So here we are once again to find out what you guys think about some aspect of graphics hardware. In response to our recent articles on multiGPU scaling, set to conclude with a 4-way shootout coming soon, we have gotten a lot of feedback about cost and value.
Our attempt to distill some of the decision making process will always be clunky, as there is no perfect way to present all possible data. There is also no way to present any subset of data in all ways that would be relevant to everyone. So we've got to stick to producing a reasonable subset of data presented in a reasonable subset of forms to best assist our readership. And there's no better way to do that than to just ask you what you think about the subject. Hooray for polling.
While we may ask more specific questions in the future on methods, we are currently listening to any and all feedback left in the comments of our articles. We would also love to see some general comments on benchmark presentation on this blog post.
But the major purpose behind this particular poll isn't to determine the best way to display data. We starting at a more general point and will try to drill down in future polls. But for now, we would like to know how much both cost and value matter to our readers.
Obviously we spend a lot of time on the high end. It's an exciting market and even if we can't afford the parts it's neat to look at what will be affordable in about 18 months time. But we suspect that the majority of our readers, while interested in high end or even halo parts, will care much more about lower price points and bang for buck metrics.
We are interested in focusing more squarely on the market segments the majority of our readers are interested in, and we are also very interested in understanding just how value relates to the decision making process within those market segments.
We could make some extremely complex polls based on all this, but we've decided to try and keep it as simple as possible for now. The first question is straight forward. Rather than focusing on what vendor or what performance you want, we would like to know what your maximum budget for buying a new graphics card is when you upgrade.
The second question is a bit more complex. Basically, we want to know how much more /or/ less you are willing to spend if another part near your price offers significantly more value.
For instance, if you are considering part A and part B costs 10% more but your investment gains you more than 10%, will you break the bank a little and spend outside of your price range for the part B?
On the flip side, if you are considering part A and part B costs 10% less but performance drops less than 10%, will you choose to save some money to go with the part that might not perform exactly as high but gives you more for the money?
So, look at the first question as the price you are fixed on spending to get a specific level of performance. The second question modifies the first by asking how flexible you would be in the performance segment if you could get a better value by spending slightly more or slightly less.
I know, I know ... it's a little convoluted. But the alternative is a much more complex poll that associates price points with specific differences in performance and cost ... and I don't think we're ready for 100+ question polls ... We're certainly open to your suggestions on how to ask the right questions to get to the heart of this sort of data though. But for now, here's the poll.
{poll 122:1200}
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DerekWilson - Saturday, February 28, 2009 - link
It validates the strategy if their only concern is the subset of customers who respond to polls on AnandTech ...There is a bigger market out there, and we've always believed that our readership are smart shoppers interested in lots of performance for the money they put in. This sort of helps confirm our thoughts about that, but we are also not randomly sampling, and there could be some correlation between people who tend to respond to polls and the answers we've gotten ... which we can't evaluate without random polling.
we actually do have the ability to randomly poll people with popup polls, but people have been down on that idea, and we still have the problem that we are limited by people who chose to respond to a poll even if they are randomly presented with a popup poll.
we would expect a similar poll on an overclocking web site to reflect higher spending and higher flexibility or more of a focus on absolute performance.
we would likewise expect a poll on a more general consumer focused computer tech site to reflect that value parts (<$50 or maybe $50-$100) have the highest demand.
This data is not generalizable... but, for us and our readers, this information is very valuable.
PrinceGaz - Sunday, March 1, 2009 - link
I suspect a poll conducted by a third-party consumer research company would give results suggesting that most people don't buy a discrete graphics-card themselves, and that those who do are most likely to buy a card in the US$50-99 range (roughly the cost of two games), with those who also indicate a significant interest in gaming more likely to spend in the US$100-149 or US$150-199 region on a graphics-card (three or four games).People who visit sites like AT are not normal. They're technology enthusiasts at least, and PC hardware fanatics quite often. Therefore any poll run here can only ever give the views of people who already visit the site, which is certainly not the general public.
I don't think many people these days would actually go to the trouble of buying and installing (or having installed for them) a sub US$50 graphics card, as the time or money spent actually putting it in and setting it up would probably exceed the value of the card. Besides, whilst even sub US$50 cards are many times faster than onboard graphics, even Intel chipsets like the X3000 are quite capable of satisfying the needs of people who enjoy Sims 2 and other less graphically-demanding games (I've been playing Civ 4 a lot lately and I certainly don't need an 8800GTS for that).
The best way to find out what most people in the real-world spend on a graphics-card would be for Anand to use his connections with many mobo companies (who also sell lots of graphics cards with both nVidia and AMD GPUs) and ask them for a rough breakdown of sales across each sector. I'm sure if he promised not to reveal his sources, he'd be able to obtain relative figures of the volumes shipped in each segment (and possibly even between their nVidia and AMD based sales). We know these companies are often willing to spill the beans on upcoming stuff, and even pass on the odd unreleased CPU from Intel or AMD to the likes of AT (what they get in return for this is never made clear...) so I'm sure they could say
"x% of products shipped is in this range, x% in that, x% there, and x% above this amount).
Bremen7000 - Saturday, February 28, 2009 - link
Making any kind of conclusion about a company's strategy based on a poll on a tech site is epic-fail.GaryJohnson - Saturday, February 28, 2009 - link
Yeah, the people participating in the poll are only consumers. What the hell do they know?crimson117 - Sunday, March 1, 2009 - link
The only thing I know is that I know nothing.DerekWilson - Saturday, February 28, 2009 - link
i modified the second question to be a little more clear -- value was changed to VALUE and the (perf/$) note was addedwe aren't looking at how flexible you are to get the best performance (that should be taken into account in the first question) ... we want to know how flexible you are to get the best perf/$ ...
342 had responded before this change was pushed live. I do apologize for any inconvenience or misunderstanding.
Jjoshua2 - Saturday, February 28, 2009 - link
I normally by cards in the $150-200 range in the $100-150, because I wait for good sales with coupon and mail-in-rebates. I think there should be a question about how much do we consider market price versus lowest price we can find on bargain websites and such.The0ne - Saturday, February 28, 2009 - link
Same here. I'll wait for a good deal before purchasing a video card. I have the time to wait since I don't play games very often but do like have a good card when I need it. I got my 9800gx2 a year or so ago for $300 and it's still doing very well for my needs.DerekWilson - Saturday, February 28, 2009 - link
this is a good suggestion. we'll look at a separate poll in the coming weeks on coupons, instant rebates, mail in rebates ...are bundles part of the same equation, or should that be considered separately from the cost?
Kougar - Monday, March 2, 2009 - link
That's pretty much what I do. I nabbed a GTX 260 Superclocked last summer for $220 after promo code, free shipping, and a mail-in rebate. Eight months later I still don't regret it, and is how I've begun to conduct most of my other PC-related purchases.To answer your question, the only time I give the bundle any consideration is when it has a game I already wanted to purchase was included. This unfortunately is very rare so it almost never turns into a factor in my GPU purchases.
Unique programs like EVGA's Voltage tuner give value, but specific warranty length, options, and provisions are usually the biggest deciding factor beyond price for me personally.
If the GPU already had a very good quality aftermarket cooler pre-installed would this count as part of the bundle? I would factor any very good factory cooler upgrade into the price equation as it saves me from buying one myself. Otherwise I don't end up factoring the bundle into the original price.
To further muddle the issue, things like combos would factor in if I already was planning to buy the hardware. For example the Intel X25-M and Core i7 920 "combo" on Newegg gives an instant $60 off the combined total... I've been incredibly tempted by that because both items are on my future shopping list already and those items don't deal in rebates otherwise.