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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Prediction: the cards will sell crazy well.

Gamers don't need high end video cards, they want high end video cards. In general, the high marginal price for low marginal value of high end video cards prevents most gamers from acting on their desires.

But this generation of video cards provides a couple of other justifications for the purchase:

- it will allow them to run uncensored ML stacks locally - it will allow the buyers to train themselves on the hottest new career path.

A large number of people who use these excuses to justify the purchases to themselves or their loved ones will only use it for gaming, but those excuses will fuel a lot of sales.

This seems like the wrong generation for AMD to skip the halo tier of gaming cards.

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> But this generation of video cards provides a couple of other justifications for the purchase - it will allow them to run uncensored ML stacks locally

It does not. They will/are reselling exactly the same graphics cards that have been sold for the last ten years; the same computing capacity (and a modest increase for their top model), with very limited RAM, at very high prices.

They simply changed the silicon manufacturing process to smaller nodes without achieving a meaningful reduction in power consumption with respect to the previous generation, they still being high-consuming energy wasters heat generators.

Flimsy justifications can be flimsy.

The same justifications sold lots of 20X0 and 30X0 generation cards too.

People simply take the marketing bait when a simple spreadsheet of 20X0, 30X0, 40X0, 50X0 GPU specifications (cores/shader units, tensor, rt) plus memory bandwidth reveals that they are just reselling the same computing capacity as they have been for the last ten years, just with smaller manufacturing nodes.

A RTX 5060 with 4352 Su, I bet will be a RTX 4060 Ti AD107 with 4352 Su, the same as a RTX 2080 Ti TU102 with 4352 Su, all ones with Mem-Bus 128 bit.

Just smaller manufacturing nodes with name change.

3D rendering engine benchmarks suggest what you're saying is nonsense.

Ten years of graphics card hardware tested and ranked

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

RTX 4070 Ti is a RTX 3090 Ti

RTX 4070 is a RTX 3080

RTX 4060 Ti is a RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 3070

RTX 4060 is a RTX 2080 and RTX 3060 Ti

RTX 4050 is a GTX 1080 Ti , RTX 2070 SUPER, RTX 3060

It is not difficult to see the pattern, just look at the GPU specifications, it is not a coincidence, and it is quite predictable. The manufacturer is just playing with disabling cores.

It is not new, Nvidia has always done this. Initially, longer than a decade ago, limiting the GPU through drivers, but someone found a way to hack it, so the manufacturer started limiting the GPU by hardware at the factory. The same thing happened when people started putting vRAM in themselves and the manufacturer restricted it again on following models.

Well sure, current generation mid-range performs like previous generation high end. That's a tech product truism.

> they are just reselling the same computing capacity as they have been for the last ten years

I'm not 100% sure what you're trying to say here, but as far as I can tell a 4090 offers quite a bit more "computing capacity" than a Titan RTX, and that's just over five years ago.

> RTX 4060 is a RTX 2080

Probably, but I just put one in a small desktop for $280, not the $700 a 2080 cost new. So, yeah they're selling the same stuff, it just costs less.

>I'm not 100% sure what you're trying to say here

What I'm trying to say is that they're deceiving customers year after year about costs and computing capacity.

It was supporting my comment six messages above:

>>> But this generation of video cards provides a couple of other justifications for the purchase - it will allow them to run uncensored ML stacks locally

>> It does not. They will/are reselling exactly the same graphics cards that have been sold for the last ten years; the same computing capacity (and a modest increase for their top model), with very limited RAM, at very high prices.

> they're deceiving customers year after year about costs and computing capacity

> a modest increase for their top model ... limited RAM, at very high prices

Yes, I see your point, and agree.

There are far too many products in the range, and the consumer cards seem to be intentionally hampered to protect their professional / studio card business. eg. huge unnecessary 3-slot cooling arrangement on 3090/4090.

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