To be fair, if it weren't for AMD YES, Nvidia wouldn't have thrown out the 30 series nuclear bomb so early

Nvidia has thrown a nuclear bomb into the graphics card market, the 30 series. In Huang Renxun's own words, "This is a cross-generational advancement."

It is no exaggeration to describe the 30 series as a cross-generational product. According to Nvidia's official propaganda, the performance of the lowest-end 3070 in the 30 series is above the highest-end 2080 Ti in the previous generation 20 series, and it is 60% faster. The performance gap between graphics cards of the same level, such as the 2080 and 3080, is more than doubled.

Why did Huang Renxun and his Nvidia throw out the trump card at the beginning? How should they play the 40 series in the future?

In fact, in my opinion, Nvidia is not acting crazy, but it has seen through the development cycle of the industry and has chosen the right time. If it does not play a trump card now, it may not even have the chance to play a trump card in the future.

Before we get into the specific analysis, let’s take a look at the performance comparison between the three new graphics cards and the current king, the 2080Ti. From the comparison in the figure, it can be clearly seen that the 30 series graphics cards using the new architecture are much better than the 2080Ti in all aspects. The only disadvantage of the RTX 3070 compared to the 2080T is the video memory. However, 8GB of video memory is more than enough to run the current games on the market, even if it is used to run 4K resolution, 8GB is completely sufficient. A monster like the 3090 with 24GB of video memory does not seem to have much use except for running 8K high-definition images and doing AI research that Mr. Huang has always been concerned about.

In addition, the difference between 8GB and 24GB of video memory also leaves room for Mr. Huang to make adjustments in the future. Just recently, foreign media revealed the specifications of the 3070 Ti, among which the video memory has been increased to 16GB.

In addition to the performance leap, the most explosive and painful thing for some fans is the price of the new series of graphics cards. As can be clearly seen from the above diagram, the horizontal axis is the price of the graphics card, and the vertical axis is the performance level. As the lowest-end 30 series 3070, its price is more than a little different from the highest-end 20 series 2080Ti.

According to the suggested retail price of the National Bank, the RTX 3070 only costs 3,899 yuan, while the 3080 only costs 5,499 yuan.

You should know that before the 30 series was announced, it would cost at least 6,000 yuan to buy a public version of the 2080Ti, and some non-public versions would be cheaper, but most would be more expensive, generally around 10,000 yuan. Now, facing the 3070 with better performance, you can buy it at almost half the price. Whether in terms of cost performance or the concept of buying new hardware instead of old, the 2080Ti has lost, and even has the momentum of becoming an "IQ test card".

It is not surprising that this kind of thing happens when a new card is launched. Many card slaves who have experienced multiple generations of upgrades usually just laugh at this situation and continue to use the jokes they made a few years ago with a different number. In fact, as early as when they heard that NVIDIA was going to launch a new graphics card, some people had already started posting pictures to warm up.

However, what no one expected was that this time, the way Boss Huang destroyed the previous generation of graphics cards was not to use a sledgehammer to squeeze out toothpaste, but to use a nuclear bomb to clear the field directly.

After the smoke cleared, a more important question arose: who exactly did Boss Huang want to bomb with this nuclear bomb?

Is it old rival AMD? Or fans who are dissatisfied with the performance of the 20 series, or do they want to defend the position of PC games at the threshold of console generation? Let's analyze them one by one.

Goal 1: Crush AMD to death?

For the independent graphics card market, the competition between NVIDIA and AMD has existed for more than a decade. Although Intel recently wanted to get involved, it is only limited to ideas.

A few months ago, someone revealed that AMD is about to launch the Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card, which has a 31.9% performance improvement over the 2080Ti, and the price is only US$999.

The revelation was very plausible. The 31.9% improvement is not high for the next generation of graphics cards, but it is in line with the law of development. AMD has always focused on cost-effectiveness, and the price of $999 sounded very tempting at the time.

It sounds like after AMD says YES, it will hit Intel hard in the CPU field and then turn to Nvidia to launch a decisive battle in the GPU field.

However, this news was quickly questioned. The main reason was that AMD would not directly target the 2080Ti in the chart display. Even if it did, it would probably just use "competitors" instead. Some sample charts were too lacking in focus and did not look like something AMD was going to show off. Given that AMD has not released any official statement so far, it is basically certain that this news is fake.

However, the reason why some people are so concerned about making such a fake exposure is that they are venting their dissatisfaction with Nvidia's near monopoly on the GPU market.

According to survey data released by market research firm Jon Peddie Research, in the second quarter of 2020, Nvidia's market share reached 80%, AMD was squeezed to around 20%, and as for Intel, since there are no official products online, it only has a sad 0%.

From the data of this survey, we can also see that in the second quarter of 2019, Nvidia's market share was only 71%, while AMD's was 29%. After experiencing various special circumstances at the beginning of 2020, AMD's share has not increased but decreased, which is also surprising.

Nvidia's high market share is inseparable from its gaming products. Although Huang Renxun has repeatedly stated in public that he wants to develop in the direction of AI, it is clear that the largest consumer group of discrete graphics cards is still gamers. With the outbreak of the epidemic in early 2020, the demand for games among people at home has increased, so it is not surprising that Nvidia's market share has risen accordingly.

Therefore, Nvidia, which has directly snatched 9% of AMD's graphics card market share in three quarters, is obviously not worried that AMD's new cards will pose too much of a threat to itself. Although the two companies are in a competitive relationship, launching new products must have the idea of ​​suppressing the other party, but even if the 30 series continues to improve in a toothpaste-squeezing manner, it can still firmly suppress AMD.

Goal 2: Atonement?

The newly launched 30 series uses the Ampere architecture, and the previous generation 20 series architecture is called Turing. When Turing was launched at the end of 2018, the market reaction Nvidia received can be said to be completely opposite to this time.

The performance of the 20 series is very little improved compared to the previous generation 10 series. Even the top-end 2080Ti is only 20% better than the 1080Ti, but the price has doubled.

The only thing that prevented the 2080 from becoming a product that only tests its IQ is the newly added ray tracing function and the advantages in software such as DLSS. The S series launched later also faced the same feeling of powerlessness in terms of performance improvement.

Therefore, most people feel disappointed with the 20 series, and this feeling is also reflected in sales.

In the fourth quarter of 2019, Nvidia rarely lowered its revenue guidance from $2.7 billion to $2.2 billion. According to the company, the reason for the reduction was that the collapse of the cryptocurrency market led to a large number of unsold graphics cards for mining, and the shrinking Chinese market affected the demand for gaming cards. The final reason was that "the sales of some high-end graphics cards based on the Turing architecture were lower than expected." It is said that after one year of sales, the 20 series graphics cards accounted for only 2% of N card users.

For Nvidia, being able to publicly admit in its financial report that the company's flagship product has poor sales means that they are aware of the mistakes they made on the Turing graphics card.

Therefore, we have seen a big leap forward in the 30 series, which is like a child who was criticized for walking slowly, blushing and rushing to the front of the team. It is Nvidia's way of "atonement" to consumers and also of expressing that its 80% market share is well deserved.

This spirit may be something that some CPU toothpaste manufacturers should learn from.

Goal three: Still want to crush AMD?

The gaming industry is the largest consumer group for discrete GPUs, and the reason why Nvidia has surpassed AMD by so much is closely related to its efforts in the gaming industry. Nvidia used "The way it's meant to be played" as its slogan at the beginning, giving money to many game developers and letting its logo appear before the game.

Even today, we can still see this sentence appearing in many masterpieces. Although ATI, which was still A-card at the time, also made some corresponding strategies, it was obviously not as large and exposed as NVIDIA. In the end, it had to hand over the synonym of gaming graphics cards and the loyal faith of gamers to NVIDIA.

For the gaming industry, in addition to PC games where discrete graphics cards are very important, the scale of console games cannot be ignored. It is in console games that Nvidia exposed its market loss due to arrogance - it is AMD that provides CPU and GPU chips for the next-generation consoles PS5 and Xbox Series X.

This year is a transitional year for console games. The old consoles PS3 and Xbox One have entered the end of their life, while the new generation PS5 and Xbox Series X have been released one after another. From the information currently available, the leap forward for console games is not small. At a price of three to four thousand yuan, the cost-effectiveness of console games in terms of graphics is gradually approaching that of PC games.

In fact, in recent years, many PC graphics cards have reached bottlenecks, and there is a saying that consoles may be the future. This is closely related to the high pricing and low performance of the 20 series.

If Nvidia's 30 series at this time still follows the previous performance improvement route of 2% or 30%, and the price does not drop much, then for players, wouldn't a PS5 that may only cost $499 be a good choice?

If all this happens, it will be a disaster for NVIDIA. Players will turn to more cost-effective console games. Who can NVIDIA sell this graphics card to?

In the face of the loss of the basic market of the game, Mr. Huang obviously cannot sit idly by. How can he keep the loyalty of gamers to the PC game platform? The weapon with unexpected cost performance comes in handy. Although the money for buying a 3070 graphics card can basically buy a next-generation console without considering the cost of other hardware such as the motherboard, CPU, and memory, but from the performance of running frames alone, it is still no problem to retain those players who have an extreme preference for game graphics.

AMD, Yes!

However, whether it is to apologize for the 20 series's behavior or to protect its position in the hearts of gamers, we can see that this is due to the pressure from competitors. If AMD hadn't been chasing Nvidia's ass, we might only see a 30 series upgrade that follows the 20 series path.

AMD has obviously become a driving force behind the progress of the times. Although the market share of its CPU and GPU businesses has been crushed by Intel and Nvidia respectively for many years, when faced with the two companies trying to get by by squeezing toothpaste, AMD will always jump out at the right time to teach them not to squeeze toothpaste!

So, when we are enjoying the super high cost-effectiveness brought by 3070 and 3080, perhaps we should also shout AMD Yes in our hearts.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.