AMD reduces prices, new game bundle inbound

[Red Hawk]

Oooooo price drops. Me like. The 7870 will probably scratch $200 with the best rebates! I just have to scrounge together the cash to get it...

 

[AnandThenMan]

I have a point: Wouldn't this reduced pricing gained much more traction when AMD announced the bios 7950 update before the official GTX 660 TI reviews? It may of changed many conclusions considering the GTX 660 ti is a competitor and how important reviews are.

The 660 is not a competitor to the 7950. If sites show that it is, it only serves to illustrate how carefully selected benches and methods can paint a certain picture. See RS's post he does a great job of explaining why.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Whomever brings the GTX580 level of performance at the $200 price point has my money. Unfortunately my GTX460 is still remarkably capable at 1080p, so the NEED really isn't there. Just that scratch that needs itching.

If the 7870 gets anywhere close to $200 bucks though, I'm in.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Whomever brings the GTX580 level of performance at the $200 price point has my money. Unfortunately my GTX460 is still remarkably capable at 1080p, so the NEED really isn't there. Just that scratch that needs itching.

If the 7870 gets anywhere close to $200 bucks though, I'm in.

I could be wrong, but I thought a overclocked 7850 was very close to the gtx580 in performance?

 

[blackened23]

I could be wrong, but I thought a overclocked 7850 was very close to the gtx580 in performance?

If you overclock it, it can pass the 580. At stock settings its slower, but then again its a 1 pin PCIE card that costs 190$.

Pantera, RIP dimebag

 

[3DVagabond]

I think if AMD would have had these prices at launch they would have sold way more than Nvidia. By the time 6 series came, more people would have bought Amd cards already. Its strange they set prices so high in the begginning and then lowered them now.

They did that with Evergreen. Mixed results.

 

[sze5003]

I really like the game bundle though. I don't like nvidia's borderlands but I kinda did want to get a 670 if only 7970 cards werent so large lol.

 

[Dankk]

Sleeping Dogs is a great title to be bundled in with the cards. They didn't have a lot of marketing for the game, so this is a good way to give it the attention it deserves.

 

[Ferzerp]

I love that there are actual options for performance in the GPU space. Hopefully the cpu issues with AMD won't spill over in to the GPU space.

 

[Arkadrel]

Whomever brings the GTX580 level of performance at the $200 price point has my money. Unfortunately my GTX460 is still remarkably capable at 1080p, so the NEED really isn't there. Just that scratch that needs itching.

If the 7870 gets anywhere close to $200 bucks though, I'm in.

SAPPHIRE 100355L Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 ~219$
Overclock it to 1200mhz (its stock is 860mhz) get a card thats ~5-10% faster than a 580.

A 7850 with OC can reach above a 580 stock performance, and you can buy them down to 220$ or so, and with the 1gb models and price cuts, that ll soon be possible for ~180$.

I could be wrong, but I thought a overclocked 7850 was very close to the gtx580 in performance?

Overclocked 7850 can beat the stock 580's.

 

[Crap Daddy]

SAPPHIRE 100355L Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 ~219$
Overclock it to 1200mhz (its stock is 860mhz) get a card thats ~5-10% faster than a 580.

A 7850 with OC can reach above a 580 stock performance, and you can buy them down to 220$ or so, and with the 1gb models and price cuts, that ll soon be possible for ~180$.



Overclocked 7850 can beat the stock 580's.

And for that matter also a stock 7950.

 

[Ferzerp]

The problem is when people try to compare stock to OC. It's not really a meaningful metric. It's usually designed to support whatever position the individual wants to present and always raises the question, "Ok, but what about if you OC the other one too?"

 

[SirPauly]

The 660 is not a competitor to the 7950. If sites show that it is, it only serves to illustrate how carefully selected benches and methods can paint a certain picture. See RS's post he does a great job of explaining why.

Yeah, okay! I enjoy my answer from Caveman - that has an outstanding relationship with AMD.

 

[KingFatty]

The problem is when people try to compare stock to OC. It's not really a meaningful metric. It's usually designed to support whatever position the individual wants to present and always raises the question, "Ok, but what about if you OC the other one too?"

Well, it could also be a way to let you know where you'd be on the benchmarks, because typically benchmarks will always show the default/stock cards' performances.

So you have a chart that shows stock performance for the 580 and the 7950, and you can still use that chart to imagine where your overclocked 7850 would be on that particular chart, even though that particular chart doesn't show any overclocked cards (even if the chart doesn't show any 7850s, stock or overclocked).

So it's just specific to that card, letting the potential overcocker know where he might achieve. But I agree with your point if you are deciding between two different cards, you should compare both of their prices and both of their potential overclockings.

 

[Siberian]

The 660 is not a competitor to the 7950. If sites show that it is, it only serves to illustrate how carefully selected benches and methods can paint a certain picture. See RS's post he does a great job of explaining why.

hardocp just posted a review of the 660 and it "blew the 7950 out of the water"

Rvenger is right: "This isn't a 660ti thread". So let's just stop here, please.
-ViRGE

 

[chimaxi83]

hardocp just posted a review of the 660 and it "blew the 7950 out of the water"

Hardocp posted some interesting tidbits that blind fanboys like yourself should probably pay attention to instead of just trolling:

We are using the same drivers we used in the original evaluation for all video cards.

Editor's Note: For those of you that are interested in OCed 660 vs. OCed 670 vs. OCed7950, keep you panties on, we are working on it currently. We will also be taking a more focused look at 660 vs. 670 memory bandwidth limitations while using AA after that.

It's obviously par for the fanboy course to not mention how highly overclocked that 660 Ti was, at 1298 MHz core, 1902 MHz memory (a 30%, 1.7 GHz overclock by the way), and how highly stock that 7950 was.

But nice try with the failtroll attempt

Do you know what's worse than a troll? Someone who starts a fight about it and gets a whole forum set ablaze. Please let the mods deal with the trolls; that's our job. Your job is to report & ignore them.
-ViRGE

 

[Rvenger]

hardocp just posted a review of the 660 and it "blew the 7950 out of the water"

This isn't a 660ti thread so I hearby reported you. Please, go troll somewhere else.

 

[SolMiester]

I hope so. 660ti will not be worth the price premium, and I really wanted one.

I would love one, I only have 16x10, so it would be a great cards for several yrs for me, but $300US is much too high....might have to wait for the plain 660

 

[ocre]

1) It wasn't obvious until very close to GTX660Ti's launch what the specs were. There were all kinds of conflicting rumors floating with 1152 SPs and 256-bit bus, 1.5 vs. 2GB of VRAM. AMD might not have been aware of the exact specs of 660Ti until the last minute. Also, after-market HD7950s were hitting $320 price level for months, if you had followed the pricing trends for HD7950. All AMD did is make them official but plenty of people acquired HD7950 cards such as the MSI TF3 for just $320 1.5 months ago. HD7850 and HD7870 also saw prices drop to $220-250 for months if you followed. The online prices for all 3 of those cards actually rose slightly before GTX660Ti's launch.

2) Razor-sharp journalism wouldn't have tested factory pre-overclocked 660Tis against a reference cooled HD7950 GPU boost and left out after-market 7950s for a fair comparison given the state of market pricing in the US/Canada and the UK. Also, razor-sharp journalism wouldn't have limited testing to low AA levels and FXAA. Xbitlabs, Computerbase, TechReport didn't and they all exposed 660Ti's weaknesses. If the rest of the journalistic community did the same AMD probably wouldn't need to lower prices since many times GTX660Ti can't even beat an HD7870 in "NV TWIMTBP" games no less. You don't think NV's reviewers guide told journalists to test Batman AC at 4AA? It's pretty interesting that even 1300mhz GTX660Ti cannot overcome the 24 / 192-bit deficit when higher in-game settings are used against a after-market HD7950/GTX670.

3) Had AMD lowered prices before GTX660Ti launch, NV could have just as easily responded by launching at $279. Both companies go back and forth lowering prices and launching newer products. People here continue to imply that AMD uses re-active price drops to NV, but they are mysteriously forgetting that NV is 6-9 months late with its sub-$400 desktop GPU roll-out. We would have loved for AMD to launch an HD7950 for $319 on January 31st against a $450 GTX580, but things don't work like that.

When AMD launches HD8000 series first, NV will also lower prices on GTX600 series, and I again expect high prices from AMD. That's the only way AMD can survive at this point with how their CPU division is doing. Then NV will launch GTX700 and probably AMD will lower prices. Latest products will continue to command highest prices and worse price/performance than older products. That's how the GPU industry has generally worked.



They did that already with 6 months early launch of HD5850/5870 and AMD's Graphics Division lost $ that generation. The main reason AMD stopped launching products priced as aggressively as HD4800/5800/6900 series is because it was hurting their profitability to the point of making the division lose $, and despite those aggressive prices, NV users weren't switching to AMD in large numbers enough to offset the profits per card sold. Essentially AMD is just back to using ATI's marketing strategy this round. They delivered the fastest single-GPU card and are delivering equal or better price/performance in almost every price level. Historically, NV tends to have 1 "superstar" card in a generation that delivers amazing price/performance. It used to be GeForce 4 Ti 4200, then 6600GT/6800U, then 7800GT/7950GT, then 8800GT/9800GT, then GTX460. The only 28nm desktop card on the NV side that actually falls into great price/performance category now is the GTX670 and it's $370+. If GTX660Ti drops to $249, it could become the next GTX460, but at $300, no way.

whoa ha.......settle down now....

Nvidia didnt send anyone in the press a 660ti. They didnt send them to Razor-sharp journalist either. vendors sent their own versions of the card. This launch is different than a lot of other launches. Why are you trying so hard to make it some conspiracy or something? I imagine you should already know these things but just in case this might help some......

this launch will be what NVIDIA calls a “virtual” launch, which is to say that there aren’t any reference cards being shipped to partners to sell or to press to sample. Instead all of NVIDIA’s partners will be launching with semi-custom and fully-custom cards right away. This means we’re going to see a wide variety of cards right off the bat, however it also means that there will be less consistency between partners since no two cards are going to be quite alike.

you can read it here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6159/the-geforce-gtx-670-review

It pretty much explains why you see overclocked 660ti's in so many reviews. Its what the vendors sent out. There is a wide variety of 660ti's out from the start. Its sort of a free for all to do what they wanted with the chip from the get go. Every partner has their own custom 660ti version they want to sell. You must remember not only are these cards competing with AMD cards, nvidia partners compete with each other as well. Reviewers were showcasing individual 660ti's from different vendors, semi-custom to fully-custom and all in between. Nvidia let their partners do it how they want to. They let them loose on this one.

now back to the topic............
As far as the pricing goes, I think AMD will be have the price/performance for a few months. I dont see nvidia dropping prices much. They dont have a huge stock and its all the better for AMD. just think, nvidia has nothing at the 200$ price point. This is a very important space. AMD should be able to really capitalize now. Its really great.

When you say prices have been low with deal for months and all AMD did was make it official, well now partners dont have to take the loss from selling cards on discounts. AMD lowering their prices means a lot for them actually. They can now sell at these lower prices and make a bigger chunk. It will lead to even better deals. Now vendors can offer even better deals than they ever could. Its pretty cool.

We all should be happy about these lower prices.

 

[tviceman]

It is great to see AMD being proactive and initiating a price war. Nvidia got the ball rolling with GK104 being more competitive than anyone thought it would (in both price and performance), and AMD has since responded many times on several different levels (in both product updates and pricing). Nvidia has PLENTY of wiggle room with it's GK104 parts, since it's both a smaller chip and has less vram associated with it than Tahiti's parts. I don't think Nvidia will lower prices, though, until supply catches up with demand. But perhaps these recent product and price adjustments by AMD will slow down the demand for Kepler...

It's still kind of crazy that back in October / November, Nvidia was probably fully expecting to release the top GK104 sku at the $299-349 price range, and here 5 months after release it is still sitting at $499.

 

[RussianSensation]

The problem is when people try to compare stock to OC. It's not really a meaningful metric. It's usually designed to support whatever position the individual wants to present and always raises the question, "Ok, but what about if you OC the other one too?"

Right but in the case of HD7950 vs. GTX660Ti no cherry-picking is needed. Reference HD7950 800mhz beats GTX660Ti aftermarket versions "stock vs. stock" based on summary of 12 Reviews . After-market GTX660Ti also loses to 850/925mhz GPU Boosted 7950 in the same link and after-market 880-900mhz HD7950 $320-330 versions are faster than after-market GTX660Tis "out of the box."

When looking at OCed vs. OCed performance, it's not even in the same ballpark.

With official price drops to $210/250, NV doesn't have a direct competitor for HD7850/7870 either until at least September. With these price cuts, HD7800 series will not really have a direct competitor for a bit.

It's still kind of crazy that back in October / November, Nvidia was probably fully expecting to release the top GK104 sku at the $299-349 price range, and here 5 months after release it is still sitting at $499.

True. Even if we agree that GK104 is a mid-range Kepler, NV had no problems selling them for $400-500.

NV also has moved up the pricing of $199/$229 GTX460 768/1GB to $299 in the form of GTX660Ti. With current price drops AMD positions HD7850/7870 mid-range at $210/250. I still think NV is overcharging more, unless NV thinks $299 is the new "mid-range".

 

[OVerLoRDI]

It's good they reduced the price of the 7870. That was kind of awkwardly priced.

 

[tviceman]

NV also has moved up the pricing of $199/$229 GTX460 768/1GB to $299 in the form of GTX660Ti. With current price drops AMD positions HD7850/7870 mid-range at $210/250. I still think NV is overcharging more, unless NV thinks $299 is the new "mid-range".

I think Nvidia knows what the mid-range is, their naming is just a little out of line from what we are used to seeing and their product roll out has been slowed (probably because they're making a whole lot more money off GK104 wafers than they would GK106 wafers AND GK107 demand massively outstrips GK106, making GK107 and GK104 top priority in supply constrained situations).

Nvidia has plenty of room to move prices down with having a smaller chip and less vram attached to it's cards, but I don't think they will drop prices until supply catches up with demand (which may happen much sooner now thanks to AMD's moves). I am guessing incoming gtx600 price drops will be relatively very soon (well Nvidia's current quarter is over). AMD's current pricing scheme should affect Nvidia's entire lineup, too - I think $50 price drops for the gtx680 and gtx670 + a premium game bundle are likely, and I think the gtx660ti will settle in at $279 or so. While some of my price guesstimates (if accurate) won't dramatically change the perf / $ landscape, it will make decisions based on what games people play a little bit more cut and dry.

Also, with the hd7870's new $250 price slot, that probably put a dent on Nvidia's GK106 initial pricing plans. If it's 5 SMX's, and has the same bandwidth as the gtx660ti, then it should trade blows with the hd7870, albeit slower overall. I fully expect it to come in at the gtx460 1gb's original MSRP - $219.

Here is another prediction: The top end GK104 sku for the gtx700 series (probably called GK114, if they tweak it a little) is going to end up being $349 MSRP at the most. Mark my words on that. And, also, I predict Nvidia will make a very limited GK110 launch this December, the gtx780 @ $599, but it won't be a fully enabled chip.

 

[Phynaz]

7850 - $190
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102998

There is no way a 660ti is worth $110 over this.

 

[notty22]

Right but in the case of HD7950 vs. GTX660Ti no cherry-picking is needed. Reference HD7950 800mhz beats GTX660Ti aftermarket versions "stock vs. stock" based on summary of 12 Reviews .

You state that without context. At 1900x1200 they are basically even. Unless I'm reading that wrong.