Why I think the cheap GPU market is dead

Linus made a video a while back on this, but I'd like to give my 2 cents in a more technical way.

Sure he said they performed like an APU, but I think the reason why is because APUs don't have to go through the layer of abstraction that is PCI Express, you can have more performance at less power. I think that's why Nvidia made NVLink, so they can get a custom GPU interface that's more efficient. Sure a top end GPU doesn't even fully saturate the PCIE 2.0 bandwidth, but what about latency?

I think what PC gaming needs is a new AGP Standard.

Not sure how you got to that point.

a new standard would most likely be useful but probably won't happen unless it's a faster/lower latency general purpose connection, probably don't really need it though

as for low end GPUs, they're only talking about the GPU's sold between like $30-$70 which is a useless part of the market, things like the R7 260+/750ti still have something of a place since they can actually deliver decent performance in some games

There is always going to be a lot of used GPUs available because people always want to upgrade to new and shiny. I don't really see the point in spending more for a new card when a high spec card a couple generations old is cheaper and still has more performance.

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I agree with the video but disagree with the way they went about it.
I watch videos to learn from people who have access to stuff I don't have, not to hear thin skinned reviews whine about negative feedback. I like how CultofMush deals with it,"I like it but you guys sh$# all over it".
What good is the 30 to 70 dollar gpu market. I don't know. Staples dedicates valuable shelf space to this market. Yes you can do better with used, which is time consuming.
For someone who is running errands, pressed for time and thinks it will get another year out of the X2 downstairs. Especially if wife plays Farmville or candy crush or some other hideous game I could see it coming off the shelf. 70 bucks, 5 minutes, one screw and your the family IT hero. They may even show thier gratitude by letting you play Doom undisturbed for an entire hour.

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OFC. the 240 is not usable for a usecase like gaming.
The 240 was never meant to be a gaming card, but rather a budget card used for day to day desktop usage, not gaming.
It is kind of like comparing a bicycle to a tracktors ability to pull heavy loads, then concluding that bicycles are useless because the tractor is better.
IMO the whole video is just another one of Linuse's "im a high end intel/Nvidia, and anything less than 2k $ is not worthy of gaming" fan boi rant videos. Even the IGPU they compare to is a recent Intel one where the price alone for the CPU needed to get the CPU is around 5 times the GPU's price.

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I can't agree that all GPUs at that price point are useless. I have recently bought two GPUs, both bellow the $50 mark. I had two older systems laying around that I turned into HTPCs. I needed HDMI outputs and lower end GPS work great for giving you HDMI 1080 video outputs. So they have their place, but they aren't much better than the onboard on newer I7s and what not.

Its also going to be interesting as we see higher than 1080p resolutions become more viable for high end gaming, we'll likely see cards very good at 1080p at lower prices, and then mid range performance at 1080p at very cheap prices.

By "cheap", I mean the r5 240 class and below, not the Rx 460/1050 Ti

Right, you can get a GPU at $25-30 or less to get a video output, past that the GPUs are worthless because they can't do any gaming and don't give you any better display outputs compared to the ultra cheap GPUs

You seem to be ignoring the entire OEM market that uses these GPUs by the pallet. Whatever is sold through third party vendors is just gravy.

As for NVLink, that's primarily a QPI style interconnect for nVidia's HPC ASICs. Not really a PCI-E replacement for consumer hardware.

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The latency of PCI-E is so small that it's not a problem when it comes to gaming.

And i don't see Cheap GPUs going away as there is always a need for business or some consumers who want to add more display to there systems.

I never said he was the end all be all. If anything, I favour Linus Torvalds.

This might now shock some of you, but there was a time when CPUs did not have graphics in them.
Those systems (like my Frankenstein project that might be a thing SOON TM) do not have onboard graphics.
Then there are rigs that were dirt cheap and performed like dirt. If you can offload some video stuff from the 2GB RAM in those systems, it runs much faster (40€ video card anyone?)
Or my home office machine that needs a new video card because the GT9800 bit the dust yesterday. In tha rig, there are no power connectors to support a used gaming card. As I do not want to spent too much for an office machine, that thing will get a 40€ video card. And that is just that! A video card! It displays the desktop, maybe two OpenOffice windows or a YouTube video, that is it.

Those cheap cards have their place just like USB expansion cards do (mobo with 2 USB ports anyone?).

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I agree with you for the most part, but 70 bucks is still kind of steep for a card like that. For another 20-40 dollars you can turn any walmart pc into light gaming machine (MOBA's, WoW, etc)
Not saying that average joes should go ahead and order an $100 gpu that's never really gonna be used. But those super low end cards could go for a lot cheaper.

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^Doubt

Material cost is always in those components, no matter how cheap you design those things, at one point you hit the line of material cost.

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The low end cards are rubbish for all but as a basic 2D video tasks for instances where either integrated graphics are unavailable or not functioning.

What gets me is the higher low end segment has many cards in the $60-100 that are all over the place in terms of performance. You could buy a $90 card that has terrible performance and off the same shelf, buy an $80 card that you can actually game at or near console performance at 1080p resolution... The performance you can get can vary wildly from card to card in some stores at the same price point.

What is the average consumer to do? They certainly can't judge based on price. Don't bother asking the store clerks in many places which is better for the money.

I get that material costs are going to have a say in minimum pricing, but I do think the market could do a better job at differentiating the products and making it clear what tasks a given card are expected to do.

I would also prefer that retailers who had any care about their integrity, start dropping the low end cards that perform like low end cards but are priced higher than $60... It is this segment that really makes no sense to me. You simply don't get any significant performance improvement for your money and if more performance is what you are after, you should be looking at the 750ti at a minimum.

An R7 240 is light years ahead of Intel HD 4400, that doesn't stop me in most games. Most APUs aren't even as powerful GPU wise as an R7 240.

Are you expecting this kind of diligence from a market which created GTX970 (not the first and definitely not the last "market" shenanigan, just an example)?

That's a fair point.

I just can't see how the market is served by flooding the market with sub-par GPUs at higher price points. Sure they may make money on suckers who don't know better, but that's not how you grow the market. People who feel burned, tend not to let you do it to them again.

It tarnishes the name of the retailer who sold you the card and the brand of the card maker.

There are so many reasons why this issue needs some light shown on it and I think the results might be better for the PC industry and consumers all around...

APU's are sensitive to memory bandwidth.
The A10-7850 absolutely runs circles around a 240 if given 2133-2400 MHZ memory for casual gaming.
But my point was that Linus as usual compared a high priced product from one of their "partners", and compared it to a low cost product in order to prove how superior intel in this case was.
Heck you could buy a fx-8350, and a 240 and still have spending cash monay compared to the price of a 6700 CPU alone.
Personally i got a A10-7850 with nothing but 2400Mhz memory powering the graphics attached to my tv(It's not my main rig just my console killer), and it demolishes anything Sony/Microsoft, and even intel has released for consoles atm, but if i changed that setup to a 240 it wouldn't be compareble.
The 240 was meant for a setup where you do desktop work and need a HDMI output, for lets say a fx-8350, or even a Xeon(Eg. a cpu without IGPU), not to compete on the gaming market, and especially not to compete with a 3-4 years newer GPU technology.

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