Friday, July 18th 2008
R700 Launch in for Wet-Weather, GTX 280 Slash Coming Up
In what could be a serious blow to AMD's R700 dreams as the company struggles to survive, NVIDIA could be working out another price-slash for the GeForce GTX 200 series, signs of which are already surfacing. You can get a GeForce GTX 280 for US $440. American e-tailer Newegg has already put several brands' GeForce GTX 280 on shelves for $440 (listed here), lower than the launch-price of the GeForce GTX 260.
Implications are:
Implications are:
- This paves the way for a 'GeForce GTX 280 Extreme', a new model which has been put on pre-order on British website OCUK (covered here).
- While board partners seemed displeased at the current market trend with the GTX 200 series (covered here), all of a sudden, they are all offering price-cuts. Could NVIDIA be subsidizing these products, given that some reports suggest poor reception of these products in the North American markets?
- Assuming the R700 comes in at around $499 and $549, it loses badly to the GTX 280 at its newest price on both fronts of price/performance and performance per Watt.
- No price-cuts for GTX 260 have been noted, showing this cut is very much specific to the GTX 280, serves two purposes: 1. Phasing out the 65nm parts, 2. striking R700 when it hurts the most, during launch.
- While NVIDIA has the resources to maintain the leadership of GeForce GTX 200 (by affording to slash prices), AMD doesn't.
112 Comments on R700 Launch in for Wet-Weather, GTX 280 Slash Coming Up
Interesting perspective. I guess we'll have to see how ATI's new cards do. Good for me though. I'm all for cheap Nvidia cards : )
Edit: added links.
If the price gap is too big though I will be going with the 280.
I dont think begged is the right word , while borrow is .
I guess what I'm saying is, how do we know all this isn't just a load of bullshit, and the card's prices after being "slashed" are still higher than they should be, and AMD and NVIDIA have done this to get people thinking they are getting a good deal on the cards?
Also - i can't find any gtx280's for $440. 450, but not 440. Typo?
The power pins alone do not supply nearly enough juice for that monster - and there is 95W of power that is pulled from the pcie slot, which has a maximum capacity of 75W... Hexus had to switch out their motherboard for the testing because the first one would crash.
"the manifestation of such power is a frankly ludicrous power-draw of around 320W when placed under sustained load. Some commentators may argue that's required for two HD 4870 boards, which is true, but the very fact that the X2 variant plugs into a single PCIe (2.0) x16 slot can become problematic. Why? Because the 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power arrangement provides in the order of 225W to a card; the rest needs to be pulled from the PCIe slot."
- source www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=14178&page=3
Nice observation, looking forward to being able to afford a GTX260.
Cheers,
Frederik
65nm G200 cores must be having a higher yield than originally thought, id say 90% of the usable dies are also fully functional, which would make sense as 65nm is mature by this point
this will defiently make things interesting. especially being that while nvidia is in a better position to sell the gtx280 for a loss than amd is. they're not exactly faring too well themselves. both companies better watch themselves in the pricewar as intel has been biding it's time waiting to retake the gpu market.
EDIT: Yogurt beat me to it... its gonna be a great time for gamers with those three at it. Ray tracing FTW!
I'm told that the drop from $499 to $449 is due to slow sales of the 280, not due to R700. 260 is selling "well" at $299-329.
My 280 can do 725/1530/1300. Its completely game stable but I think it can go a bit higher. Not that it matters though, it can already max out everything except everyone's favorite POS anyway.
[sarcasm] I really don't care about the pricewar on the companies' side, they both deserve it. If the 280 drops even more, then that only means the 4870x2's launch price will soon after. They should just keep on dropping prices so these babies will be in everyone's range :roll: [/sarcasm]