RussianSensation
Elite Member
- Sep 5, 2003
- 19,458
- 765
- 126
But 780 has been available for $450 for 6-8 months, R9 290 dropped to $380-450 for at least 6 months and 780Ti has hovered at $630-650. The opportunity cost of waiting that long to get marginally faster performance for $80-100 less isn't worth it imo. When someone waits 1 year to NOT upgrade, they expect either very large price drops or a very large boost in performance (30%+). It's doubtful that 970 and 980 will beat 780/780Ti by 30% and the rumoured prices of $399 for 970 and say $549 for 980 aren't exactly revolutionary in the context of 780/780Ti pricing in the last 6+ months. I guess the selling points for those who held out this long will be 4GB of VRAM, lower power usage, upgraded video codec, HDMI 2.0 and G-Sync surround.
If someone sells a 680/7970Ghz, they'll get what $150-200 for it? To step up to the 980 will cost them $350-400 vs. buying a used 7970Ghz/680 for $150-200 to at least match a 980. So your statement that "selling a card & going to a fast single solution doesn't cost that much more" isn't true.
In the past, the next gen flagship replacement would provide 45-100% increase, a bit less with 680 at 30-35% but 980 providing just 15% would be an unheard of flop for this level of branding (aka x80 series). Essentially NV is banking on people not caring about price/performance of tech curve and not caring about the opportunity cost of waiting since they could have grabbed only marginally more expensive 780 and 780Ti nearly a year ago.
----
I think 970 may very well surprise us as I don't see it trailing 980 by the corresponding amount of CUDA cores. (2048 x 1216mhz for 980 / (1664 x 1178 for 970) would produce a 27% advantage for the 980). Such a large gap between a 980 and 970 hasn't happened in years (6800GT vs. 6800U, 470 vs. 480, 570 vs. 580, 670 vs. 680 were all fairly close). If NV called the 980 card 960Ti or even 970, it would make a lot more sense but marketing would hate that....
It's almost as if NV is purposely segmenting the GM204 product even though they could get a lot of chips yielding higher than 1664 CUDA cores but this way they could add $150-200 for bragging rights of the 980 to perhaps leave room to counter AMD later with a 970Ti of sorts. That's 1 area where I have to give props to AMD since their 2nd best card is barely slower than the best offering unbeatable price/performance (5850/6950/7950/R9 290). For NV I guess it makes sense to provide more incentive for gamers to pay $150-200 more for the flagship by purposely neutering the 2nd best card by significant amounts. Otherwise if they priced a 1792 CUDA core 970 at $399, not many people would buy the 980 at $550+.
Last edited:
Facebook
Twitter