AMD Midrange [M]adness

[PGHammer]

Has anyone noticed how *crowded* the $100-200USD (what I have thought of as midrange) AMD GPU market is getting?

The weird part is in terms of trends (compared to even a year ago):

1. There are exactly zero (except for old) AIB GPUs with less than 1 GB in this range. Even the low end is now 1 GB.

2. DDR3/GDDR3 (except for older cards) is ALSO going away - even at the lowest-priced end. (In fact, the only GPU I'm seeing for US retail/e-tail with DDR3 is the unique XFX HD7750 2GB DDR3 model carried by Best Buy.)

3. 2 GB GDDR5 has appeared simultaneously with 256-bit memory bus - as a regular item; specifically, the HD7850 2 GB. (These were primarily sale-only with HD68xx.)

Now if only the driver teething can stay banished....

 

[Domini]

You mad bro?

 

[airthimble]

AMD has said they will be doing a lot of work on their drivers this year

 

[PGHammer]

You mad bro?

Mad? Hardly - just not used to having this much choice from Big Red in this part of the market (and I've been with either ATI or AMD GPUs since my first Pentium).

The concentration has typically been at one of the ends (high end or low) - not the middle. And it's even more shocking that the suddenly-fat middle is mostly populated by the current generation - not two generations of GPUs (as is typically the case when the midrange has massive overlap). In fact, I didn't expect HD7850 to drop to the middle until HD8xxx was released - let alone the 2 GB variants to become midrange material.