>MOST COMPANIES like to shout about their new products. Not Nvidia, it seems. On May 19th the chip-design firm will release the GeForce RTX 5060, its newest mass-market graphics card for video gamers. PR departments at companies like AMD and Nvidia usually roll the pitch for such products by providing influential YouTubers and websites with samples to test ahead of time. That allows them to publish their reviews on launch day.
>This time, though, Nvidia seems to have got cold feet. Reviewers have said that it is withholding vital software until the day of the card’s launch, making timely coverage impossible. May 19th is also the day before the start of Computex, a big Taiwanese trade show that often saturates the tech press.
>Trying to slip a product out without fanfare often means a company is worried it will not be well received. That may be the case with the 5060. Nvidia, which got its start in gaming, has more recently become a star of the artificial-intelligence (AI) business. But some of its early customers are feeling jilted. Reviews for some recent gaming products have been strikingly negative. Hardware Unboxed, a YouTube channel with more than 1m subscribers, described one recent graphics chip as a “piece of crap”. A video on another channel, Gamers Nexus (2.4m subscribers), complains about inflated performance claims and “marketing BS”. Linus Tech Tips (16.3m) opined in April that Nvidia is “grossly out of touch” with its customers.
>Price is one reason for the grousing. Short supply means Nvidia’s products tend to be sold at a much higher price than the official rate. The 4060, which the 5060 is designed to replace, has a recommended price of $299. But on Newegg, a big online shop, the cheapest 4060 costs more than $400. The 5090, Nvidia’s top gaming card, is supposed to go for $1,999. Actually getting hold of one can cost $3,000 or more.
>Quality control seems to have slipped, too. Power cables in some of the firm’s high-end cards have been melting during use. In February Nvidia admitted that some cards had been sold with vital components missing (it offered free replacements). Reviewers complain about miserly hardware on the firm’s mid-range cards, such as the 5060, that leaves them struggling with some newer games.
>In February Nvidia reported that quarterly revenue at its gaming division was down 11% year on year. Until recently that would have been a problem, as gaming accounted for the majority of the firm’s revenue. Now, though, the AI boom has made it a sideshow. Data-centre sales brought in $35.6bn last quarter, more than 90% of the total and up from just $3.6bn in the same period two years earlier (see chart). With that money fountain gushing, gamers can grumble as much as they like—but unless the firm’s AI business starts misfiring too, neither its bosses nor its shareholders are under much pressure to listen.
brentsg
I take issue with this. I’m not “feeling grumpy”… I AM GRUMPY.
nesnalica
i get that as a company you gotta make money.
but you’re already making so much fucking money.
the gaming segment isn’t even as big. why cant we just have good products for reasonable prices?
Noobphobia
I do understand people’s frustrations but when it comes to the 5060…its an entry level card, do people expect them to roll out the red carpet for the Nissan versa of gpus?
Waffler11
I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually leave the GPU industry entirely and just focus on AI. I remember seeing a graph somewhere that showed how much work they allocated to different areas and the GPUs represented a tiny slice.
Valoneria
Yet they keep buying their products
abstractism
It’d be seriously great if they would stop being greedy trash. Because their incompetence is showing.
roogie15
Can confirm, just bought my first AMD GPU in a while. Nvidia is just greedy with trash quality control atm.
TsubasaSaito
Jokes on you, I never felt loved in the first place!
But man come on, the gaming sector might be THE most loyal customers you could get on your side by the most cheapest things possible…
Ragnarsdad1
At no point did I inappropriately feel Grumpy or any other dwarf for that matter.
mvw2
I’ve built several new computers and done upgrades n recent years. The GPU is the one item I haven’t bought new in my last four builds. A GTX 980 Ti was the last new card I bought.
Jamizon1
And Jensen Huang (Clown) gives no fucks while he laughs all the way to the bank.
The story should be that the value proposition of Nvidia’s GPUs has massively tanked in the past 5 years due to higher margins in data centres for AI driving up investor expectations.
Semi-conductors have NEVER been a 70% margin business as they are so capital intensive and have always had boom and bust cycles driving down profits massively every few years (the bust part…).
Nvidia has a once in a generation oppo to drive profits and instead of being reasonable about it, they are gouging their core userbase who have fuelled their growth for 20+ years.
They are literally spending the capital of their goodwill with their customers for short term profits when… they already have insane short term profits.
I can’t think of a more short sighted company at the moment.
usual_suspect82
I’m not grumpy, and I’m also not delusional enough to believe a corporation loves me, or ever loved me. The 50-series is just a low point in their otherwise mostly great track record, but as a 40-series owner I’m absolutely happy. I think the people that are unhappy/vocal are the budget conscious shoppers who didn’t expect steep price increases, about 1% of their total user base dealing with random issues that look and smell like end user issues, and the AMD subreddit, which ironically has seemingly been merging with PCMR.
I’ve had zero issues since switching back from AMD, and costs be damned I’d prefer to keep it that way. I don’t have all the time in the world to deal with headaches, under-volting, overclocking and since everything is working smoothly, even with the latest drivers, I’m not going to tempt fate.
I’ll assume when it’s time to upgrade, probably around the 60-series refresh, all these problems will be ironed out.
Griever2142
Next GPU will be AMD. I’m done with Nvidia.
onefourk
I’m not grumpy, just a bit disappointed – but at the same time I understand why they do it, money. Why make a gaming card when you could use that manufacturing capacity to make an AI one which you can sell for much more? In their place I’d do the same thing. This is likely to continue until AI cards come down in price, demand falls off, margins on gaming cards increase to near that of AI stuff, or some combination of these factors. I don’t think any of this is going to happen for a while, in the meantime the best we can hope for is that AMD and Intel raise their games.
eriksprow07
Man corpo greed blamming and shunning out their own consumers….okay, welp ill just keep my 3080 until it just doesnt work any morr, who knows prolly go team red if it doesmt go the same way nvida did in a few years.
DkoyOctopus
they will express their displeasure by buying a 5090 super.
Muster_the_rohirim
Saddly Ngreedia doesn’t give a shit
smol_boi2004
NVIDIA doesn’t make as much profit from the gaming space anymore. People need to realize that this company stopped pandering to us the second AI showed more money. Without some significant government regulation in AI development, NVIDIA has no reason to ever return to making gamers happy
ImRonniemundt
15 years of support and I’ve switched over to the dark side
A M D
irish_faithful
I am not an engineer, but maybe there is a way to design GPUs that are solely for gaming and don’t work well for other AI applications…sort of how certain CPUs may be super powerful and are great for running servers, but would be terrible for gaming. Can anyone with knowhow weigh in on this?
firedrakes
well gamer wont pay real price for gpus
cognitiveglitch
As an nVidia customer exclusively since their first cards, I bought my first AMD card this year. I’m really impressed with it, too.
28 Comments
>MOST COMPANIES like to shout about their new products. Not Nvidia, it seems. On May 19th the chip-design firm will release the GeForce RTX 5060, its newest mass-market graphics card for video gamers. PR departments at companies like AMD and Nvidia usually roll the pitch for such products by providing influential YouTubers and websites with samples to test ahead of time. That allows them to publish their reviews on launch day.
>This time, though, Nvidia seems to have got cold feet. Reviewers have said that it is withholding vital software until the day of the card’s launch, making timely coverage impossible. May 19th is also the day before the start of Computex, a big Taiwanese trade show that often saturates the tech press.
>Trying to slip a product out without fanfare often means a company is worried it will not be well received. That may be the case with the 5060. Nvidia, which got its start in gaming, has more recently become a star of the artificial-intelligence (AI) business. But some of its early customers are feeling jilted. Reviews for some recent gaming products have been strikingly negative. Hardware Unboxed, a YouTube channel with more than 1m subscribers, described one recent graphics chip as a “piece of crap”. A video on another channel, Gamers Nexus (2.4m subscribers), complains about inflated performance claims and “marketing BS”. Linus Tech Tips (16.3m) opined in April that Nvidia is “grossly out of touch” with its customers.
>Price is one reason for the grousing. Short supply means Nvidia’s products tend to be sold at a much higher price than the official rate. The 4060, which the 5060 is designed to replace, has a recommended price of $299. But on Newegg, a big online shop, the cheapest 4060 costs more than $400. The 5090, Nvidia’s top gaming card, is supposed to go for $1,999. Actually getting hold of one can cost $3,000 or more.
>Quality control seems to have slipped, too. Power cables in some of the firm’s high-end cards have been melting during use. In February Nvidia admitted that some cards had been sold with vital components missing (it offered free replacements). Reviewers complain about miserly hardware on the firm’s mid-range cards, such as the 5060, that leaves them struggling with some newer games.
>In February Nvidia reported that quarterly revenue at its gaming division was down 11% year on year. Until recently that would have been a problem, as gaming accounted for the majority of the firm’s revenue. Now, though, the AI boom has made it a sideshow. Data-centre sales brought in $35.6bn last quarter, more than 90% of the total and up from just $3.6bn in the same period two years earlier (see chart). With that money fountain gushing, gamers can grumble as much as they like—but unless the firm’s AI business starts misfiring too, neither its bosses nor its shareholders are under much pressure to listen.
I take issue with this. I’m not “feeling grumpy”… I AM GRUMPY.
i get that as a company you gotta make money.
but you’re already making so much fucking money.
the gaming segment isn’t even as big. why cant we just have good products for reasonable prices?
I do understand people’s frustrations but when it comes to the 5060…its an entry level card, do people expect them to roll out the red carpet for the Nissan versa of gpus?
I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually leave the GPU industry entirely and just focus on AI. I remember seeing a graph somewhere that showed how much work they allocated to different areas and the GPUs represented a tiny slice.
Yet they keep buying their products
It’d be seriously great if they would stop being greedy trash. Because their incompetence is showing.
Can confirm, just bought my first AMD GPU in a while. Nvidia is just greedy with trash quality control atm.
Jokes on you, I never felt loved in the first place!
But man come on, the gaming sector might be THE most loyal customers you could get on your side by the most cheapest things possible…
At no point did I inappropriately feel Grumpy or any other dwarf for that matter.
I’ve built several new computers and done upgrades n recent years. The GPU is the one item I haven’t bought new in my last four builds. A GTX 980 Ti was the last new card I bought.
And Jensen Huang (Clown) gives no fucks while he laughs all the way to the bank.
Poor greedy ahole
https://preview.redd.it/2vw4a81asz0f1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=72160cd013f467e0cd9c4440440fb402d4742bb7
Even my feed isn’t impressed I guess.
Nvidia makes me feel Whooo.
I currently own 3 Nvidia GPUs, and Nvidia stock.
Today I bought an AMD 9070 XT.
The story should be that the value proposition of Nvidia’s GPUs has massively tanked in the past 5 years due to higher margins in data centres for AI driving up investor expectations.
Semi-conductors have NEVER been a 70% margin business as they are so capital intensive and have always had boom and bust cycles driving down profits massively every few years (the bust part…).
Nvidia has a once in a generation oppo to drive profits and instead of being reasonable about it, they are gouging their core userbase who have fuelled their growth for 20+ years.
They are literally spending the capital of their goodwill with their customers for short term profits when… they already have insane short term profits.
I can’t think of a more short sighted company at the moment.
I’m not grumpy, and I’m also not delusional enough to believe a corporation loves me, or ever loved me. The 50-series is just a low point in their otherwise mostly great track record, but as a 40-series owner I’m absolutely happy. I think the people that are unhappy/vocal are the budget conscious shoppers who didn’t expect steep price increases, about 1% of their total user base dealing with random issues that look and smell like end user issues, and the AMD subreddit, which ironically has seemingly been merging with PCMR.
I’ve had zero issues since switching back from AMD, and costs be damned I’d prefer to keep it that way. I don’t have all the time in the world to deal with headaches, under-volting, overclocking and since everything is working smoothly, even with the latest drivers, I’m not going to tempt fate.
I’ll assume when it’s time to upgrade, probably around the 60-series refresh, all these problems will be ironed out.
Next GPU will be AMD. I’m done with Nvidia.
I’m not grumpy, just a bit disappointed – but at the same time I understand why they do it, money. Why make a gaming card when you could use that manufacturing capacity to make an AI one which you can sell for much more? In their place I’d do the same thing. This is likely to continue until AI cards come down in price, demand falls off, margins on gaming cards increase to near that of AI stuff, or some combination of these factors. I don’t think any of this is going to happen for a while, in the meantime the best we can hope for is that AMD and Intel raise their games.
Man corpo greed blamming and shunning out their own consumers….okay, welp ill just keep my 3080 until it just doesnt work any morr, who knows prolly go team red if it doesmt go the same way nvida did in a few years.
they will express their displeasure by buying a 5090 super.
Saddly Ngreedia doesn’t give a shit
NVIDIA doesn’t make as much profit from the gaming space anymore. People need to realize that this company stopped pandering to us the second AI showed more money. Without some significant government regulation in AI development, NVIDIA has no reason to ever return to making gamers happy
15 years of support and I’ve switched over to the dark side
A M D
I am not an engineer, but maybe there is a way to design GPUs that are solely for gaming and don’t work well for other AI applications…sort of how certain CPUs may be super powerful and are great for running servers, but would be terrible for gaming. Can anyone with knowhow weigh in on this?
well gamer wont pay real price for gpus
As an nVidia customer exclusively since their first cards, I bought my first AMD card this year. I’m really impressed with it, too.