Great article by Anandtech, IMO.
There's more to business than just price points. How about brand image?
The people who fail to see why the 48xx series is special miss the point entirely, and are caught up in the monolithic die-size mentality (ie. nothing less than the performance crown is impressive).
Recently, the 4850 became the best selling card at any price point IIRC. Usually, that doesn't happen; the $100 part sells the best, with the $200 part being a runner up, followed by the low end cards and then the high end cards that skim the market.
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ATI is doing several things with its low pricing/small die strategy:
-Regaining marketshare. For the first time, Nvidia had something like a 10% gap in GPU marketshare over Nvidia. This is closing the gap substantially.
-Making the 48xx series VERY attractive and difficult to pass up. Many people would prefer one brand over the other due to personal preference, and would gladly pay $300 for a GTX 260 over a 4870 at $300. A $200 4850 or $200 4870 now make those ATI cards incredibly hard to pass up.
-Force people to try ATI again. Message boards are full of complaints of driver issues, and people are often afraid to try a new brand due to complaints they read online. This pricing entices people to go ATI and realize their cards are not broken pieces of crap after all. They will be more inclined to go ATI again the next time, as that is what they are familiar with.
-Hitting Nvidia where it hurts. Nvidia is losing sales like crazy in the chipset market. Discrete GPU's are traditionally where they hang their hats. RV770 is a two-pronged attack on Nvidia's market skimming GTX 2xx series, and the midrange sales of the 9800 series. Nvidia is still turning in profits, and is wisely aggressively pursuing the integrated-GPU market, but they are not in as rosy a spot as they were when the 8800GTX first launched.
Furthermore, after RV770, this may cause Nvidia to rethink its future designs. Do they go for smaller cores and better performance per watt, or keep going for a huge die? If nothing else, it proves that ATI can and will attack a weak or overpriced product from Nvidia.
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As for complaining about ATI's pricing - you must be either a shareholder or biased. ATI is making money again (though AMD is still dragging them into the red).
There's more to business than just price points. How about brand image?
The people who fail to see why the 48xx series is special miss the point entirely, and are caught up in the monolithic die-size mentality (ie. nothing less than the performance crown is impressive).
Recently, the 4850 became the best selling card at any price point IIRC. Usually, that doesn't happen; the $100 part sells the best, with the $200 part being a runner up, followed by the low end cards and then the high end cards that skim the market.
------
ATI is doing several things with its low pricing/small die strategy:
-Regaining marketshare. For the first time, Nvidia had something like a 10% gap in GPU marketshare over Nvidia. This is closing the gap substantially.
-Making the 48xx series VERY attractive and difficult to pass up. Many people would prefer one brand over the other due to personal preference, and would gladly pay $300 for a GTX 260 over a 4870 at $300. A $200 4850 or $200 4870 now make those ATI cards incredibly hard to pass up.
-Force people to try ATI again. Message boards are full of complaints of driver issues, and people are often afraid to try a new brand due to complaints they read online. This pricing entices people to go ATI and realize their cards are not broken pieces of crap after all. They will be more inclined to go ATI again the next time, as that is what they are familiar with.
-Hitting Nvidia where it hurts. Nvidia is losing sales like crazy in the chipset market. Discrete GPU's are traditionally where they hang their hats. RV770 is a two-pronged attack on Nvidia's market skimming GTX 2xx series, and the midrange sales of the 9800 series. Nvidia is still turning in profits, and is wisely aggressively pursuing the integrated-GPU market, but they are not in as rosy a spot as they were when the 8800GTX first launched.
Furthermore, after RV770, this may cause Nvidia to rethink its future designs. Do they go for smaller cores and better performance per watt, or keep going for a huge die? If nothing else, it proves that ATI can and will attack a weak or overpriced product from Nvidia.
-------
As for complaining about ATI's pricing - you must be either a shareholder or biased. ATI is making money again (though AMD is still dragging them into the red).
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