Thursday, March 29th 2012
Radeon HD 7970 Price Cuts Not Any Time Soon: Report
A lot of prospective buyers of new generation GPUs were counting on the US $499 launch price of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 to result in reactionary price-cuts in the red camp, particularly with the $549 Radeon HD 7970. NVIDIA's GPU is faster, more efficient, and under normal circumstances, should leave AMD with no other option, but to cut prices of HD 7970 to stay competitive. However, that hasn't happened, and according to a HardwareCanucks report, will not happen any time soon.
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 launch wasn't just on paper, there was market-availability on launch-day, although like every other new GPU launch, stocks have been quite limited. Before this launch, AMD and its partners managed to replenish inventories of Radeon HD 7970, making it generally available, while not budging from its ~$549 price. Sources told HardwareCanucks and this situation won't change unless NVIDIA has a more full-fledged lineup of new-generation GPUs against AMD's, or unless the availability of GeForce GTX 680 drastically improves.
AMD can't cut prices of HD 7970 without disturbing prices of its other HD 7000 SKUs, namely HD 7950, HD 7870, and HD 7850. The company is able to command relatively high prices for these SKUs, because they offer relatively high performance in their market segments. Until NVIDIA has new products to compete with these three SKUs, it makes sense for AMD to overlook, and even sacrifice the competitiveness of one SKU, the HD 7970. Besides, with AMD AIB partners out with a bouquet of non-reference design products based on the HD 7970 without charging too high premiums, AMD has a chance of attracting buyers awaiting availability of GTX 680 away from it.
Source:
HardwareCanucks
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 launch wasn't just on paper, there was market-availability on launch-day, although like every other new GPU launch, stocks have been quite limited. Before this launch, AMD and its partners managed to replenish inventories of Radeon HD 7970, making it generally available, while not budging from its ~$549 price. Sources told HardwareCanucks and this situation won't change unless NVIDIA has a more full-fledged lineup of new-generation GPUs against AMD's, or unless the availability of GeForce GTX 680 drastically improves.
AMD can't cut prices of HD 7970 without disturbing prices of its other HD 7000 SKUs, namely HD 7950, HD 7870, and HD 7850. The company is able to command relatively high prices for these SKUs, because they offer relatively high performance in their market segments. Until NVIDIA has new products to compete with these three SKUs, it makes sense for AMD to overlook, and even sacrifice the competitiveness of one SKU, the HD 7970. Besides, with AMD AIB partners out with a bouquet of non-reference design products based on the HD 7970 without charging too high premiums, AMD has a chance of attracting buyers awaiting availability of GTX 680 away from it.
114 Comments on Radeon HD 7970 Price Cuts Not Any Time Soon: Report
I was smart about most of my other purchases, bang for the buck for the games I play.
I have honestly given up on ATI/AMD and their hardware acceleration of anything compute based. Not enough stuff uses it. They were the first with Folding @ Home though due to their full precision hardware.
See that chart, over there, on the wall? Check that out.
Other reviews with voltage tuning show 1200+ core clock. These cards much like everything from 5xxx series on also seek to clock better at lower temps., allowing for 1300+ with water cooling.
Most of us here will at least change TIM to get better temps.
When it is at $199, there is a discount.
The GTX 680 is equal or better than a 7970, costs $50 less, introduces new features like dynamic clock speeds, has lower power consumption, has lower power requirements, also NOW supports 3 monitor gaming with one card, 3D vision (with actual driver support unlike AMD HD3D), PhysX, overclocks easily, and more than likely will only get better with driver updates.
And before you point to me as some Nvidia fanboy, I have an MSi 6850 OC, and Two Sapphire 6950s as well as my GTX 580.
AMD for the sake of the consumer, drop that sucker to $499 or lower to level the playing field.
the only way, people would buy right now a amd 7xxx card would be a fair price, competitive with nvidia 5xx and amd's 6xxx. well... it's not in that place.
the reasons are that nvidia has shown us the power, of his generation of gpu's, and it gives a good taste of what the next gtx650 and gtx660 could be.
me (and i think no one) would like to buy a 7770 now and, in like, 3 months, appears the gtx650 faster, more eficcient and cheaper, as the gtx680 to the 7970. (same with 7850/7870 and gtx660)
that is something i don't want.
i think amd is speculating with that 1gb vram extra, seems they want to trick unexperienced customers that asks "wich one has more *megabytes*" :roll: really i don't know what to think. i hope that, when amd said they were going to be more agressive, they don't mean overpricing..
because those fps affect on final result, nobody cares about them, but they are affecting on final score that everyone will be talking about and consulting them.
I was talking in general anyway. 4870>5870>6970 were very similar and the price increased by $50-100. 6870 to 7870 are very similar and price increased by $100. 2 Gb GDDR5 does not cost much more than 1 Gb GDDR5, as in 2x as much, it does not cost double, not eveb close, and it does not cost more than 1 Gb GDDR5 several months/years ago. 8 chips vs 12 chips does increase price more but not by $50 or anything close to that.
So their prices can't be justified now, neither really is GTX680's price, except for the fact that it's the fastest card and is actually priced lower than the competing card, so it's more justified.
And people don't seem to know the basics of math. The 7970 is 7% slower than the GTX 680, doesn't mean the 680 is 7% faster! 100/93 = 7.53% faster. Now think about it. I haven't checked the prices but assuming the GTX 680 can be had for 500$ and the 7970 at 550$. If you normalize the 680 price/perf to the 7970's, you get 591.42$, and considering it is the fastest card, an 8$ price premium would be normal, so basically, the GTX 680 priced itself 100$ LOWER than the 7970 if you take into account 1200p perf which is usually where you have to base yourself off as most people use that resolution.
It's the same thing as if, let's say, the HD 8850 and the GTX 760 Ti were priced at 350$, but the HD 8850 is 20% faster. Would you be defending NV in this case? Also note NV usually has better driver support and a few more features like CUDA/PhysX. CUDA can be a great feature for some, else it usually doesn't matter
Yes, 20% faster perf/$ on the most used resolution is steps ahead. I know I'm being a bit favorable to NV here not taking into account 2560x1600, but before the cheap Korean panels, noone except people who had 700$ to burn on a monitor used the resolution, and usually they'd buy 2 cards if they did (so you'd have to take into account CFX and SLI scaling etc)
TL;DR: If you compare it to a 7970, perf/$, the GTX 680 is 100$ lower, that's like 17% cheaper perf/$ (or 20% faster perf in perf/$) (again this is for the 1200p resolution ONLY as most people use 1080p, higher resolutions the diff is much lower). Many here seem to be biased towards AMD :o
also: +1 Except I have a GT 240, 2 6950s and a 6870, close enough xD
Over the time, what you dscribed is true probably. AMD does the last price reduction while Nvidia doesn't, or doesn't reduce it as much, but this is only because of how the market goes. If you look at sales of discrete cards, Nvidia has a 60%+ of market share so it does not make sense for them to lower the price below a certain point when they are selling 2x as many cards at the current price. And we are talking about the $100-200 bracket mostly, where AMD having a better perf/$ ratio barely means a $5 or $10 difference. Essentially AMD does have the better ratio (say 10% better ratio), but for an extra of $5 you get many features like CUDA, PhysX and the peace of mind of knowing that most times than not driver support and optimisation for new games is going to be there the day the games are launched and not in the next driver package. I think most users feel those advantages and that's why Nvidia enjoys the market share and slightly higher ASP. But again, from what I've seen at least, perf/$ is almost always the same at launch and next few months: it's 3-6 months later when it starts to "deviate" from that norm.
EDIT: www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/30.html
Even when HD7970 was reviewed, long before GTX500 cards got the price reduction:
GTX570 better perf/$ than HD6970, GTX560 Ti better than HD6950.
We'll have to respectfully agree to disagree on this point :p I've rarely ever seen NV beat AMD perf/$... At launch or later on. IIRC, the 5XXX series was a great example, especially with the launch prices of the 5850. Even after the price went up, it still was great perf/$
EDIT: Yea that's my point, recently NV has been getting better perf/$, AMD needs to do price cuts! Yet people keep defending them for no reason..
EDIT: Maybe we are talking about different time frames. I'm talking about the last 3 years or so, I wouldn't say that's "recently", it's been a long time. They have been pretty even or much to my surprise, NV has actually been better according to the chart. I mean, GTX470 and 480, both better than HD5870...
EDIT: I think the reason that people tend to think AMD has better perf/$ is because they always do the wrong/weird/biased comparison. Look at old threads and you'll see people comparing HD5870 to GTX480, HD5850 to GTX470, HD6970 to GTX580, HD6950 to GTX570 and so on, I even remember people comparing GTX460 with HD5770, based on the basis that both were the mid-range parts, even with the obvious performance difference. Of course comparing different "class" cards will show better results. The lower you go in price points the better that perf/$ is.
it's the overall business case they will be looking at rather than concentrating with one model, which if they now cut by 50$ will have a cascading effect on the prices of other 7xxx models..
also, the 6xxx series is not going to be EOL any time soon(at least not this year)... so we can expect AMD (and also nV) to price current & previous gens at different price points(a 'portfolio' made up of more than one generation of cards).. simply dropping price of one model could affect the prices(value) of other models
below is very likely the 2012 product line-up for both sides
True, what what probably meant to be Nvidia's mid range card is a little faster than AMD's high end (in gaming) and true, the 680 is a great purchase, but where are they ? Don't you all think that AMD had a very good idea of Nvidia's stock in the channel ? The fact is there is simply no physical competition currently and apparently will not be for a couple of months.
So the question is : Do you price war with 'competition' that isn't on the shelves ?
this isn't about fps or perf per dollar, this is simply supply and demand, there is demand and currently, AMD has a complete card lineup of supply. Nvidia does not.