Big Price Drops on NVIDIA Cards Coming

[RussianSensation]

Am I likely to get any benefit at all upgrading to any of these from an 8800gt if I only have a 5600 athlon64 x2 CPU? Or is it new PC or nothing?

For that CPU, probably an HD4870/4890/ GTX260/275 or a GTX460 768mb are better cards <$130. Unless you plan on upgrading your platform, a 5600 x2 is too slow to benefit from an HD6870.

 

[3DVagabond]

it is refutable. NV pays way less per wafer than AMD

I've seen this statement made quite often. Why, though would TSMC offer discounts unless they had excess capacity they needed to sell? FWIU, this is not the case. They are actually constrained and could charge a premium.

 

[arredondo]

For that CPU, probably an HD4870/4890/ GTX260/275 or a GTX460 768mb are better cards <$130. Unless you plan on upgrading your platform, a 5600 x2 is too slow to benefit from an HD6870.

Ooh, me next! :awe:

Would I benefit from a 6870 upgrade even though my HP installed Q6600 can't be OC'd?

 

[Silverforce11]

Prolly not much unless you game at HD res with 4xAA, that should put more pressure on the GPU side of things.

 

[v8envy]

@v8envy: what else is in your rig that an ea500 wouldn't handle the load? gtx 470 isn't that bad on power, unless you're running an i7 @ 4.0+ and lots of hd's you're probably ok.

Close enough, 3.8ghz i7 920, a couple of spinning rust drives, lots of ram, tv capture card, bunch of 120mm and 80mm fans. It's the Seasonic version from early 2008, so between capacitor aging and extra heat I'm not looking forward to running that PSU anywhere near 100% rated capacity. With a mildly overclocked 470 I'm guestimating drawing 400 watts or so. Well over 50% of the original rating in any event. I was planning on jumping on the next TP750 deal that comes along anyway, so we'll see what develops.

 

[arredondo]

Prolly not much unless you game at HD res with 4xAA, that should put more pressure on the GPU side of things.

I'll be going for 1080P resolution with AA bumpage.

 

[Phynaz]

yes cost per functioning chip is what matters and cost per wafer has a huge effect on that, so how would that make it meaningless when it directly influences the metric that we agree is all that matters?

You pay $100 per wafer and get 5 usable chips. I pay $150 per wafer and get 8 usable chips. Your wafer cost is 30% lower than mine, and yet my cost per chip is 7% less than yours.

Trust me, they don't give a crap what a wafer costs. All they care about is their fully loaded cost per sellable chip. If that means that wafers cost $10k or $50k doesn't matter. That's another reason why contracts have yield clauses in them. Piles of low yielding wafers are useless no matter how cheap they are. On the other hand the fabs also get bonuses if they exceed contracted yield.

 

[Leyawiin]

These price drops today are great - too bad I bought a month ago. 🙁 I know, I know, I'm not totally ignorant that it might happen so its all on me. 😉 What's really interesting is the HD 5850 not budging much at all on price. The HD 6870 peforms a bit better and is on a whole cheaper. The HD 6850 is awesome - a bit better than the GTX 460 1GB for only $180.