OK so I just watched the video.
Basically then they are skimping on power delivery. That's about the upshot of it.
However, they did that on Turing and it came at no real cost. I mean sure, my single 8 pin 2070 was locked at 1950mhz in the OC software, but that was because of the single 8 pin and so on. However, it didn't crash.
A few years ago a mate of mine who lives in Taiwan and worked at the time as a journo back to the UK sent me some profit and loss reports. MSI and Gigabyte were in big trouble at the time, and he predicted that a good few of them would go under. Mostly because they were making so little on Intel boards and stuff like that and the competition so stiff that they really had to work to margins that were so tight it just wasn't feasible for them to stay in business.
A lot of this was down to brand power. You know? that Asus tax that Asus can charge and get away with because of the reputation they have built, yet companies like MSI don't have that reputation and thus have to make cheaper boards. Cheaper in every way.
EVGA are another company that can enjoy this relative safety. Again because they have built a reputation but mainly just down to simple brand loyalty because they are American and Americans like buying stuff designed by Americans. EVGA is pretty tiny in the UK by comparison.
Smaller companies? yeah they are going to struggle quite badly.
`It will be interesting to see where people stand who bought off Ebay if they do a recall, though I'm still betting on a firmware boost limit even on new cards
Now that it seems to be more acceptable to be a little bit negative about Ampere (mainly thanks to Steve @ GN and a couple of others) I will once again talk about it.
Cheaper cards are going to have to be limited yes. You can't double the cost of the components and still sell the cards for the same prices. It just doesn't work like that. My Dual OC was cheap, and it was cheap for a reason. It had one 8 pin, and was limited to a hard 1950mhz in OC tools by the firmware. Bypassing it would have been a bad idea, as it would have likely cooked itself.
But that was OK because I knew that before I bought it. I could see the single 8 pin. I also knew that it may have analogue caps, but again that was fine. Turned out it did.
So the reality is? any of the cheaper 3080 cards will not be able to boost at their own leisure, and you will see lower clocks, and you will see much less raw performance out of those cards. Meaning every review you watched so far? means jack.
If you want that extra performance? prepare to pay extra for it. That is nothing new. However, understanding that before you blindly order a card is incredibly important.
Ampere as a design? fantastic. Ampere as a technology? brilliant. Ampere in reality because of Samsung?
I won't need to repeat what I have been saying for ages.
BTW I would just like to reiterate that I was no more negative about Turing than any other guy. I actually defended the pricing, because I knew it was expensive and knew it would be long before launch (IE putting loads back onto the die would come at a cost).
And, as much as I don't like Nvidia I still run three Turing cards. Which speaks for itself. So don't tell me I am being overly negative because I don't like Nvidia. I am being overly negative because Ampere is overly negative on Samsung. It's as simple as that and if you don't understand that? try doing some learning and reading before you get so mad at me.
