7 ms·

> I think I'm getting old, but I can't for the life of me get excited about this 450W behemoth. Then don't buy it? These are flagship cards. It's like the $10

> I think I'm getting old, but I can't for the life of me get excited about this 450W behemoth. Then don't buy it? These are flagship cards. It's like the $100,000 Corvette in Chevy's lineup. It's fun to watch the reviews and see on the showroom floor, but most people aren't in that enthusiast market segment. They're going to the dealership for the $40,000 Camaro or the $30,000 Colorado truck because those get the job done for them at a reasonable price. If you're an enthusiast and this is your thing, you save up the money and buy the flagship. It's a small audience, but the product is there for those who want it. If you're a casual gamer, you get something like a 3060 and it works great as long as you're not maxing out settings and trying to play everything at 4K. I honestly don't understand all of the criticism for these flagship parts. When auto makers release a ridiculous flagship car, everyone cheers it on and understands the purpose. When hardware makers release a flagship part, it seems everyone wants to criticize it for existing.

selfhoster11 4y ago
Compared to past cards, these behemoths aren't the equivalent of a top-end car. They are the equivalent of an oil tanker: slow, wasteful, and while yes, you might sometimes need to harness the power offered by one of these, as a private individual you definitely want something whose fuel efficiency is not measured in hundreds of tons of fuel per day. Besides all that, releasing "consumer" cards with such overly inefficient power consumption is just being tone-deaf at a time where half of the Western world is facing rapidly rising electricity bills.
- paulmd 4y ago
  where are people getting this idea that the cards are "inefficient fuel tankers"? https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/images/power-gaming.png https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-e... https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/images/energy-efficiency.png https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-e... in contrast to the breathless rumors, those power numbers look incredibly reasonable... it's less than the 3090 pulled last gen, and it's 1.7x the perf/w of a 3080 or 2x the efficiency of a 3090. 3090 was always known to be pushed a little far, but, there is an easy 70% uplift in efficiency here, and none of the power-creep stuff ended up actually happening. 4090 Ti will eventually happen, and will pull about the same as 3090 Ti. Which, if it gets 1.7-2x the perf/w, sounds fine.
paulywog 4y ago
I think people lament that you could previously have the flagship experience for a couple hundred dollars, but now the flagships have become much less reasonable price wise.
- lupire 4y ago
  Flagship used to mean two couple-hundred dollar cards bound together.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > I think people lament that you could previously have the flagship experience for a couple hundred dollars I think you're right. I imagine a lot of people don't like the feeling that something faster exists outside of their budget. Ironically, I suspect these people would be happier if the faster cards simply didn't exist and the GPU lineup topped out at something like a 3060. It's funny that people get angry that faster parts simply exist.
DigitallyFidget 4y ago
For me, it's not the MSRP cost, it's that they've thrown power efficiency out the window entirely. It'd be like that automaker's flagship car getting only 2 miles per gallon on highways. Granted, that comparison makes the vehicle functionally useless anywhere but a drag strip, but that's not the point I am focusing on, I'm arguing the lack of focus on achieving performance with efficiency. These new GPUs and even CPUs are entirely about power and performance. The upfront cost is one thing, but the long term cost of the both the energy consumption and central air system having to handle the massive thermal load is getting out of hand, particularly in a hotter region. It's severely overlooked or just lightly complained about as "this thing needs cooling" without really elaborating what that entails or means. It's one thing to cool down a large studio area with a commercial HVAC system for doing youtube videos, but it's another to try and cool a bedroom in a house with the normal central air system. I just wish these PC component manufactures would have some more focus on making their products more energy efficient, do more with less. You can always do more by consuming more, that's less impressive. And to go back to cars. Take a huge engine, and one half its size, both output the same power, but one uses a third as much of the same fuel. Which one is more impressive? I understand flagship is the extreme edge. But when the power consumption of the flagships keep increasing, it normalizes the lower and mid ranges to also keep increasing. I just want to see a focus on efficiency, stop doing more with more. Do more with less instead.
- stevenhuang 4y ago
  I think what we're seeing is just an increase in the power envelope: more power for more performance. Efficiency should be better than previous gens, at least this was the case for the CPUs I looked at (looking at their power efficiency ratings at full TDP they're hard to tell). Marginal efficiency is lower when the power envelope is expanded to make these higher performance numbers achievable. I'd wager that performance matched, these "power hungry" current gen GPUs/CPUs would show better efficiency than previous gens.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > For me, it's not the MSRP cost, it's that they've thrown power efficiency out the window entirely. It'd be like that automaker's flagship car getting only 2 miles per gallon on highways Flagship cars generally do get significantly worse gas mileage than mainstream cars. But you're exaggerating the inefficiency of a 4090. In terms of performance-per-watt, it's not that far off from their lower level cards. If low power is a primary driver, it's very easy to move a slider and reduce the power usage for any of these cards. > I just wish these PC component manufactures would have some more focus on making their products more energy efficient, They do! Efficiency and performance are one in the same. They wouldn't be able to squeeze out this much performance if they didn't optimize the efficiency. More efficient parts result in higher performance for a given thermal envelope. If you wanted the most efficiency, you would buy a 4090 and turn the power limit down to 50%. This is very easy to do. Reducing voltage and power limits is extremely common in small case builds.

selfhoster11 4y ago

Compared to past cards, these behemoths aren't the equivalent of a top-end car. They are the equivalent of an oil tanker: slow, wasteful, and while yes, you might sometimes need to harness the power offered by one of these, as a private individual you definitely want something whose fuel efficiency is not measured in hundreds of tons of fuel per day. Besides all that, releasing "consumer" cards with such overly inefficient power consumption is just being tone-deaf at a time where half of the Western world is facing rapidly rising electricity bills.

paulmd 4y ago
where are people getting this idea that the cards are "inefficient fuel tankers"? https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/images/power-gaming.png https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-e... https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/images/energy-efficiency.png https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-e... in contrast to the breathless rumors, those power numbers look incredibly reasonable... it's less than the 3090 pulled last gen, and it's 1.7x the perf/w of a 3080 or 2x the efficiency of a 3090. 3090 was always known to be pushed a little far, but, there is an easy 70% uplift in efficiency here, and none of the power-creep stuff ended up actually happening. 4090 Ti will eventually happen, and will pull about the same as 3090 Ti. Which, if it gets 1.7-2x the perf/w, sounds fine.

paulywog 4y ago

I think people lament that you could previously have the flagship experience for a couple hundred dollars, but now the flagships have become much less reasonable price wise.

lupire 4y ago
Flagship used to mean two couple-hundred dollar cards bound together.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> I think people lament that you could previously have the flagship experience for a couple hundred dollars I think you're right. I imagine a lot of people don't like the feeling that something faster exists outside of their budget. Ironically, I suspect these people would be happier if the faster cards simply didn't exist and the GPU lineup topped out at something like a 3060. It's funny that people get angry that faster parts simply exist.

DigitallyFidget 4y ago

For me, it's not the MSRP cost, it's that they've thrown power efficiency out the window entirely. It'd be like that automaker's flagship car getting only 2 miles per gallon on highways. Granted, that comparison makes the vehicle functionally useless anywhere but a drag strip, but that's not the point I am focusing on, I'm arguing the lack of focus on achieving performance with efficiency. These new GPUs and even CPUs are entirely about power and performance. The upfront cost is one thing, but the long term cost of the both the energy consumption and central air system having to handle the massive thermal load is getting out of hand, particularly in a hotter region. It's severely overlooked or just lightly complained about as "this thing needs cooling" without really elaborating what that entails or means. It's one thing to cool down a large studio area with a commercial HVAC system for doing youtube videos, but it's another to try and cool a bedroom in a house with the normal central air system. I just wish these PC component manufactures would have some more focus on making their products more energy efficient, do more with less. You can always do more by consuming more, that's less impressive. And to go back to cars. Take a huge engine, and one half its size, both output the same power, but one uses a third as much of the same fuel. Which one is more impressive? I understand flagship is the extreme edge. But when the power consumption of the flagships keep increasing, it normalizes the lower and mid ranges to also keep increasing. I just want to see a focus on efficiency, stop doing more with more. Do more with less instead.

stevenhuang 4y ago
I think what we're seeing is just an increase in the power envelope: more power for more performance. Efficiency should be better than previous gens, at least this was the case for the CPUs I looked at (looking at their power efficiency ratings at full TDP they're hard to tell). Marginal efficiency is lower when the power envelope is expanded to make these higher performance numbers achievable. I'd wager that performance matched, these "power hungry" current gen GPUs/CPUs would show better efficiency than previous gens.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> For me, it's not the MSRP cost, it's that they've thrown power efficiency out the window entirely. It'd be like that automaker's flagship car getting only 2 miles per gallon on highways Flagship cars generally do get significantly worse gas mileage than mainstream cars. But you're exaggerating the inefficiency of a 4090. In terms of performance-per-watt, it's not that far off from their lower level cards. If low power is a primary driver, it's very easy to move a slider and reduce the power usage for any of these cards. > I just wish these PC component manufactures would have some more focus on making their products more energy efficient, They do! Efficiency and performance are one in the same. They wouldn't be able to squeeze out this much performance if they didn't optimize the efficiency. More efficient parts result in higher performance for a given thermal envelope. If you wanted the most efficiency, you would buy a 4090 and turn the power limit down to 50%. This is very easy to do. Reducing voltage and power limits is extremely common in small case builds.