These prices are out of line from what i would expect from amd.
No they aren't, the undesputed topend cards from both AMD/ATI and Nvidia have always been very expensive. The X800XTX, the X1950XT, The 9700 pro, The 9800 pro, all of them were expensive and the mainstream cards were the big sellers.
They are clearly way marked up which is fine but not really something amd has done in the past. I would expect this pricing from nvidia like the crazy 200 series pricing before ati came out with the 4000 series.
The HD 5870 was the only topend card from AMD/ATI that was priced at mainstream prices, and that was because AMD thought Fermi was being released in a matter of weeks. The HD 6970 was released at mainstream prices because it wasn't the topend card, that honour belonged to the GTX580 and it was priced accordingly. All previous undesputed topend cards from ATI had the same price gouging or mark up.
Hard to buy a card when you know damn well as soon as kepler comes out these will drop $100-$150. I think for people like myself who already don't like buying next gen gpus until both sides come out to play this pricing is just the guarantee that I wont be buying one until kepler is out. If i could pick up a 7990 for the normal dual gpu $700 price I probably would tho.
This is the norm for every single new GPU release, the HD 5870 was a one off mistake by AMD. New GPUs comes out, old ones get sold at rock bottom prices because they are old and surpassed in speed and sometimes features. Look at the prices of the HD 5870 and GTX 480 soon after the GTX 580 and HD 6970 were released. It has always been the late adopters who got the best bang for buck deals. Early adopters usually pay for R&D costs and they know this, it doesn't stop them dropping $550 apiece for the bestest ever GPUs.
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