This is a 3 way relationship where everybody wins if it was a normal market. Now only GPU manufacturers and AIB partners win. Gamers lose big money to have their digital entertainment. "Gamers want FPS" but also care about prices. I know I do and don't want to spend $1000 on a single PC part. Let those cards gather enough dust in stores and they will be begging us to buy their stuff. First sign of low sales is here, look at Zen4 price cut in first month after release. Game bundles with new products is next.
Nvidia and AMD ca go...........you know where.
I understand your sentiment but it's a bit misplaced. AMD isn't to blame for the fact that cards cost what they do now. The blame lies with nVidia and the people who bought nVidia. I'll explain how this happened:
1) nVidia is the poster-child for unbridled greed in the tech industry.
2) nVidia uses their marketing machine to make people think that they
need nVidia cards even though gamers don't use CUDA and ray-tracing is just terrible below the RTX 3080.
3) Demand for nVidia products skyrockets because people are basically stupid.
4) This demand is recognised by nVidia so they jack prices higher and create artificial shortages by selling entire skids of cards directly to miners. Prices soar even higher.
5) nVidia increases the MSRP of its 80-level card by 40% in a single generation, based on the fact that its 90-level halo card is $1,600.
6) AMD decides that if people are willing to cut their own throats for GeForce cards, then they can slash their own wrists for Radeons. Radeon prices rise but not to the same degree as GeForce cards.
People seem to think that AMD raised its prices out of greed and to a certain degree, they would be correct but it would be a very small degree. AMD had to raise its prices because with all of the money that nVidia is getting thrown at them by the people that they've hoodwinked with their marketing BS, if AMD
didn't raise their prices as well, they'd have no hope of being able to keep up with nVidia's R&D. Remember what happened with Intel in the 2010s. Everyone and their mother were buying overpriced Intel parts and then they had the nerve to admonish AMD for falling behind.
If you don't support the underdog with more than just words, no industry can survive. I've bought only Radeon since 2008, not because I thought that GeForce was a bad product but because it was terribly overpriced and nVidia was doing some slimy things behind the scenes back then.
When I worked at Tiger Direct, nVidia was offering TD employees big discounts on the GeForce 9800 GTX+ (aka GTS 250) or GTX 260 if we promised to always try to sell an nVidia card to any prospective customer before recommending an ATi card, regardless of their needs (Intel tried the exact same thing with their i7-920).
Something about that didn't sit right with me and I basically told the rep "Thanks but no thanks." which kinda shocked her because the vast majority of my co-workers accepted the terms. I can't tell you how much respect I lost for many of my co-workers at that time.
One evening, as we were closing, I saw the nVidia rep outside. She was smoking a cigarette (I swear, ALL of the tech reps back then smoked like chimneys) and seemingly waiting for us. It turned out that it was
me she was waiting for (I guess she got some pie-in-the sky bonus if she managed to turn an entire store) and tried to get me interested in the deal again. I remember thinking that she was pretty (which seems to be par for the course when a sales rep is a woman) but I also remember saying to myself "The black mamba is pretty too but I wouldn't want to get close." (
)
She was clearly trying to charm me but I remained stone-faced (You wouldn't want me as a poker opponent). I told her that even with the discount (about $100), the cards weren't worth what I'd have to pay for them. I'll never forget what she said in response to that. She said "But
these are nVidia cards and no cards are made better than nVidia." to which I replied "Sure, but none are made worse either." which actually got a chuckle out of her. I told her that I had owned cards by ATi, Matrox, CirrusLogic, nVidia and Oak Technologies. I pointed out that they all did their jobs as video cards pretty much the same.
She realised that, unlike a lot of the teenagers that worked at my store, I actually knew what I was talking about because I'd already been building PCs for almost 20 years at that point. I told her that I was certain that these actions were probably illegal at worst and damaging to the market at best. She said "Who cares, as long as you get cheap cards?" to which I replied "I care because I want to
always be able to get cheap cards and if what you're trying to do succeeds, there would be only overpriced nVidia cards left. Equally important is that I will not lie to my customers because my job is to help them make the best decision they can to win their loyalty in the future." and continued to my car.
I bought my first XFX Radeon HD 4870 for $100-$300 (depending on the brand chosen) less than her "discounted" GTX 260 would've ended up costing me. More importantly, I kept my self-respect and my intellectual sovereignty remained intact. Over time, I saw nVidia doing more and more terrible things (like arm-twisting reviewers) and when they blocked the use of PhysX if their drivers detected a Radeon card in your system along with a GeForce, I began to actively hate them. They (like Intel) never given me a reason to stop.
AMD never tried anything like that with me. Their rep was friendly and liked me a lot because I sold more Phenom CPUs than the rest of the store combined. This was because I was easily the most knowledgeable one there and was thus perfectly comfortable selling
any brand of
anything because I knew that they all did the same thing. He and I had a mutually respectful repectful relationship and he never tried anything slimy like the nVidia rep did. The Intel rep actually tried pretty much the same thing and I turned him down as well.
So yeah, they're all corporations trying to make a profit but the way that they go about it isn't even close to being the same.
