Nvidia CEO, President and Founder Interview (seriously what on earth?)

I believe you all already know that the GTX Titan Z is coming at a price of $3000, and is on par and outperformed in some cases by a freaking $1500 R9 295x2. I just read this interview and am completely disappointed and out of words:

Source: NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Z Gets Potential New Release Date - Nvidia CEO Also Defends $3000 Price Tag

My question is: Are people really going to buy this thing? I may be being naive but what he said just sounds utterly ridiculous. He quite simply stated that Nvidia consumers don't bother paying twice the price of an EQUIVALENT hardware and that we are stupid enough we could do it every year! Even if you are swimming in cash this just doesn't make sense whatsoever.

 

Unless nvidia's drivers are just that much better or CUDA is a requirement it seems silly.

 

I'm sure he's basing his comments on collected data, and it probably supports what he's saying. Nothing is guaranteed, but it's a good generalization.

Also, don't be so naive to believe that people won't buy this card. They will.

 

Its pretty easy

GTX Titan Black - Both good in GPGPU and gaming - $999
GTX 780 Ti - Horrible in GPGPU but good in gaming - $599
R9 290X - $499
GTX Titan Z - Both good in GPGPU and gaming - $2999
R9 295X - $1500

You see that Titan cards which are jack of all trades goes for 2x the AMD cards, while typical gaming cards, 780 Ti, goes for slightly more than AMD.
Nvidia is a strong brand among gamers so they will pay $100 more for the gaming cards and professionals that need CUDA in their applications have no other choice than to buy Titan`s.
Nvidia knows this and set the price accordingly.

That said, I don`t think Nvidia have high sales expectations from Titan Z anyway. Neither does AMD with 295X. Both of these cards are worse value than CF/SLI builds.
The difference is that AMD sell more with lower margins while Nvidia sell less with higher margins. They both have their own user groups which is the reason why they can co exist.
Wouldn`t surprise me if they have a secret agreement to follow this price strategy: That Nvidia must be a little more expensive than AMD.
It seems like they both benefit from it.

 

Well there's Jen-Hsun Huang for you. Dude's in way over his head and loves to run his mouth to the press. Probably thinks he's the next Steve Jobs or something.

Check out this gem: Q&A: Nvidia chief explains his strategy for winning in mobile computing | VentureBeat | Mobile | by Dean Takahashi

Let's see now. PS4? AMD. XB1? AMD. Wii U? IBM & AMD.

And this was March 2011, when all three consoles were already in developement. LOL!!!

 

That certainly does make a lot of sense, what doesn't and previously made me think Titan Zs will mainly target gamers is this:

"GeForce GTX TITAN Z is a gaming monster, built to power the most extreme gaming rigs on the planet. (...) This is a serious card built for serious gamers. (...) If you’re looking for the ultimate in gaming power, GeForce GTX TITAN Z is your card. Arriving April."

They don't even mention any use other than gaming for this card in their own announcement: Ultimate Power. The new GeForce GTX TITAN Z | GeForce. As a matter of fact, the branding "Geforce" is used for gaming cards and "Quadro" for professional cards and they are supplied with different drivers accordingly. Why would they name a mainly professional card as a gaming card? Also, I believe by GPGPU you mean CUDA right? Because there also is OpenCL which as far as I know AMD is as strong as Nvidia if not stronger. Couldn't find any benchmarks saying which brand is generally best at GPGPU (GPGPU is currently dominated by CUDA and/or OpenCL, GPGPU is a general term), obviously Nvidia is the only one that supports CUDA so that is indeed a valid point. In terms of GPGPU in general I doubt two r9 295x2 in Crossfire will be outperformed by a single GTX Titan Z (which is equivalent in terms of price).

Now that I think about it, possibly professional users will study what card they will buy so neither AMD nor Nvidia really need to market it as such? That's why perhaps Nvidia is trying to fool gamers that don't think much before spending loads of money?

 

They don't need to fool gamers. They just need to get them hooked and keep them hooked. They're probably trying to throw this in gamers' faces because they know it wouldn't be profitable otherwise. Gamers are the only ones that spend thousands on stupid stuff just to brag about it, and continue to do so each year to keep bragging about it. I've done it, I'm sure a lot of people that will read this post have done it, and we'll keep on doing it for years to come.

Unfortunately, I don't have enough liquidable income to purchase multiple Titan Z's, and I don't see any benefit in doing so over 780Ti's. Another factor in my not purchasing a Titan Z, is the fact that I can trade my car in for a model year newer for less than $3000 difference. So, yeah... My money can be better spent elsewhere.

 

There is also the "high ball" advertising factor. If Nvidia has a $3000 GPU up against AMD @ $1500, then sure, maybe you don't buy the $3000 Nvidia chip as the average consumer.

But, it helps to shape our perception of them as consumers anyway. Then, when you're faced with a $249 AMD vs $299 Nvidia chip of equal performance, maybe you go with team green.

 

Yep been there done that. I have enough saved up to buy a few Titan-Z's but there's no way in hell I'm getting a Titan-Z for gaming, especially not with the R295X2 around. nVidia's blatant arrogance towards gamers is starting to pees me off more than anything else.

Sadly, I have no doubt people will still buy this just for gaming. Joke's on them though. But hey it's their money, whatever makes them happy I guess.

 

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To be honest, what else did you expect him to say?
The Nvidia CEO is not turning any customers away with his comments, because he knows that they have a locked-in customer base that will buy Nvidia no matter what.
AMD has a really good Desktop card that is far more affordable, but Huang isn't going to start telling people to buy that nor anything else and expect to keep his job.
Nvidia is in the business to make money- A LOT of money, and as much as they can, so therefore he has to get people to buy their very expensive Titan Z card, and have them do so as often as possible.
They also know whom their core clientele and customers are, so they have to keep them satisfied with what they can, because they know that their customer base will spend more- sometimes a lot more to get the best GPU that they can, whether it's justified to their loyal customer base or not.

 

The sad thing is that as rapidly as technology progresses, that $3000 card will only put you on the top for 6-9 months. Then it's time to upgrade again. Truly silly IMHO. I can almost understand if you want the machine to last a while without having to touch for 4-5 years, to spend $5-6K on the build. A friend of mine does just that, about every five years he's gone out and spent over $5k for a PC rig.

 

He's probably right that the people who will buy this are not concerned about money. You don't buy a $3000 graphics card if you're concerned with money (or even the $600 780 Ti, for that matter). The market for this is either the people who really need all the performance they can get, and for whom the increase in productivity will repay the costs (and those people might buy every year if the performance keeps going up and it keeps increasing their productivity), or those who have plenty of money and buy it as a luxury good. You could even argue that they're trying to make the Titan Z a Veblen good, where the sheer fact that it's expensive makes people want to buy it (kind of like Bentleys or diamonds).

Jen-Hsun Huang has never been humble, though. He likes to make bold, optimistic, triumphant proclamations that sometimes are based on fact and sometimes are based on what he hopes will become fact (but isn't necessarily a finished product quite yet). nVIDIA delivers on his promises often enough that it works out okay. But he's certainly not a calm, politically correct CEO - and while he won't be everyone's favorite executive, that isn't entirely a bad thing.

 

I'd argue the Titan-Z is more of a Giffen than Veblen good.

 

Just sounds like a confident CEO to me. As long as Nvidia and AMD keep on producing good cards that stimulate competition I'm happy.

Sent from Tapatalk from an increasingly expensive smartphone

 

You only get one side of the stort of the situation on forums and comment sections.
Professional users know they need Titan cards and CUDA in their applications. So they don`t go writing about it on forums. Exactly like professional users and system memory. You don`t see any of them asking "do I need 16GB DDR3?". They know it based on experience. So you only get the common folks version of price hence why people think Titan Z won`t sell based on the collective voice of typical average users.

From cnet.com interview with Huang:

Nvidia have a lot of support in the computing field, so they know they can price the cards pretty high against AMD which are a no option for many.
You are right that AMD have a lead in OpenCL but far from everyone use that API while working on graphics, and big cluster of cards run their own software while crunching data etc.

When all is said and done, nobody is forcing anyone to buy Titan Z. People have the power to make it a failure. Gamers have GTX 780 Ti SLI option still and luckily R9 295X with a much more reasonable price for gamers, so life moves on


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Life is hard for eliteists that want to have the best at all times lol.
Luckily you can get some money back when selling old hardware though so you dont have to dish out full price every time. But I imagine those who want to sell Titan Z gonna have to go down in price...a lot lol

Very interesting theory. Sublimal marketing. Very sneaky

Exactly.

If people would stop buying these cards then Nvidia wouldn`t price them high as this either. But here we are, Nvidia cards still cost more than AMD cards and one of them is making one hell of a profit every quarter. It is not AMD.

So apparantly Nvidia know what they are doing

 

Well, I'm starting to doubt if Nvidia cares about typical gamer's market anyways.
They got a pretty lucrative market in the military industry, especially in the unmanned development.

 

I just hope that this does not mean that overpricing will increase further in the GPU industry because honestly this GTX Titan Z was an aberration for me ("enthusiast" consumer). Is this the most expensive 'gaming' GPU (not workstation/professional) ever released or something? Couldn't find dependable data about it. I know that the value of money fluctuates but in 2011 I believe the most expensive gaming GPU was the ASUS Mars II GTX 580x2 which cost $1500 which is half of what the GTX Titan Z costs now. I don't believe the value of money has varied that much since then (completely unsure though).

Really? I wasn't aware of that. Interesting.

 

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Yes, and those are important points, because it is in the best interests of EVERYONE in the gaming community to have BOTH Nvidia and AMD be phenomenal successes.
When both Nvidia and AMD win, we win as consumers and customers- and that includes Intel as well.
If I had my way via a genie in a bottle wish, I would wish for both companies to incredibly successful, and post multi-billion dollar profits each quarter forever. That fuels even greater competition, which begets greater technological advancements, which makes for far faster and more powerful GPUs, which fuels greater leaps in technological breakthroughs across the board.
Everyone wins in the end.