AMD price cuts on 7900 and 7800 series!

dremic said:
nvidia can keep their prices and still sell cards though i personally dont get it.. not after reading the tomshardware article on the 660ti

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people swear by nvidia so hard. the best one i hear is drivers. personally i have a 670 and i dont pick teams. i think AMD gives way better performance for the price look at the 7970
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Now the 7970 offers good price/performance, but when it was $500 and the GTX670 was $400, essentially making the 7970(and GTX680, Radeon 7950 and 7870) pointless. With the latest price corrections (I don't call them price drops because they were retardely overpriced to begin with) The Radeon 7xxx livens up. If I were to get a set up now, I would have no problem getting two 7870's for $500...In fact if AMD had the 7950 available at it's current prices I would have gotten two at the time of launch...Instead I dealt with what I had and waited for the GTX670...I'm sure a lot of people have a similar mindset...AMD could have dominated this generation if they launched just $100 less at each price level ($450,$350,$250) the competing nVidia products wouldn't have been as attractive. I don't know who at AMD decided to price them like this as they basically shot themselves in the foot overpricing at launch. If I remember correctly, I remember hearing that it currently costs as much now to make a Radeon 7970 as it did to make a Radeon 5770, so they have headroom to wiggle prices, but decided not to.

nVidia did a similar thing with the GTX280 and GTX260. Difference is, when the $300 Radeon 4870 crushed the $400 GTX260 and overclocked could run close to the $500 GTX280, nVidia almost instantly collapsed prices to correct their overpriced product and sent rebate checks to early adopters. They knew their products were over priced and made amends for it.
 
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Rauelius said:
Now the 7970 offers good price/performance, but when it was $500 and the GTX670 was $400, essentially making the 7970(and GTX680, Radeon 7950 and 7870) pointless. With the latest price corrections (I don't call them price drops because they were retardely overpriced to begin with) The Radeon 7xxx livens up. If I were to get a set up now, I would have no problem getting two 7870's for $500...In fact if AMD had the 7950 available at it's current prices I would have gotten two at the time of launch...Instead I dealt with what I had and waited for the GTX670...I'm sure a lot of people have a similar mindset...AMD could have dominated this generation if they launched just $100 less at each price level ($450,$350,$250) the competing nVidia products wouldn't have been as attractive. I don't know who at AMD decided to price them like this as they basically shot themselves in the foot overpricing at launch. If I remember correctly, I remember hearing that it currently costs as much now to make a Radeon 7970 as it did to make a Radeon 5770, so they have headroom to wiggle prices, but decided not to.
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i wish we had some solid sales figures, but i'll tell you right now when that 7970 launched SO MANY people bought them at their release price. if they can sell em for 550 why would i launch it at 350? especially with no competition. I am with you on the waiting I waited to see what was gonna happen with the market, that and all the 680s were out of stock. but as far as AMD is concerned they are smart for their pricing structure. hella expensive when theres no competition and amazing prices when there is. sounds brilliant to me :p
 
Yes people have very short memories. I distinctly remember the feeding frenzy of buying that happened when the 7970 first launched. Every upper end video card buyer rushed out to the store to buy one at release price.

That $500+ price tag was a real heart stopper for most of us mere mortals.

We won't be hearing from most of those guys who bought those at launch because frankly nothing has come out to make them switch. A 680 wasn't enough faster to justify taking a bath on a card that expensive.

Yeah, AMD/ATI cleaned up big on that launch. My gut tells me that it may be the only reason AMD is still in business right now.
 
I remember that. nVidia actually gave me $125 bucks cash back after the 280 GTX price drop. Sadly that was only half the actual price drop of $250 dollars (650 to 400).

The 280 GTX was a horrible launch, my first 2 cards overheated causing shutdowns when they hit 105 degrees and they were terribly overpriced.

Rauelius said:
nVidia did a similar thing with the GTX280 and GTX260. Difference is, when the $300 Radeon 4870 crushed the $400 GTX260 and overclocked could run close to the $500 GTX280, nVidia almost instantly collapsed prices to correct their overpriced product and sent rebate checks to early adopters. They knew their products were over priced and made amends for it.
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dremic said:
i wish we had some solid sales figures, but i'll tell you right now when that 7970 launched SO MANY people bought them at their release price. if they can sell em for 550 why would i launch it at 350? especially with no competition. I am with you on the waiting I waited to see what was gonna happen with the market, that and all the 680s were out of stock. but as far as AMD is concerned they are smart for their pricing structure. hella expensive when theres no competition and amazing prices when there is. sounds brilliant to me :p
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^This. Enough people were willing to spend the $ at the release price for ____ (insert manuf. name here) to keep the prices where they were. Quick price adjustments means that not enought people were biting at the requested price. Slow price drops means they are being sold at current prices.

Speak with your wallet. Dont want to pay a high premium? Then dont. Does it mean forgoing having the latest, greatest and bestest currently on the market? Yes. But it is the same with cars, gadgets and anything new tech.

I am glad to see the prices continue to decline. Price wars/performance wars benefit the consumer. It is just a matter of where you are in the line of products; bleeding edge or further down the chain?
 
dremic said:
nvidia can keep their prices and still sell cards though i personally dont get it.. not after reading the tomshardware article on the 660ti

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people swear by nvidia so hard. the best one i hear is drivers. personally i have a 670 and i dont pick teams. i think AMD gives way better performance for the price look at the 7970
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It's how much more emphasis Nvidia puts out in their marketing than AMD does. I personally know three people who thought buying 660ti's were solid choices and I couldn't convince them otherwise, even to GTX 670s. I mean, Nvidia uses marketing shills for Pete's sake / check xoleras' post here in [H].

Drivers is the always the argument people choose. But in reality, those who have used both AMD and Nvidia's products know both are guilty of this. I've had nonstop BSOD/nvlddmkm.sys problems on my 9800 GT playing TF2, my 5870 had random artifacts in various games, my GTX295 kept black screening in BFBC2, etc.

Lately though, they've both been good to me thus far, no problems with my GTX580/GTX690 and none from my 6990/7970s.

I'll quote what n0x1ous said in a topic regarding this since he does bring a good point:
n0x1ous said:
I think the 7900 series are really good products. I know it has been said time and time again that nvidia's marketing is vastly superior.

Does anyone put any stock in the killing of off the ATI name? ATI's brand was viewed positively in my opinion, but AMD brand not so much.

AMD CPU's always viewed as budget or second rate (which they have been except for Athlon/Athlon X2) I think it was a mistake particularly for average consumers who may have had a more positive opinion of the ATI brand. Now they see AMD and probably don't know that its actually ATI and think ATI went out of business etc etc......I dunno know. didn't seem like a good move. Probably should changed the name of the whole company to ATI!
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I'm going to return my card to Microcenter and either get a 7870 or kick in the extra bones and go up a model. But I don't want to go in blind and get a less reliable card than I have.
I need to find out which of these manufacturers are better than the other.
Is XFX better than HIS? Is Diamond better than them all? Who's who?
 
XFX is good, they used to make a lot of them for both amd and nvidia. Diamond I heard is ok. I'm not so sure about HIS. I would go with xfx. MSI is another good model.
 
Not for nothing, but I feel that ATI / AMD has really played their cards well this generation. When the 7970 was released it was the fastest video card money could buy and it was priced accordingly. They were first to market, and with improvements such as the GHZ Edition and now the 7950 with Boost they have done a more than adequate job at keeping the product line fresh; recent price cuts are just the icing on the cake.

To the people wallowing in upset about the supposed "price gouging" on AMD's part, get over yourself. They're a business, and quite frankly AMD can use all the money they can get these days.
 
Blkout said:
Its sickening that AMD can sell these cards for so much less now than they could when they launched. I don't care what anyone says about not having competition from Nvidia, it was simply price gouging the fullest effect. I don't have pity for AMD right now because I'm a firm believer that had they lowered the launch price to something that was more reasonable and appropriate, they would have sold more cards and likely wouldn't have had to deal with the pressure from Nvidia. By the time Nvidia launched the 6xx series, many consumers wouldn't have bought Nvidia cards because they had already made their purchase for this generation of cards. AMD shot themselves in the foot releasing them with prices that were WAY too high and clock speeds that were WAY too low. They had a solid opportunity to put the smackdown on Nvidia with a great product and early start and they blew it by making some poor marketing choices.
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When you get a bunch of decision makers in a room and start talking about money, they care about margin more than they care about selling X million units. AMD needs to worry about keep board partners, and those partners need to remain profitable. As an example...

Lets say a 7850 cost $150 to manufacture...

If the card sells for $200 MSRP, there is $50 profit in each item for that SKU
If that same card sells for $250 MSRP, there is $100 profit in each SKU

Now lets say the cards get discounted $25 somewhere along the line and the prices drop to $175 and $225. Then the $200 MSRP card only has $25 profit, while the $250 MSRP card comes in at a healthy $75 profit (3x the profit of the cheaper card, even though the original MSRP is only 25% higher).

AMD and card manufactures care about profit margin more than volume sales. Plus if they go for volume sales, profits are more volatile. This means they need to sell the cards for whatever the market will pay to remain viable.
 
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Thanks for the answer guys, another quick question. In CCC with my HIS (I know) 7850 I see activity at 100% while in a game but the temps and stuff are normal (48C give or take a few) what does that mean? Should I clock up the card a bit because it has more to offer even with turbo power boost thing checked already?
 
t.o. said:
Thanks for the answer guys, another quick question. In CCC with my HIS (I know) 7850 I see activity at 100% while in a game but the temps and stuff are normal (48C give or take a few) what does that mean? Should I clock up the card a bit because it has more to offer even with turbo power boost thing checked already?
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Overclock until it starts smoking, then back it off a notch ... :D
 
Wow. My 660ti comes in tomorrow, but if the 7850 was $190 at the time i purchased it, I would've probably purchased that without giving it a 2nd thought.

I think I'll build a lower-end rig and use a 7850 with it later this year. =)
 
Kzar said:
Wow. My 660ti comes in tomorrow, but if the 7850 was $190 at the time i purchased it, I would've probably purchased that without giving it a 2nd thought.

I think I'll build a lower-end rig and use a 7850 with it later this year. =)
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Considering Two in CFX to replace my GTX460 SLI now...but I may wait to see if any 7950's dip under $280.
 
MRAB54 said:
How would two 7870's compare with one GTX 680?
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Definitely faster . If you want to know by how much take HD 7870 performance and multiply by 1.9x and compare with GTX 680. There is no HD 7870 CF review with latest 12.8 WHQL drivers for HD 7870. And any review with the earlier drivers would not be accurate because AMD has made vast improvements in Skyrim, Batman AC, Dirt 3 with the 12.7 beta / 12.8 whql drivers.
 
usb said:
Some are showing up with a rebate already.
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some have had rebates for a few days already. I've been eying 7950s this week, almost pulled the trigger too, but my gut was telling me to wait. I hope these new prices will reflect on those cards with rebates. I'd rather get price reduction than a rebate :)
 
MRAB54 said:
How would two 7870's compare with one GTX 680?
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like above they would destroy it.

the reason people will still buy a 7970 or a 680 though is because single card is always the better choice. multi GPU comes with cons
 
usb said:
Yeh but no drop on the 7970 of course. I think the 670 ftw or any oc model does better than 7950 anyway.
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Please, why would they lower the prices on 7970Ghz? its neck to neck/faster then GTX680 and yet cheaper already.
 
Forceman said:
Maybe now, but it wasn't so great 6 months ago when the 7950 was $400+.
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oh really? tell that to people still buying 670s

dont kid yourself its still a good card at 400$

its a DAMN good card at 320 though
 
Tarrosion said:
Thanks for the heads up. Is Sapphire a good brand? I think lately I've been hearing good things primarily about XFX.

(Also, how about HIS/Visiontek?)
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you should look at the RMA process for these companies. performance is relatively close between all of them, they all have the same GPU.. the RMA process is what i look at when im thinking about buying a card. like Diamond i dont buy diamond simply because people talk about the RMA process being the most horrific thing theyve ever experienced
 
just saw the 7870 prices drops this morning. on the egg for as low as 239$! that's alot of card for this price!!!!
 
dremic said:
oh really? tell that to people still buying 670s

dont kid yourself its still a good card at 400$

its a DAMN good card at 320 though
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670 is faster than a 7950, hence the willingness of people to pay a higher price. It may still be a good card at $400, but $400 isn't a good price for it, as shown by AMD's willingness to drop the price.

The 7950 is back in AMD's wheelhouse of price/performance at $320 though, I agree with that.
 
ebduncan said:
just saw the 7870 prices drops this morning. on the egg for as low as 239$! that's alot of card for this price!!!!
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I agree! It whoops the @$$ off my 6950! Still though, I shall wait. I only do three-tiered upgrades or higher. Not enough of an upgrade there to warrant a purchase.
 
just got an XFX 7870 with the latest Dirt game for free and after $30 MIR for $219. CDN!!! NCIX.
 
Forceman said:
670 is faster than a 7950, hence the willingness of people to pay a higher price. It may still be a good card at $400, but $400 isn't a good price for it, as shown by AMD's willingness to drop the price.

The 7950 is back in AMD's wheelhouse of price/performance at $320 though, I agree with that.
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ah just like the 680 is better then the 7970? naw dude. sorry.
 
Forceman said:
Oh, come on. You aren't going to seriously try to say that a 7950 is a faster card than a 670, are you?
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Did I ever say that? All I said was the 7950 was still a great buy even at 400$ and is an amazing deal now. The 670 is better in average FPS by 6%...


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as you can see the 670 is barely better and gets worse at higher resolutions where the 7950 gets better.

dont say that the 7950 isnt a 400$ card it is. and it is worth just as much as a 670.
 
quit bickering about what is "better"... they're all literally single digit frames performance difference between each other. They're both fantastic cards, that do better in different games.
 
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