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- How does this compare to the raytracing units in Apple A17 Pro/M3 series? They also provide additional eye candy for a relatively large cost I would say. - W

- How does this compare to the raytracing units in Apple A17 Pro/M3 series? They also provide additional eye candy for a relatively large cost I would say. - Why are relatively expensive and large GPUs like in the RTX 3070 commonly called “midrange” online? The meaning of “midrange” seems to be creeping upward.

josephg 3y ago
> Why are relatively expensive and large GPUs like in the RTX 3070 commonly called “midrange” Because the 30xx generation of graphics cards includes the 3050, 3060, 3070, 3080 and 3090. The 3070 is right in the middle of the range. Hence, midrange.
- henriquecm8 3y ago
  And also because it's a generation old. A card like 1080 was high-end during its time, and still works well, but it isn't high-end anymore. High-end gpus right now are the 4090 and 4080.
jrk 3y ago
Within the market of discrete gaming GPUs, there has been a hierarchy from "low-" to "high-end" for decades -- since before integrated GPUs even existed. For almost 20 years, things with 192- or 256-bit memory busses have been "mid-range" (vs. 384- or occasionally 512-bit memory busses at the high end, and smaller at the low-end). NVIDIA's "7"-tier GPUs have historically been the top of the mid-range in this world. Within this world "midrange" has been creeping upward not via big shifts in these fundamental characteristics but via: 1. Prices increasing steadily across the board, due to shortages and market power 2. Power budgets (and corresponding board/cooler sizes) increasing across the board The fundamentals (memory bus width -- still 256-bit; die size and performance relative to the top of the line) remain "mid-range" in exactly this same sense.
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  Expressed differently: the memory bus and chip size of a 4070 is equivalent to a 3060, NOT a 3070. Nvidia has shifted its portfolio to the left, so they can charge more for a smaller chip. I suspect this is mostly due to increasing manufacturing costs, not (just) pricing power. This is also a reason why they are banking on AI upscalers to drive improvements in the future.
  - xmodem 3y ago
    Put another way, they took the gains in technology and process improvements and banked them for themselves, releasing a new generation that achieves similar performance (in some cases worse) to last gen, albeit at an improved power envelope, at the same price as last gen, but that they have higher margins on. The fact they can do this speaks to the lack of competition in the GPU market at the midrange and up. Compare this to the CPU market, where we now have Intel and AMD giving it everything to leapfrog each other every 6-9 months. I don't begrudge nvidia wanting to spend a generation consolidating their market position - that's their right - just as it's mine to look at a GPU that performs roughly the same as one I bought 7 years ago at almost the same price and say "no thanks".
    - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
      > releasing a new generation that achieves similar performance (in some cases worse) to last gen Afaik the new gen still manages to improve over the old one, albeit modestly, do you know of an example where is that not the case?
      - xmodem 3y ago
        See this GN review: https://youtu.be/WS0sfOb_sVM?t=666&si=Xt62b_2BfQM-fnuH https://youtu.be/WS0sfOb_sVM?t=666&si=Xt62b_2BfQM-fnuH Specifically, at 4K, the 3060 outperforms the 4060 in Cyberpunk. Most of the charts do show a gain, but I'd describe it as marginal rather than modest.
        MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
rbanffy 3y ago
> The meaning of “midrange” seems to be creeping upward. That has been the case since before I touched my first computer. The first mainframe I touched had 16 megabytes of memory, and my first desktop had 48 kilobytes. Both were midrange in their respective categories (although the mainframe was in the top in memory, it was only average in processing power - the Apple II+ was better than a VIC-20 and performed a little better than a C-64, but was slower than most of the "professional" personal computers). My work laptop is midrange today and is many, many orders of magnitude more powerful than the supercomputers of that period. To put things into perspective, my phone runs Unix on a RISC CPU closely coupled with an array processor. That's Moore's law. It has slowed down a bit, in part from the difficulty of doubling density every couple years, but also from the fact even a 5th generation Intel i3 is vastly more capable than what the average user needs. In GPUs it's a little bit different, with games requiring increasingly ludicrous amounts of compute power, pushing the "good enough" range upwards every year. If you really like to play Pac-Man, an 8-bit CPU and a simple CRTC should suffice.

josephg 3y ago

> Why are relatively expensive and large GPUs like in the RTX 3070 commonly called “midrange” Because the 30xx generation of graphics cards includes the 3050, 3060, 3070, 3080 and 3090. The 3070 is right in the middle of the range. Hence, midrange.

henriquecm8 3y ago
And also because it's a generation old. A card like 1080 was high-end during its time, and still works well, but it isn't high-end anymore. High-end gpus right now are the 4090 and 4080.

jrk 3y ago

Within the market of discrete gaming GPUs, there has been a hierarchy from "low-" to "high-end" for decades -- since before integrated GPUs even existed. For almost 20 years, things with 192- or 256-bit memory busses have been "mid-range" (vs. 384- or occasionally 512-bit memory busses at the high end, and smaller at the low-end). NVIDIA's "7"-tier GPUs have historically been the top of the mid-range in this world. Within this world "midrange" has been creeping upward not via big shifts in these fundamental characteristics but via: 1. Prices increasing steadily across the board, due to shortages and market power 2. Power budgets (and corresponding board/cooler sizes) increasing across the board The fundamentals (memory bus width -- still 256-bit; die size and performance relative to the top of the line) remain "mid-range" in exactly this same sense.

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
Expressed differently: the memory bus and chip size of a 4070 is equivalent to a 3060, NOT a 3070. Nvidia has shifted its portfolio to the left, so they can charge more for a smaller chip. I suspect this is mostly due to increasing manufacturing costs, not (just) pricing power. This is also a reason why they are banking on AI upscalers to drive improvements in the future.
- xmodem 3y ago
  Put another way, they took the gains in technology and process improvements and banked them for themselves, releasing a new generation that achieves similar performance (in some cases worse) to last gen, albeit at an improved power envelope, at the same price as last gen, but that they have higher margins on. The fact they can do this speaks to the lack of competition in the GPU market at the midrange and up. Compare this to the CPU market, where we now have Intel and AMD giving it everything to leapfrog each other every 6-9 months. I don't begrudge nvidia wanting to spend a generation consolidating their market position - that's their right - just as it's mine to look at a GPU that performs roughly the same as one I bought 7 years ago at almost the same price and say "no thanks".
  - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
    > releasing a new generation that achieves similar performance (in some cases worse) to last gen Afaik the new gen still manages to improve over the old one, albeit modestly, do you know of an example where is that not the case?
    - xmodem 3y ago
      See this GN review: https://youtu.be/WS0sfOb_sVM?t=666&si=Xt62b_2BfQM-fnuH https://youtu.be/WS0sfOb_sVM?t=666&si=Xt62b_2BfQM-fnuH Specifically, at 4K, the 3060 outperforms the 4060 in Cyberpunk. Most of the charts do show a gain, but I'd describe it as marginal rather than modest.
      - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago

rbanffy 3y ago

> The meaning of “midrange” seems to be creeping upward. That has been the case since before I touched my first computer. The first mainframe I touched had 16 megabytes of memory, and my first desktop had 48 kilobytes. Both were midrange in their respective categories (although the mainframe was in the top in memory, it was only average in processing power - the Apple II+ was better than a VIC-20 and performed a little better than a C-64, but was slower than most of the "professional" personal computers). My work laptop is midrange today and is many, many orders of magnitude more powerful than the supercomputers of that period. To put things into perspective, my phone runs Unix on a RISC CPU closely coupled with an array processor. That's Moore's law. It has slowed down a bit, in part from the difficulty of doubling density every couple years, but also from the fact even a 5th generation Intel i3 is vastly more capable than what the average user needs. In GPUs it's a little bit different, with games requiring increasingly ludicrous amounts of compute power, pushing the "good enough" range upwards every year. If you really like to play Pac-Man, an 8-bit CPU and a simple CRTC should suffice.