[kitguru] AMD 7970/7950 price drops incoming

[Bman123]

This is why I game at a lower res and buy second hand video cards a gen or 2 after they come out. I can't even think of spending over $400 for a video card when it is half that not even a year later

 

[Subyman]

Of course, you didn't have the courtesy to compare an overclocked 7870 to the overclocked 448. Sure the 448 is a great value, but i'm pretty certain the overclocked 7870 would beat it by quite a bit - since many 7870s are matching stock 7950s. Is that worth the additional money? For a budget gamer no. That 448 is a great deal, I didn't even realize how well it performed until I just checked it out. It doesn't beat the 7870 though all things considered.

Anyway, I definitely agree the 7870 should be price cut along with everything else. I'm also pretty impressed with that 448 model, I didn't realize it performed that well.

That card comes factory OCed, of course both could be OCed further, but he was comparing out of the box experiences.

 

[Zebo]

Of course, you didn't have the courtesy to compare an overclocked 7870 to the overclocked 448. Sure the 448 is a great value, but i'm pretty certain the overclocked 7870 would beat it by quite a bit - since many 7870s are matching stock 7950s. Is that worth the additional money? For a budget gamer no. That 448 is a great deal, I didn't even realize how well it performed until I just checked it out. It doesn't beat the 7870 though all things considered.

Anyway, I definitely agree the 7870 should be price cut along with everything else. I'm also pretty impressed with that 448 model, I didn't realize it performed that well.

Those benchmarks are only for the regular classified the classifed ultra is even faster being clocked higher. Unfortunately I could not find a review for the $239 classified ultra - regardless out the box its faster than 7870 for over $100 less.

I assure overclocked further it will beat/tie an Oced 7870 as well since they OC to 150Mhz even beyond that from what I've seen.

 

[blackened23]

Those benchmarks are only for the regular classified the classifed ultra is even faster being clocked higher. Unfortunately I could not find a review for the $239 classified ultra - regardless out the box its faster than 7870 for over $100 less.

I assure overclocked further it will beat/tie an Oced 7870 as well since they OC to 150Mhz even beyond that from what I've seen.

[citation needed] Hmm, I don't believe so based on using the Fermi 580 type for a long while, although I could be wrong (its happened a couple of times!) The 7800 will overclock better, IMO. Based on my own experiences with the 7000 series I think the 7800 will scale better more easily, although overclocks aren't guaranteed. Still, the 448 classified is incredible for the price and I didn't realize it performed as well.

I think that (448 classified) will be the card to recommend to my friends for a budget. The out of box performance is very good.

 

[tviceman]

So have these price drops been made official yet? Newegg still shows the hd7970's starting at $530. I think AMD has been losing out on a great opportunity to capitalize on Nvidia's inventory situation. The gtx680 is selling out the moment any stock arrives, while at $530+ the hd7970 just isn't an attractive alternative. I think most people in the market for a ~$500 video card will wait to get what they want, rather than settling on something with a little less (to, at best, equal) performance for more money. BUT, if the hd7970 had been $450-470 the entire time, the gtx680 hunters might grow impatient enough on waiting for gtx680 and get the (near equal value) hd7970.

All in all, a $450-470 price is needed for for the hd7970, but newegg is still showing $530. AMD is dragging their feet to get there and losing sales along the way.

 

[Grooveriding]

So have these price drops been made official yet? Newegg still shows the hd7970's starting at $530.

Newegg is probably taking their time. $479 7970s are already showing up

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=69073&vpn=900491&manufacture=VISIONTEK&promoid=1259

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=70111&vpn=AX7970%203GBD5-2DHV3&manufacture=PowerColor&promoid=1259

Most likely takes time to implement at etailors, there is probably also some sort of balancing that needs to take place for inventory that was sent out at previous higher prices.

edit, custom overclocked 7970s @ $499 as well.

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=67172&vpn=FX797ATDFC&manufacture=XFX&promoid=1259

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=67547&vpn=GV-R797OC-3GD&manufacture=Gigabyte&promoid=1259

That 1000core gigabyte is probably the best choice out of all of them.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/02/08/gigabyte_radeon_hd_7970_oc_video_card_review/3

 

[iCyborg]

The OC-ed 7950 from Gigabyte at NCIX for $400 is also a pretty good deal, I'm tempted.

Still waiting for 7870 to move down. Maybe 7850/7870 are priced in a way so some people will pay the premium, and others will help clear 69xx/68xx from the inventories.

 

[Wall Street]

Newegg is probably taking their time. $479 7970s are already showing up

Those are Canadian Dollars hence not the same.

 

[Grooveriding]

Those are Canadian Dollars hence not the same.

? Pretty much exactly the same. The 7970s were $549+ just like they were everywhere else before the price cuts. The Canadian Dollar is worth more than the US dollar, but it's negligible

http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert/?Amount=1&From=CAD&To=USD

Take a look at newegg.com and newegg.ca Prices are identical.

 

[Zebo]

The OC-ed 7950 from Gigabyte at NCIX for $400 is also a pretty good deal, I'm tempted.

Still waiting for 7870 to move down. Maybe 7850/7870 are priced in a way so some people will pay the premium, and others will help clear 69xx/68xx from the inventories.

Not a good deal IMO. There are $240 cards that can hang with it like Ocing a 7850 or a 448 Classified ultra out of the box. I wouldn't pay $160 extra for nothing at least.

Might as well spend an extra $100 and get real high end GTX 680.

 

[Zebo]

So have these price drops been made official yet? Newegg still shows the hd7970's starting at $530. I think AMD has been losing out on a great opportunity to capitalize on Nvidia's inventory situation. The gtx680 is selling out the moment any stock arrives, while at $530+ the hd7970 just isn't an attractive alternative. I think most people in the market for a ~$500 video card will wait to get what they want, rather than settling on something with a little less (to, at best, equal) performance for more money. BUT, if the hd7970 had been $450-470 the entire time, the gtx680 hunters might grow impatient enough on waiting for gtx680 and get the (near equal value) hd7970.

All in all, a $450-470 price is needed for for the hd7970, but newegg is still showing $530. AMD is dragging their feet to get there and losing sales along the way.

Exactly.

 

[AE-Ruffy]

no price cut in the sub $300 market no care.

All cards currently need a good $100 pricecut

 

[iCyborg]

Not a good deal IMO. There are $240 cards that can hang with it like Ocing a 7850 or a 448 Classified ultra out of the box. I wouldn't pay $160 extra for nothing at least.

Might as well spend an extra $100 and get real high end GTX 680.

This is almost 10% factory OC-ed card with a pretty good custom cooler from what I read, reference 7850 cannot "hang with it", and you can OC 7950 too. That $100 more is 25% more, if you have the money, sure, go for it, but for someone finding even $400 a stretch, they're pretty similar in bang for the buck.
Anyway, I have some other special circumstances that make 7950 more appealing to me personally...

 

[tviceman]

Newegg is probably taking their time. $479 7970s are already showing up

I guess newegg can afford to take their time. I hope the price cuts are just the tip of the iceberg and as Nvidia gets off their (slow) a$$ and releases the rest of Kepler more price cutting ensues. I would like to upgrade at the end of summer, but by then big Kepler will only be a month or two off, so I find myself playing the perpetual wait-for-next-best-tech-to-come-out game.

 

[Zebo]

dp

 

[Zebo]

This is almost 10% factory OC-ed card with a pretty good custom cooler from what I read, reference 7850 cannot "hang with it", and you can OC 7950 too. That $100 more is 25% more, if you have the money, sure, go for it, but for someone finding even $400 a stretch, they're pretty similar in bang for the buck.
Anyway, I have some other special circumstances that make 7950 more appealing to me personally...

I didnt say 7850 could hang stock but OC it can easy. That card is factory gimped big time and has a lot more OC headroom than 7950. When both maxed out I seriously doubt w/o tools, benchmarking tools, you'd be able to tell a difference. The $400 cards right now are a compete ripoff evidenced by the fact $239 striaght out of the box 448 can hang with them. Hey your money your choices but I would not pay $160 for infinitesimal gains.

 

[Quantos]

That Gigabyte at $500 looks like a pretty good deal.

 

[iCyborg]

I didnt say 7850 could hang stock but OC it can easy. That card is factory gimped big time and has a lot more OC headroom than 7950. When both maxed out I seriously doubt w/o tools, benchmarking tools, you'd be able to tell a difference. The $400 cards right now are a compete ripoff evidenced by the fact $239 striaght out of the box 448 can hang with them. Hey your money your choices but I would not pay $160 for infinitesimal gains.

Sorry, I meant 7850 with reference cooler/PCB when OC-ed. Because I can only see reference boards at $240, those with fancy coolers are $250-$270, at least in Canada.
I know you're referring to that other thread, but I'm skeptical about these 40-50%+ overclocks being the norm.

That 560 Ti ultra is great, but according to the review summary it's still ~10% off stock 7950 (I know the ultra is faster than the card reviewed, but I don't think 1.6% higher clock will skyrocket its numbers). Anyway, as awesome as it is, not everyone changes cards on a yearly basis, and its 1.3MB of VRAM is a major turnoff for me.

 

[Zebo]

Thats true especially if you play skyrim with max mods. I even found 580 an issue. Still then 7850 is best bang and even better Ocing. I just don't see 7950 worth it, actually whole line between $350-$450 isnt worth it.

 

[BoFox]

Yes, you did. You implied it very strongly. Why are we supposed to care about it having a larger die now? It was you that made an argument about this initially, and it was debunked.

His key word, "alone". I'd leave it at that, but now feel that one should be reminded that 28nm is substantially more expensive than 40nm, by the largest magnitude of any single-node shrink in recent history.

Except no, because it was you that started this arguing about die sizes. And the HD 7870 will get a price drop when the GTX 660 or GTX 670 (non-Ti) are released. Funny how you go from arguing about prices to die sizes suddenly. Fact is, the GTX 580 has a 145% larger die size yet it's only AS fast.

Never mind the 3GB vs 2GB, for only $50 more, plus about 11% more performance.

Yet you conveniently forgot that in the past NVIDIA has had cards at outrageous prices, like the GTX 280 which was... what again... $650. But that doesn't matter, because it's NVIDIA. It also doesn't matter that it was NVIDIA that set the price for the GTX 580 at $500 because it was the fastest single-GPU card, right? But since it's AMD we're talking about now, they couldn't price the faster HD 7970 at $50 more than the GTX 580, right? If NVIDIA decides to release a GTX 685/GTX 780 at $700 will you be here complaining? Probably not. What if AMD releases an HD 8970 that's faster and prices it at $750? You bet.

Doesn't matter if it's NV or AMD - most people don't like outrageous prices. So, the cynical "victim-hood" of "high prices would be fine if it were NV because people are complaining about AMD now" was a bit unfounded. At least Nvidia gave $100 rebates to GTX 280 owners, after doing an immediate $150 price cut right at the time of HD 4870 launch, rather than waiting nearly a month later to do anything.

Citation needed. Also, who are you to impose what's a necessary performance increase for a card at a given price point? Do you control the economy? Do you know about supply and demand? Did you forget again that 28nm wafers cost more than their 40nm counterparts? Did you forget again that 28nm is immature and therefore yields are much lower than 40nm? Finally, do you think AMD is a charity that HAS to give you more performance at lower prices with each new card even when there's little if any cost savings for AMD from a new gen, and why do you think it's fair for NVIDIA to price a card at high prices yet not AMD?

Why is citation needed for this, other than for overly pedantic purposes? Simply, the "7" replaces the "6" for the x870. Both die sizes are nearly identical, and both use the same bus width. It's clearly not in the best interest of a profit company to publicly express that the 7870 replaces the 6870 that sells for just a bit over 1/3 the price. Generally speaking, for the 28nm round, it would start to appear that way later on as the production ramps up and the 28nm competition starts to get more fierce.

I'm also one of the many in this thread who agreed that the 7870 isn't a great value at $349.

I guess one thing has changed: AMD saw that giving cards away wasn't a very smart business strategy, and so they stopped giving people bargain basement prices for high-end cards. Also, the GTX 580 dropped to $390 and AMD is pricing the HD 7950 to keep the competition they had going. Since the GTX 580's price dropped before the HD 7950's, does that mean the GTX 580 was even more overpriced? Speaking of overpricing, the HD 7950 competed with the GTX 580 and initially had a lower price. In comparison to its competition, it was priced more aggressively, so in comparison to its competition it was not overpriced. In comparison to the rest of the market, namely the GTX 570 and HD 6970, it was overpriced. But that's simply points of diminishing returns at work. When you get into Enthusiast-level cards, you get into points of diminishing returns, and the higher Enthusiast card you go with the lower the performance difference will be and the higher the price will be.

RS probably forgot to mention the 3 free games (Deus Ex:HR plus the Missing Link DLC, and 2 brand new, yet-to-be-released games), which probably cost AMD quite a bit in addition to the price cut (one could probably sell them for $100 on Ebay). EDIT- Somebody just told me that the games are worthless, so I'll just let you win that one, Axel, except that AMD was probably just "pre-emptively" pricing things high because they knew NV would underprice them anyways.

Yes, that is exactly right. Corporations price their products at however much they want. If they price too high, the admittedly-flawed free market takes care of it because consumers will not purchase said product.

And you've still got to get me that quote from a reputable source saying the HD 7870 replaces the HD 6870, because AMD has never said that. It's what you conveniently make up to then use as an argument. The HD 6850 and HD 6870 didn't replace the HD 5850 and HD 5870, but rather the HD 5830 and HD 5850 respectively. Your price argument is therefore invalid, because you pulled the argument of the HD 7870 being the replacement for the HD 6870 right out of nowhere. Pro tip: what replaces the HD 6870 is probably a yet-to-be-announced HD 7790 or HD 7830 because the HD 7770 replaces the HD 6850. And the HD 7870's pricing makes a great deal of sense. You're getting a card that's as good, or better than, the GTX 580 for $50 less. Unfortunately, AMD shot themselves in the foot by putting the HD 7870 and 7950's stock performance so close. Regardless, since the HD 7950 has more compute units and memory bandwidth, it has higher IPC than the HD 7870 and it can also overclock to a higher degree. At $10 more than the GTX 580 it's still a great choice in comparison.

Right, but if HD 6850 is a far, far better buy than the slower HD 7770, then it's a turn-off for many would-be buyers who are gaming enthusiasts. Many companies do not behave in that respect - especially Intel, as to actually give customers incentive to buy their newer products.

Yes, exactly. Turn the argument around and we land at the fact that the GTX 680 needs an effective clock speed of around 1050-1100MHz because of GPU Boost to be 5-10% faster than the HD 7970. And an HD 7970 at 1GHz is already as fast as a GTX 680, and that's an overclock 99% of HD 7970's will be able to do on stock voltage. Then there's also the fact that you didn't point out: Tahiti gains significantly more than GK104 from increases in clock speeds. So yes, they are very much alike when it comes to IPC. Both at 1GHz GK104 has higher IPC because it needs less cores to do the same, but at 1.1 or 1.2GHz Tahiti has higher IPC because of better clock scaling. Simple as that.

You had an argument about performance earlier, and now you have an argument about noise? How atypical of you. The reference cooler does make more noise than the GTX 680's, but you've yet to explain how that equates to it needing to be priced $40 lower at $430. You've also yet to mention the downside of having a central internal exhaust cooler: all the heat gets dumped into your case, raising temperatures for all the other components nearby. There's also the fact it makes a multi-GPU configuration a lot worse because if you have one card next to the other the one on top won't be able to breathe air in and therefore increasing its temperature AND the card on the bottom will receive all the heat exhaust from the top card. Unless you have a motherboard with a spacing of three slots for PCIe slots, it's a lose-lose situation for CF/SLI.

GTX 680 still performs faster than HD 7970 when both cards are overclocked to the max on air cooling, judging from the average overclocks. And it's far quieter, consuming 100W less on average again, according to several reviews.

As to the part highlighted in red above, a reference GTX 680 also exhausts the heat outside the case with a blower fan..., while not being as noisy. Or maybe I'm getting you wrong - most well-ventilated cases have no problems with this because of the front intake (and from the bottom/side for some as well).

Right, except you only need 1-1.05GHz to match a stock GTX 680. At 1.2GHz you're already ahead by a noticeable margin. And since, like I mentioned before, cards with third-party heatsinks, fans, and PCBs (boards) are typically $20-30 more expensive than reference and the HD 7970 will be priced at $470, then those cards being at $500 is realistic.

The same goes for GTX 680 - they can also be overclocked, so saying that HD 7970 is ahead at 1.2GHz holds little water if it still loses to a GTX 680 that is also oc'ed.

Except no because Hardware Canuck's review has titles that are mainly biased in favor of NVIDIA and they include too little in terms of quantities to get a broad picture of performance. Techpowerup test using 14 games, some NVIDIA biased, some AMD biased, and some neutral and what they get is that, both stock, the GTX 680 is 8% faster than the HD 7970. They're the most unbiased when it comes to selecting titles, so I'll trust them more.

Voodoopower rankings rate GTX 680 at only 7% above HD 7970.

TPU is far from what I would consider a quality review site (outdated comparisons with ancient benchmark scores based on old drivers, Starcraft 2 being CPU-limited across all resolutions, history of using games with 200+ fps, etc.. etc..), though.

It still doesn't change the fact that it's stupid shenanigans by NVIDIA. Different reviews got different GPU Boost clock speeds, and even if the difference in on average only 50MHz between reviews, it makes comparing more difficult. Why couldn't NVIDIA do what they should do and make it work like Intel's and AMD's Turbo, where if it follows thermal parameters it overclocks to a specific clock speed? Furthermore, why are Enthusiasts obligated to use an offset mode for overclocking and why did they remove the ability to fine tune voltage, instead making the card decide for itself what voltage it needs? Given who this card is targeted to, it's complete BS and NVIDIA deserve to get called out on it.

Why? It's not like when the HD 6970 was downclocked in Metro2033 with default PowerTune settings. There's nothing BS about up-clocking a card. It's very advanced tech - more advanced than anything out there so far. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

And you conveniently forgot that those are sales figures for ALL platforms. I'm sorry, but almost no one plays Batman: AC on the PC, just like almost no one plays Metro 2033 and DiRT 3.

Starcraft II is more popular than all of those, and Batman: AC isn't popular on the PC at all. Crysis 2 and many other titles I can't recall right now are popular on the PC as well.

Not true. Batman AC is still a popular game for the PC. It's an AAA quality game with extremely high review scores. Perhaps it's not as popular in the circles of those without PhysX, giving them that kind of impression that it's not popular overall.

Now you've stepped into making completely subjective arguments. Not many people play it, so it's not that good of a benchmark UNLESS you're looking to compare everything to give a broad picture of what you can expect in every situation.

I wouldn't call that "completely subjective" if RS was basing it on the average review scores derived from thousands of gamers on ign or gamespot for example.

That first sentence looks completely redundant. Barring that, people that want a card that's more widely available, prefer AMD, care about compute performance, or know that with a small overclock it will match the GTX 680 will go for the HD 7970.

Not redundant, but the bitcoin mining looks real promising for the 7xxx series, if bitcoin continues to trade at what it is worth right now (let alone rise in price).

Doesn't change much, if anything. The 6970 eventually became $30 cheaper than MSRP, and the 7870 is now at $20 lower than MSRP. And it's still a great value, especially in comparison to the GTX 580 as I've discussed before.

Not in comparison to HD 7850, as SickBeast has contended in this thread. In the minds of most, HD 7870 has never been a "great value" to begin with.

That is, unless one pays it off with 24/7 bitcoin mining.

Except no, because unlocking does not equal overclocking. Overclocking is luck of the draw when it comes to the max clocks one or another card can reach, but all HD 7850s can overclock. The vast majority of reviewers and users are getting 1100MHz on stock voltage, so it's not luck of the draw until you get to where you want to see the maximum clock speeds achievable. 1100MHz is a typical overclock; 1200MHz is something some may not reach. Unlocking isn't in the same ballpark because unlike overclocking, it isn't guaranteed (and yes, all 7850s will overclock from their stock 860MHz, so don't come back with phony arguments about how overclocking is "luck of the draw" when I mentioned an average overclock; your argument is like saying it's "luck of the draw" to get 4.2GHz on a 2500K/2600K when 99% of samples can achieve it). By not guaranteed, I mean that even when you had the "right" hardware (reference 2GB card) some people weren't able to unlock. Only the initial 6950s were able to unlock as a matter of fact, because after some months all cards started to come with cheaper, non-6970 PCBs and there was also the introduction of a 1GB version which had less success unlocking. Another obvious thing is that it involves a lot more risk to the card than doing an average overclock. So no, they're not similar in any way, shape, or form. Probably less than 50% of all HD 6950s sold were able to unlock, while 99% of HD 7850s are gonna easily get 1.05-1.1GHz on stock voltage because it's an average overclock.

"Average" does not mean "99%". To me, average means 50%.

Well, since it's now been established that an unlock is not the same as an average overclock and that even if you CAN unlock a 6950 you still have lower-rated memory chips, your whole argument falls apart. Also interesting that you go from jumping around from MSRP to street pricing to deals to suit your argument whenever possible. Very objective and unbiased. Deals are not the same as street pricing, and like rebates they're not what the vast majority of people will pay, and therefore it's invalid. That's why they're called deals: because they're rare, available for a limited amount of time, and often in a specific shop only. Wanna keep it fair? Use street pricing from what everyone will pay in the US, and that means stick to Newegg and Amazon and any other reputable retailers that ship to all US states. Similarly, and as I've mentioned several times in the forum, mentioning rebates as final price is deceiving and inaccurate because it's not upfront price (meaning you need to pay full price when you buy), not everyone gets them back, and others don't even bother with them.



The GTX 680 also performs worse than the HD 7970 in certain games.

Look guyz, the HD 7970 is faster than the GTX 680. OMG!!!

Thanks, I'll be buying a HD 7970 now. ^_^

 

[Grooveriding]

Whoah. Tldr.

 

[3DVagabond]

At least we have the consolation that it took days to compose that response. Which means we likely have an equal reprieve until there's a response.

I say bring on the $400 HD 7950's that'll do 1200MHz+ :crossedfingers: That will be decent value for the highend.

 

[BoFox]

Whoah. Tldr.

At least mine's not as long as LOL_Wut_Axel's post that I quoted in my post above, making it really really long! :biggrin:

At least we have the consolation that it took days to compose that response. Which means we likely have an equal reprieve until there's a response.

I say bring on the $400 HD 7950's that'll do 1200MHz+ :crossedfingers: That will be decent value for the highend.

Actually, it took me 2 weeks to compose that response, believe it or not! I'm exhausted! :'(

 

[Zebo]

At least we have the consolation that it took days to compose that response. Which means we likely have an equal reprieve until there's a response.

I say bring on the $400 HD 7950's that'll do 1200MHz+ :crossedfingers: That will be decent value for the highend.

No it's not. Value is good performance/price and the highest end card 680 beats a $400 7950 in p/p ratio. It's 30% faster for only 20% more money.

Just because 7950 went down in price doesnt mean it's a good value with new realities in the market only the math can tell value.

$350 is a good price for 7950

(BTW you're supposed to have diminishing returns as you go to high end. Everyone knows you pay a premium for it. Like GTX 680. @$400 for a 7950 You're about to pay a premium for lower end. Unheard of and a poor value)

 

[toyota]

No it's not. Value is good performance/price and the highest end card 680 beats a $400 7950 in p/p ratio. It's 30% faster for only 20% more money.

Just because 7950 went down in price doesnt mean it's value with new realities in the market only the math can tell value.

actually its 25% more but your point still stands.