Now imagine that chip with 8GB GDDR5(X) going for $300-350 (what I assume will be the new "mid-range" price bracket), suddenly buying two are probably within (if not equal) with Fury X2 performance, possibly less priced, less power, less heat, updated uarch and more VRAM.
That means you think AMD will bring down Fury X level of performance from $649 to $299-349 in 12 months? Those days seem to be long gone. Welcome to the milking way of selling graphics cards => 25-35% performance increases trickled down slowly while milking each card as a flagship at $550-650.
January 4, 2016
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AMD’s Joe Macri stated, during our talks, that they expect this FinFET technology will bring a 50-60% power reduction at the same performance level
OR a 25-30% performance increase at the same power."
Unless Mr. Joe Marci is completely wrong, it seems AMD the only way AMD is going to give us 75-100% increase in performance over Fury X is with major architectural advancements/core re-balancing and a breakthrough in memory bandwidth: HBM1 -> HBM2. What are the chances AMD is going to deliver on such a performance advancement by nailing all of these fronts, delivering HBM2 and a 550-600mm2 14/16nm FinFET die in 2016? imo, close to 0%.
What are the chances the competitor will do the same for 2016? imo, again close to 0%. It's really simple: why release a card 75-100% faster than Fury X/980Ti right away and wipe out huge profit margins across all the latter $100-500 chips when you can increase each level 25-35% (maybe a bit more) and then repeat in 2017?
> This way both companies offer more tangible performance in 2017
> This way both companies maximize profits
> This way both companies don't have to deal with terrible yields on immature 14nm/16nm node wrt to 550-600mm2 die
> This way both companies don't need to panic about HBM2 yields or supply in 2016
More importantly, gamers bought $500-550 680/7970 and again $550-700 290X/780Ti. That means both AMD and NV got the message loud and clear ==> gamers will upgrade 2 or even 3 times in the same generation and/or some don't care if the "flagship" is 300-350mm2 or 550-600mm2. MOAR performance => MOAR sales.
If you are NV/AMD, if just saw this type of consumer behaviour, the last thing you'd want is to launch a card 75-100% faster than your last flagship for $650 vs. $550-600 25-35% faster in 2016, then $550-700 25-35% faster in 2017. Milk that wallet baby.
If NV and AMD are only gonna release small chips this year, I'm not upgrading! lol
The way both companies set up a GPU generation now makes it almost impossible to "win." On the front end of a generation, you'll get milked for mid-range die at flagship prices, on the back end of a generation, you'll get milked for flagship die at flagship prices but then it's already almost half-way into the generation. I offer my 6 ways to upgrade with the new system:
1) Buy as close as possible to the launch of new next gen cards, then resell as close as possible to the launch of next cards to minimize loss of resale value. Rinse and repeat. This strategy entails frequent upgrading but allows maintaining top performance year over year. AMD/NV would love this! The huge risk of this strategy is mistiming optimal time to resell. For instance, if you bought a $700 780Ti and didn't sell it on time, your resale value bombed.
2) Buy 2 mid-range $350-400 cards and SLI/CF them. This would be akin to buying 290 CF/970 SLI as close as possible to launch date. Throughout the entire generation, you'd get that gen's flagship performance but with a caveat that some games won't work for months as far as SLI/CF goes.
3) Find GPUs with a severely tarnished reputation and pounce on them at the right time. Perfect examples of this would be something like $299 GTX480 weeks after $499 580 came out, or $280 R9 290X when $550 980 was the bees knees. For example, if in 2016 cards come out 20-25% faster than the Fury X for $650 and use less power, then suddenly Fury X sells for $280 since "no one wants it". That's an opportunity for a cheap upgrade. It's hard to predict which card of any gen will end up to be in this spot, but chances are a flagship AMD card is likely to be the most likely candidate for this position closer to the end of a generation of that series. This is because generally speaking flagship AMD cards aren't very popular as far as market share goes, which means last gen / close to EOL flagship AMD cards would be even less popular. We've actually seen this scenario play out with HD7970/7970Ghz/R9 290X and now Fury X will join them soon.
4) Focus on software, not hardware. That means stop worrying about hardware % increases and instead look if game X, Y, Z is actually (1) worthwhile to upgrade for because it's a great game you are likely to spend lots and lots of hours playing; (2) the performance advantage is beneficial as in going from 25-30 fps to 55-60 fps vs. 60-70 fps to 120-140 fps.
5) Go used. In some countries like Canada/Australia/Russia, etc., where the local currency got destroyed against the USD, the best values will be in the used market, while new cards will be more expensive than ever!
6) Get your gf/son/daughter into gaming, so this way you pass on your GPU upgrade down to this person as a gift; and suddenly your new GPU upgrade means your old/current GPU is their new FREE upgrade.
If only 100mm2 and 200mm2 Polaris are to be released this year then Fiji X2 will be fine.
Even if 350mm2 Polaris comes out for $650 and is 25-30% faster than Fury X, Fiji X2 can still sell for VR. If you think about the context of VR, a card 25-30% faster than Fury X is not a direct competitor to 2xFury Xs in a VR environment. As long as VR allows both Fury X GPUs to work seamlessly and independently of each other on a per eye basis, the Polaris card would have no chance of coming close to that level of performance. That means you could technically have a $600-650 Polaris 300-350mm2 and a $999 Fury X2 selling to completely different markets without directly competing with each other.
Also, AMD could offer some discount combo bundle with a VR headset of choice and Fiji X2 but such a deal wouldn't be available for a Polaris card. That would only cement the distinction between a gaming GPU vs. a VR GPU.