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Why is 4850 so cheap?

J

Jakalwarrior

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 6, 2005
Messages
3,189
Not that im complaining about my 150 dollar video card on the way, but why are they so cheap? why are there already steep discounts on something just released? I'm totally lost. I didnt expect to be able to buy one for 150 for atleast 6 months since the 3850 costs about that much?!?!
 
3850 COSTED that much, maybe a few months after release. You can pick a 3850 up now at some places for under $100. The 4850 was designed to make a sweep of the sub $200 gaming department and become the dominant card in that area. You were able to pick one up for $150 either because of an intensive push strategy for the card designed by ATI to make them fly off shelves or because a retailer thought they would be a flop and had discounts in place just as a precaution.
 
many factors make the cards cheaper

small chip, more on each wafer, 55nm
256-bit bus reduces board costs
gddr3 is cheap and abundant
low power, one 6-pin
cause they wanted to
 
Brent_Justice said:
many factors make the cards cheaper

small chip, more on each wafer, 55nm
256-bit bus reduces board costs
gddr3 is cheap and abundant
low power, one 6-pin
cause they wanted to
Click to expand...

I gotta ask why you formatted this post this way? Is it like a haiku or a limerick or something?
 
Early price rumors were that the 4850 was targeting the original 9600GT price range (~$150) and the 4870 target range was supposed to be $229.

They jacked up the prices when performance turned out better than expected (and when Nvidia's cards performed relatively worse than expected). There was talk that ATI wanted to raise the MSRP of the 4870 all the way up to $349, but the partners convinced them not to.

Anyway, I think ATI's manufacturing process, yields and costs are based on making a profit selling these at their original price points 4850@$150 and 4870@$229, so they should have plenty of room to wage a price war against Nvidia and still make a nice profit. I imagine they can easily counter-punch with their own price cuts, even if Nvidia suddenly drops $100+ off the GTX 260.
 
UtopiA said:
Where did you get it for $150 besides in-store BB?
Click to expand...
Asus at Newegg after rebate and code.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1319073
Coupon Code VGA62320
http://images10.newegg.com/UploadFilesForNewegg/rebate/SH/ASUS14-121-253Jun19July15lt12.pdf

Also Sapphire at $154 AR code and rebate
Coupon Code VGA62320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102747

http://images10.newegg.com/UploadFilesForNewegg/rebate/SH/Sapphire14-102-747Jun20Jul908jh28.pdf

Trust me, ATI is still making money at that price.
 
berzerker said:
Early price rumors were that the 4850 was targeting the original 9600GT price range (~$150) and the 4870 target range was supposed to be $229.

They jacked up the prices when performance turned out better than expected (and when Nvidia's cards performed relatively worse than expected). There was talk that ATI wanted to raise the MSRP of the 4870 all the way up to $349, but the partners convinced them not to.

Anyway, I think ATI's manufacturing process, yields and costs are based on making a profit selling these at their original price points 4850@$150 and 4870@$229, so they should have plenty of room to wage a price war against Nvidia and still make a nice profit. I imagine, they can easily counter-punch with their own price cuts, even if Nvidia suddenly drops $100+ off the GTX 260.
Click to expand...

Sources?
 
legendz411 said:
Sources?
Click to expand...
Try Google for the early price rumors ($229 for the 4870). See ATI slides for positioning against 9600GT. There have been far too many articles over the past few weeks to bookmark them all. You can probably find the stories linked in the big 4800 thread.
 
berzerker said:
Asus at Newegg after rebate and code.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1319073
Coupon Code VGA62320
http://images10.newegg.com/UploadFilesForNewegg/rebate/SH/ASUS14-121-253Jun19July15lt12.pdf

Also Sapphire at $154 AR code and rebate
Coupon Code VGA62320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102747

http://images10.newegg.com/UploadFilesForNewegg/rebate/SH/Sapphire14-102-747Jun20Jul908jh28.pdf

Trust me, ATI is still making money at that price.
Click to expand...

I'm not getting anything off that Sapphire coupon code. Is it supposed to be the same code as the Asus?
 
Jakalwarrior said:
Not that im complaining about my 150 dollar video card on the way, but why are they so cheap? why are there already steep discounts on something just released? I'm totally lost. I didnt expect to be able to buy one for 150 for atleast 6 months since the 3850 costs about that much?!?!
Click to expand...

ATI launches pre-emtive strike, Nvidia losses horrifying, Nvidia returns with tactical strike, ATI quickly launches a second wave.
 
I got $20 instant using the Sapphire coupon code.
Might go ahead and order one now actually, thanks for posting it.
 
Ordered the ASUS 4850 with that promo code!
$20 instant + $30 mailin = $149.99 to my door. Very nice indeed.

Now I don't feel so bad about missing the Best Buy deal.
I might also order a 2nd card.
 
Good thing I have multiple addresses.
Anyway it says limit two per household.
 
The new video cards have you so happy you are writing poetry about them? :D Must be a good sign.
I was thinking with how broke AMD is that they would be milking the heck out of them and selling the 4870 for 380ish and the 4850 for 220 firm while they can, and save all of these big ol rebates etc.. until later. They didn't even offer rebates right away on the 3870 and it wasn't even competative!

I'm dumbfounded, but happy! Wicked gaming performance for 150 bucks is always a good thing. I was planning on waiting on the 4870s to drop in about 3 or 4 months... but these deals are just to good!
 
Jakalwarrior said:
I was thinking with how broke AMD is that they would be milking the heck out of them and selling the 4870 for 380ish and the 4850 for 220 firm while they can, and save all of these big ol rebates etc.. until later. They didn't even offer rebates right away on the 3870 and it wasn't even competative!
Click to expand...

I think what ATI learned from the 3870 episode is that if you're playing up price performance, you gotta do it fast and furious. Is 50 dollars off MSRP a week after release overkill? Perhaps, but there's no indication that these cards are expensive to make unlike the new GTXes, and ATI might be more interested into regaining lost market share while still making a tidy profit on the side. In addition, it might also be trying to deflect attention from the unavailability of the 4870s, so you gotta figure that in.

All in all, I think it's a winning strategy if ATI can keep up on it.
 
Falling Anvil said:
I think what ATI learned from the 3870 episode is that if you're playing up price performance, you gotta do it fast and furious. Is 50 dollars off MSRP a week after release overkill? Perhaps, but there's no indication that these cards are expensive to make unlike the new GTXes, and ATI might be more interested into regaining lost market share while still making a tidy profit on the side. In addition, it might also be trying to deflect attention from the unavailability of the 4870s, so you gotta figure that in.

All in all, I think it's a winning strategy if ATI can keep up on it.
Click to expand...

Maybe so. Maybe they are trying to get everyone to buy them up ASAP. Possibly they think they can make more proffit that way than slowly milking them at higher prices since when nvidia shrinks their process down to 55nm it will have competition and possibly be too late.
 
I am in for 2 asus cards and 2 zalman vf700s to mount on them. I saw a pic of the 1gb asus 4850 gladiac, no ram or voltage reg heatsinks, just like their and gigabytes 3850-70 cards.
 
Jakalwarrior said:
Not that im complaining about my 150 dollar video card on the way, but why are they so cheap? why are there already steep discounts on something just released? I'm totally lost. I didnt expect to be able to buy one for 150 for atleast 6 months since the 3850 costs about that much?!?!
Click to expand...

That is because the HD4850 is that odd creature not really seen from ATI since the halcyon days of the 9600 derived from R300: a true mainstream chipset designed not just for mainstream use, but designed to be sold at a mainstream price.

Apparently, what ATI was trying to do was come up with a true 8800/9600GT-killer - performance that blows those two nV cards into the weeds, but at the same price; and they have, apparently, succeeded. (So much so that nVidia had to actually darn near halve the price of the 9800GTX to compete with it; nV does NOT simply get rid of most of their profits uness they have to!).

Suddenly, we have Real Choice in the mainstream market again!
 
I think it was built solely to be cheap, like the 9600gt. To conquer a specific part of the market.
 
I think ATI is mainly trying to get a lot of market share back they lost with the 2900 series of products. Market share is nearly as important as profit, and when you can get both - at the same time - is when get get a raise! :p
 
Let's see if Dell goes ati in their next line of desktop offerings. If ati wins with dell, now that is big.
 
The 4850 is the new 8800GT. I was amazed by the performance I got for the money when I bought my 8800GT.. remember, it was launched before the Geforce9/GX2. At the time it was pretty much on par with the much more expensive 8800 cards. 4850 isn't quite as impressive, actually - the fastest cards like the GTX260 smokes it, but at twice the price or more. But you do get a lot of GPU performance for your money with a 4850.

The 4870 is almost as impressive since you can get the performance of a $400 card for $300.
 
Nuker said:
I think it was built solely to be cheap, like the 9600gt. To conquer a specific part of the market.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily cheap, but as a mainstream part (like the 8800GT that the 9600GT is a re-spin of). It's why I brought up the original ATI 9600PRO and 9600XT: both were mainstream derivations of the wildly successful (at the time) R3xx platform (which had already given birth to the 9700 Pro and semi-successor 9800 Pro). Even the X1K series had no true mainstream derivatives (after the X1950 series, the bottom fell out rather quickly); ditto HD2xxx and HD3xxx). ATI has been cursed with either high-end-targeted chips that were hopelessly outclassed or budget parts.

However, with 4850, nV is actually in a rather nasty position (and one it hasn't been in since the bad old (for nVidia) days of the infamous GeForce FX series) - it tried to move its heretofore heavyweight champ down in class to the supposedly-unheralded middleweight (mainstream) division, only to be rather rudely greeted with a right cross to the teeth.
 
I don't really care why it's cheap, I'm just happy I was able to pick up such a cheap, kick ass card for my second build at the same price I paid for my second 8800GT just two weeks earlier.

The lack of real competition over the past few years had led to the lack of any real competitive choices in the sub $200 market for a while. As someone that loves value and performance, it is great to see ATI back in the game.
 
Trepidati0n said:
How so? The half-price life of most video cards is usually 6 months. The 8800GTX (and its 320/640 cousins) was just an anomoly.
Click to expand...

That is actually why I went ahead and bought the 4850. I just cant see it hitting 75 dollars in 6 months... so I figured might as well buy now! :D The 3850 can be had for around 90 dollars AR at the moment, I figure that is probably not making much if any real proffit. The 4850 would have an ever harder time getting to that price with its bigger die size and 512 memory.
 
Brent_Justice said:
many factors make the cards cheaper

small chip, more on each wafer, 55nm
256-bit bus reduces board costs
gddr3 is cheap and abundant
low power, one 6-pin
cause they wanted to
Click to expand...

Absolutely right =). chip is cheap and yields must be good, and gddr3 is everywhere. i bet they've got tons of 4870 chips lying around, just no gddr5 =(.
 
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