coolers, and newer features like PCIe 4.0. AMD has been putting on an all-out assault on Intel's processor lineup the last few years, after being well behind for quite some time.

In the graphics card space, many of the Radeon cards could be considered reasonable options, but for the most part, their current lineup has not been offering much more for the money than Nvidia, and in some cases less. Their energy efficiency and heat output are a lot more competitive now due to them being on a superior process node for the time being, but they are still not quite matching Nvidia on that metric despite that process advantage. And feature-wise, AMD is arguably still playing catch-up, particularly with raytracing, however underutilized it might be at the moment, but also with things like their hardware video encoder. Nvidia's current cards do pretty much everything AMD's do, and a little more. AMD does tend to offer slightly better performance for the money in most current games with their 5600 and 5700-series cards, but the feature tradeoffs prevent that from being a clear win. Had they launched the cards at those prices alongside Nvidia's initial 16 and 20-series lineup, they would have been highly competitive, but with all of them coming the better part of a year later, Nvidia was able to counter each of these cards before they even launched.

And for the 5500XT, AMD may have improved efficiency over the RX 480 and 580, but otherwise they are offering a very similar level of performance as they were offering at a comparable price point a few years prior, and no tangible benefits over similarly priced cards from the competition. I suspect a lot of this has been down to limited 7nm production, as they likely make significantly more money per wafer on Ryzen processors than on Radeon graphics cards, so they don't want to push them any more than they have to, especially at those lower price points. As such, we get performance that is merely on par with the competition. It would be nice if they really pushed performance and features at every price point with their next cards, though Nvidia tends to be more responsive than Intel at reacting to competition on a timely basis, so it might be more difficult for AMD to offer something notably better than them for the money.

 

[Blaze Productionz]

I'm in the market and I'm doing my best to hold off;

How long do you think it will be until we can get a desktop with?;

Intel 12th gen k-series 10nm CPU (alder lake)
MB with w/PCI4.0 full support.
CPU and MB to support DDR5 RAM
RTX 3080 Super (PCI 4.0)
PCI 4.0 SSD


I'm guessing this time next year? What do you guys think?

Pretty hard to tell especially with all these coronavirus restrictions holding the industry back but ill throw a wild guess. November, 2021. I can see Gen 4 support coming in the near future, as well as Nvidias 3000 series. A PCI 4.0 SSD could be out soon but it will come at a huge price originally. Should be affordable by maybe March/April 2020. I feel like DDR5 RAM is going to hold all this back but these are all huge guess lmao

 

[spongiemaster]

Dollar for dollar they already are . The "ultra-high end" is such a small market, that AMD (at this point) doesn't really care, and correctly see it as a pointless pissing contest. An RX 5700XT pushes about as many pixels as an RTX 2070 Super - both firmly in the "high-end" GPU category. Cards above that price bracket have an absolutely minuscule market-share that isn't economic and thus not worth pursuing outside of bragging rights on review websites like this one.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Nvidia doesn't have a 60%+ profit margin because they're selling truckloads of 1660's. When a company owns 100% of the highend and gets to name whatever price they want, they also acquire a license to print money which is basically what Nvidia is doing. Back in 2018, Nvidia said that average selling price had increased at a 14% annual rate the past five years. Turing's release in the q3 of 2018 probably accelerated that rate. The profitable money is in the highend.

 

[cryoburner]

A PCI 4.0 SSD could be out soon but it will come at a huge price originally.

There are already some PCIe 4.0 SSDs out, since AMD's X570 motherboards have supported that interface for the last year, and their recently-launched B550 boards now support it as well. However, for most typical usage scenarios, the higher bandwidth provided by PCIe 4.0 hasn't been shown to make much of a difference. Aside from large sequential reads and writes, such as when copying a directory of files, they generally tend to perform similar to 3.0 drives.

 

[Jason_43]

it might be a terrible time to buy the latest graphics cards but I did just fine this weekend buying a budget card.

 

[Rukazu]

Ok, I should wait to buy a new GPU. Even if I get a discount on the 5600XT / 2060 (my price target can't exceed 300USD / EUR)... So there is going to be new graphic cards in this price range?

And what about CPU? The Ryzen 5 3600 or 7 3700x is going to be outdated soon? I want / need to renew all my actual setup, but I don't know what to do with this renovation.

Also, the new DDR5 is driving me crazy. All the renovations at the same time, You can't buy anything because is going to be old in a few weeks!

 

[Wolfshadw]

You can't buy anything because is going to be old in a few weeks!

This has been pretty much true for the last couple of decades. IMO, if you want to upgrade your PC, do so when budget allows (regardless of price). You can always hope prices will drop but if you do, you may be waiting for quite a while.

-Wolf sends

 

[spongiemaster]

This has been pretty much true for the last couple of decades. IMO, if you want to upgrade your PC, do so when budget allows (regardless of price). You can always hope prices will drop but if you do, you may be waiting for quite a while.

-Wolf sends

The constant obsolescence meme for the industry doesn't really apply any more. 10+ years ago, there was a new lineup of video cards from ATi and Nvidia released every 6 months. With that cadence, it made no sense to wait for the next great thing, as it was always around the corner. Anyone who bought a 2080Ti on release day in 2018 is still using the fastest mainstream card available rolling towards 2 years later. If you bought any 1st gen RTX card there was nothing worth upgrading to with last year's Super refresh.

If you're in the market for a $400+ video card it makes all the sense in the world to wait to see what Big Navi and RTX3000 have to offer as they should be generational performance improvements and if you buy early you'll probably be sitting pretty with a card that won't be significantly superseded in its price bracket for a couple of years.

 

[Rukazu]

The constant obsolescence meme for the industry doesn't really apply any more. 10+ years ago, there was a new lineup of video cards from ATi and Nvidia released every 6 months. With that cadence, it made no sense to wait for the next great thing, as it was always around the corner. Anyone who bought a 2080Ti on release day in 2018 is still using the fastest mainstream card available rolling towards 2 years later. If you bought any 1st gen RTX card there was nothing worth upgrading to with last year's Super refresh.

If you're in the market for a $400+ video card it makes all the sense in the world to wait to see what Big Navi and RTX3000 have to offer as they should be generational performance improvements and if you buy early you'll probably be sitting pretty with a card that won't be significantly superseded in its price bracket for a couple of years.

Yes. I want to buy a graphics card about $300+-. And a Ryzen 5 3600 or 3700x... So I think that in one month I will buy a better graphic card if I wait... Do you think so? I mean, some new graphics card should be on the actual rtx 2060 or the 5600xt price

 

[cryoburner]

Yes. I want to buy a graphics card about $300+-. And a Ryzen 5 3600 or 3700x... So I think that in one month I will buy a better graphic card if I wait... Do you think so? I mean, some new graphics card should be on the actual rtx 2060 or the 5600xt price

In a month? No I don't really expect there will be much better performance for around $300. The new generation of cards is probably still a few months off, and those will likely be targeting the $400+ range initially, if not higher, with mid-range models potentially not coming until months later still. As I posted on the previous page...

It could potentially be a fair amount longer before they launch new mid-range cards around the $300 price point. In the case of the 20-series, they launched their high-end $600+ cards between late September and early October of 2018, but the $350 2060 didn't come out until late January, close to four months later, and the $280 1660 Ti didn't come out until a month later still. So, it's very possible that we might not see new mid-range cards until early next year. Likewise, AMD just launched their similar-performing 5600 XT for around $280 less than 6 months ago, so they may also be more focused on higher-end models this year. So, you might potentially be waiting half a year or more, unless you spend $100-$200 more for something in a higher-end bracket. I guess it's possible that we could see cards like the 2060 SUPER and 5700 XT go on sale for around $300 during the holiday shopping season if faster cards appear in the $400+ price range though.

 

[matt206]

Can this shady, unprofessional looking site be trusted? Anyone here ever purchase from them before?

NVIDIA A100 900-21001-0000-000 40GB Ampere PCIe GPU for Deep Learning AI, HPC, Analytics and Research – Dihuni – GPU Server for AI, Data Center & IoT Hardware & Software Solutions

www.dihuni.com

 

[nitrium]

Nvidia doesn't have a 60%+ profit margin because they're selling truckloads of 1660's. When a company owns 100% of the highend and gets to name whatever price they want, they also acquire a license to print money which is basically what Nvidia is doing. Back in 2018, Nvidia said that average selling price had increased at a 14% annual rate the past five years. Turing's release in the q3 of 2018 probably accelerated that rate. The profitable money is in the highend.

"Profitable" yes. But the revenue in the ultra high-end is so low, that it doesn't matter how much profit you make from it. The RTX 2080 Ti makes up an absolutely minuscule percentage of nVidia's total profits (despite a very high margin on them) becuase they sell so few of them.

 

[Rukazu]

In a month? No I don't really expect there will be much better performance for around $300. The new generation of cards is probably still a few months off, and those will likely be targeting the $400+ range initially, if not higher, with mid-range models potentially not coming until months later still. As I posted on the previous page...

Oh, I just wanted a card like the 2060 but in better price, or at least, the newer version (better) in the same price range =(

 

[Dr. Know]

I am looking to upgrade my PC for the new MS flight simulator. I was willing to pay for up to I9 and GTX 2080 but It's hard on my budget, to say the least. If I read your article and comments I should wait till sometime next year for new releases of CPUs and GPUs? Do you expect the costs to stabilize later in the year?

 

[spongiemaster]

"Profitable" yes. But the revenue in the ultra high-end is so low, that it doesn't matter how much profit you make from it. The RTX 2080 Ti makes up an absolutely minuscule percentage of nVidia's total profits (despite a very high margin on them) becuase they sell so few of them.

Like I said above, Nvidia as a company isn't producing 60%+ gross margins because the overwhelming majority of their revenue is coming from mid and low range products. They have to be selling enough in the high end and at extreme margins to pull up the overall margins of the lower end of the stack.

 

[spongiemaster]

Oh, I just wanted a card like the 2060 but in better price, or at least, the newer version (better) in the same price range =(

With the reported cancellation of the RTX 2070 Super, rumors are starting to float around that the RTX 3060 will be released later this year in the October/November time frame. If you can hold out until then, you probably should. Though you'll want to closely follow the reviews and prices of the 3080ti/3080 and 3070, which will release earlier, to try and guesstimate where the 3060 will end up price wise and performance wise. If the higher cards see significant price increases from last generation, the 3060 will likely as well.

 

[cryoburner]

With the reported cancellation of the RTX 2070 Super, rumors are starting to float around that the RTX 3060 will be released later this year in the October/November time frame.

Discontinuation of the 2070 SUPER could just mean that Nvidia will have new, faster cards around that model's $500 price point soon. Cards around the $300 price range may not be affected as much for some time longer. Again, the 2080 Ti, 2080 and 2070 all launched around late September through October of 2018, but the 2060 didn't come out until January, around 3-4 months later, and not until a month later still for the 1660 Ti. On the other hand, with the prior 10-series, the 1060 came out within two months of the initial cards. So, it could go either way. It's probably worth waiting unless one needs a card right away though.

 

[Rukazu]

The new cards are all going to be RTX, right? Which ones are going to replace the 1650/1660 series? I want something between 1660 ti / rtx 2060 / 5600XT, but newer.