AMD price cuts arrive?

[blastingcap]

Sorry,you have reading fail.
My point was performance at the level of HD5870 will probably require 5870 price level components...hence its likely 5770 with cheaper components is more profitable.
I still don't get the dates thing tho.
And FYI Cypress 5870 was never an over priced halo product...check price of similar performance NV cards at launch time.
Halo product was the disagreeably overpriced,but very fast Hemlock 5970.

This is what you wrote: "I think it's a little unrealistic to expect a $200 card that performs like HD5870 yet. Manufacturing and component costs alone make up a sizable chunk of a part with that level of performance. As the node remains at 40nm it will still require robust cooling,1GB worth of VRAM and high performance VRMs,all of which don't come cheap. I imagine the current 5770 is quite a lot cheaper to produce as it doesn't require such high end components. Perhaps AMD will be able to price such a card at $200...but I doubt it."

No duh of course 5770's are cheaper, that is not even worth discussing because it's like saying the Pope is Catholic. I guess your "point" if there is one is that you think AMD stubbornly wants the same profit margin on Barts XT as they got on Juniper, but I'm saying that that might actually be possible (and listed reasons why), and in any case AMD does not necessarily have to have the same profit margin if it wants to push NV. I was commenting more on your first sentence. Why is it so unrealistic to expect near-5870 performance at $200 by Oct. 25? It's not unusual when going from generation to generation to have last-gen high-end relegated to next-gen low-end. There is no new shrink but reclaiming wasted die space can get you some of the way there, plus better yields, reusing PCB designs, cheapening out on backplates, and last but definitely not least, a newer architecture and efficiencies.

When I say that halo products are almost always overpriced, I mean that there is a dropoff in price/perf as you climb up the performance curve. At launch, 5770 > 5850 > 5870 in price/perf. Barts XT won't be high-end anymore and perhaps AMD will price it accordingly.

Granted, I don't think they will necessarily price Barts XT at $203, I am just saying that it would be a reasonable lower bound, with the upper bound being whatever the 5870 sells for (street price) on Oct. 25. It's not necessarily out of the question to see Barts XT close to $200, especially if NV cranks up the heat with price cuts on the GTX4xx series.

"Reading fail" is juvenile and applies more to you than me. For crissake you started this thread off with a post about a $209 Cypress Pro GPU that likely is more expensive to make than a Barts XT.

 

[betasub]

C'mon, blastingcap - don't MRSP usual end in 9? And even your low-balling figure of $203 doesn't hit the marketing sweet spot of $199. So don't you think $229 or $249 or more likely? (Heck, anything up to $299 depending on performance and AMD's strategy for market share).

 

[edplayer]

I think that AMD could profitably sell their new mid-range cards for $200 or less. I don't see a good reason to do that at the beginning though.

Assuming it really does have 5870 level performance. They should have a very large demand for it even if they were to charge up to $250. The only thing I think that could change that would be a drastic price drop in the 1GB GTX 460.

I do expect Nvidia to lower the price on that card though. $199 or less depending on what AMD has/how it performs and costs. If it did drop to $199 and AMD were to price it like a mid-range card (something that they expect to sell in high volume), a $219~229 price sounds pretty good (from their perspective, not the consumers).

A slightly slower card (maybe 5850 level performance) for $189~199 would make two good choices that would seem to compete well with Nvidia's current cards with an already factored in price cut on the 1GB model

 

[Ares1214]

For those who say this isnt a good deal...then im not sure what is. You say they havent made progress?! Thats what the 6970 is for, a +30% over 5870 supposedly. 5850-5870 performance at $200-250 with way better DX11, tesselation, and likely lower temps and power consumption is an amazing deal. Definitely enough to knock the 460 down.

 

[Will Robinson]

He doesn't get it.
It's still on the same 40nm node.To be able to drop the price from around $350-$400 that HD5870 debuted at only a year ago to anything like $200 for a similar performing 6 series card will be a hell of an achievement.
I think $230-$250 is more likely.
Anyway at that price it smashes a GTX460 and will feature later technology like UVD3 and likely better image filtering.

 

[Fanofou]

Sorry,you have reading fail.
My point was performance at the level of HD5870 will probably require 5870 price level components...hence its likely 5770 with cheaper components is more profitable.
I still don't get the dates thing tho.
And FYI Cypress 5870 was never an over priced halo product...check price of similar performance NV cards at launch time.
Halo product was the disagreeably overpriced,but very fast Hemlock 5970.

If that's the case we'd be paying $100+ for each new generation of card, we'd be up to $2000 for new video cards. Technology changes and prices come down, they don't go up/stay the same.

 

[Dribble]

I remember the 4850 being $100 and the $4870 being $150. I'd be surprised if ati couldn't sell the 5850 and 5870 at close to those prices if they were forced too, shame that's not happened

 

[v8envy]

Offering the same performance and features as a year ago for marginally better prices does not make for gangbuster sales, especially in view of most games being console ports.

Would many upgrade from a 5850 to a 6870? I don't think so. Which leaves the 'halo' parts, a 30% improvement for $400-500. Call me a pessimist, but I don't see millions of people beating down doors to get that kind of bang/buck.

IMO the 6870 will need to break the magical $200 street price barrier quickly to be relevant. At $250 street price it's pretty much what people could have bought at the 5850 launch a year ago. AMD is competing not only with nv (who, granted, were a no-show last year) but also its own past products.

 

[PingviN]

If that's the case we'd be paying $100+ for each new generation of card, we'd be up to $2000 for new video cards. Technology changes and prices come down, they don't go up/stay the same.

No, because, with time, the manufacturing node changes. 40nm allows for more performance at the same die size than 55nm or 65nm. If you're stuck with 40nm (which both Nvidia and AMD are, at the moment) you can't increase performance much without increasing die size. Sure, there are archtictural optimizations and software optimizations, but they'll only get you so far. An entire new micro architecture at the same node just doesn't make much sense.

I remember the 4850 being $100 and the $4870 being $150. I'd be surprised if ati couldn't sell the 5850 and 5870 at close to those prices if they were forced too, shame that's not happened

Cypress is way bigger than RV770, thus it's more expensive to manufacture. That's why the price has gone up. So has performance. HD5770 offers roughly RV770 performance and is smaller, so it could probably be called slightly overpriced. Then again, AMD wants to make a profit and Nvidia has been having trouble competing, so prices stay high - making AMD happy, Nvidia sad and us devastated :'(

 

[maddie]

One big danger AMD has in trying to price products too low, is the demise of Nvidia. They must balance winning without destroying them. The absolute last thing AMD needs now, with fusion starting to arrive , is for Intel to buy Nvidia. AMD would have won the battles but lost the war.

Remember that Intel already has fusion experience. If they had world class graphics, it would take a lot less time to adapt it to their cpu than AMD did, when starting from scratch.

 

[Aristotelian]

MSI are selling the HD5850 for $209 with MIR.
That's a great price for a strong performing card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-500-_-Product

I see one discount (i.e., cut). That is not 'cuts'. Have any other discounts handy?

 

[Dribble]

Cypress is way bigger than RV770, thus it's more expensive to manufacture. That's why the price has gone up. So has performance. HD5770 offers roughly RV770 performance and is smaller, so it could probably be called slightly overpriced. Then again, AMD wants to make a profit and Nvidia has been having trouble competing, so prices stay high - making AMD happy, Nvidia sad and us devastated :'(

It's a bit bigger, but still smaller and simpler to make then the GTX 260 and that was also $150. Also the chip isn't that big a part of the cost - the board, the packaging, etc is all pretty similar to the 48xx (still 256bit memory bus for example). Hence yes maybe stick a few $ on for the more expensive chips but that really only ups costs to $120 and $170.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Offering the same performance and features as a year ago for marginally better prices does not make for gangbuster sales, especially in view of most games being console ports.

Would many upgrade from a 5850 to a 6870? I don't think so. Which leaves the 'halo' parts, a 30% improvement for $400-500. Call me a pessimist, but I don't see millions of people beating down doors to get that kind of bang/buck.

IMO the 6870 will need to break the magical $200 street price barrier quickly to be relevant. At $250 street price it's pretty much what people could have bought at the 5850 launch a year ago. AMD is competing not only with nv (who, granted, were a no-show last year) but also its own past products.

Are you saying everyone already has a 5870/5850 or GTX480/470/460?

Upgrading from GT200/RV770 to this generation isn't something very attractive but jumping from GT200/RV770 to next generation might be more attractive.

 

[blastingcap]

C'mon, blastingcap - don't MRSP usual end in 9? And even your low-balling figure of $203 doesn't hit the marketing sweet spot of $199. So don't you think $229 or $249 or more likely? (Heck, anything up to $299 depending on performance and AMD's strategy for market share).

Don't take $203 literally; see how I derived that number. Also note that it's the lowest bound of what I'd expect, the upper bound being $350 if the 5870 doesn't drop a cent from now till Oct. 25. If I absolutely had to bet today on the launch price of Barts XT and its rumored specs are true and it performs like a 5870, I'd guess $249. If sales are slow, I'd expect rebates to crop up quickly.

 

[blastingcap]

He doesn't get it.
It's still on the same 40nm node.To be able to drop the price from around $350-$400 that HD5870 debuted at only a year ago to anything like $200 for a similar performing 6 series card will be a hell of an achievement.
I think $230-$250 is more likely.
Anyway at that price it smashes a GTX460 and will feature later technology like UVD3 and likely better image filtering.

No, you don't "get it" and I'm sick of replying to you so I will stop doing so after this.

First of all, I listed reasons why Barts XT is cheaper than Cypress--including smaller die size (Barts XT would be what, 82% the size of Cypress?)--meaning AMD can wring a profit out of Barts XT priced at $200. Heck it could probably even go BELOW that: check out the die size of GF104, it's actually LARGER than Cypress and yet GTX460s are selling for at or below $203 street price--even the 256-bit ones. I doubt NV is taking a loss on every one of those sold.

You seem stuck on the concept that GPUs can't improve drastically despite being on the same node, not enough to drive prices way down, but history shows differently (look back to RV770's improvement).

In this case, just because a GPU is on the same node doesn't mean it can't be more space efficient, or architecturally efficient (if rumors are true, Cayman-style SPs get a free 20-25% boost in speed at same clocks!), or reclaim die space that went unused (I heard that Cypress had some unused die space), or remove some redundancies or now-unneeded vias or what have you. It's still 40nm--but it's a more mature manufacturing process. Simple thought experiment: if launch yields of Cypress were 30% and if Barts XT were the same size but had yields of 90%, which is cheaper--even disregarding the fact that Barts XT is actually a SMALLER size? Not to mention the non-GPU parts may be cheaper as well (I already gave a list of such things, including discarding 5870's backplate).

Secondly, I threw out $203 as a probably lower bound of sanity price if NV and AMD engaged in a price war. The upper bound would be as high as $350 if 5870s cling to their current street prices. If I had to bet on the actual price and knew the specs were true (including die size), I'd bet $249.

On likely price (assuming ~5870 performance), we're actually in agreement here and yet you're trying to pick a fight with me for some reason. Whatever, you are on your own now, pick a fight with someone else.

 

[blastingcap]

No, because, with time, the manufacturing node changes. 40nm allows for more performance at the same die size than 55nm or 65nm. If you're stuck with 40nm (which both Nvidia and AMD are, at the moment) you can't increase performance much without increasing die size. Sure, there are archtictural optimizations and software optimizations, but they'll only get you so far. An entire new micro architecture at the same node just doesn't make much sense.

Cypress is way bigger than RV770, thus it's more expensive to manufacture. That's why the price has gone up. So has performance. HD5770 offers roughly RV770 performance and is smaller, so it could probably be called slightly overpriced. Then again, AMD wants to make a profit and Nvidia has been having trouble competing, so prices stay high - making AMD happy, Nvidia sad and us devastated :'(

Speaking of RV770 it was what, 80% as fast as its rival and half the price (not half the cost, though)? Cypress at launch would have been priced lower had there been any competition from NV back then, I agree.

 

[blastingcap]

I think that AMD could profitably sell their new mid-range cards for $200 or less. I don't see a good reason to do that at the beginning though.

Assuming it really does have 5870 level performance. They should have a very large demand for it even if they were to charge up to $250. The only thing I think that could change that would be a drastic price drop in the 1GB GTX 460.

I do expect Nvidia to lower the price on that card though. $199 or less depending on what AMD has/how it performs and costs. If it did drop to $199 and AMD were to price it like a mid-range card (something that they expect to sell in high volume), a $219~229 price sounds pretty good (from their perspective, not the consumers).

A slightly slower card (maybe 5850 level performance) for $189~199 would make two good choices that would seem to compete well with Nvidia's current cards with an already factored in price cut on the 1GB model

This.

 

[nemesismk2]

MSI are selling the HD5850 for $209 with MIR.
That's a great price for a strong performing card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-500-_-Product

wow that is a very nice price for a MSI 5850