"AMD’s next-generation family of high-performance graphics cards is expected to ship

[RussianSensation]

However, 6950 2gb is still the king in perf/$ AND perf/watt and completely voids the need to buy a 6970. With vcore mods, they all run around the same core speed and the 6970 which is a lot more expensive ends up 2% faster due to shader/vram differences.

Ya, I think HD6950 was the star of the show for AMD this generation, just like HD5850 was before that. It offered near premium level of performance with slight tweaking for $230-275. Not sure if AMD will be as generous with the HD7950.

I'd buy 2x 7970 (6970 + 60-80% perf) for $400-450 ea, no hesitation.

Even if Kepler is faster at the same $400-450 price level?

Based on AMD's small die strategy (Ya, I know HD6970 really ballooned away from that), I think AMD will want to stay below $400 for their 7970 and rather position their HD7990 as the top end offering. NV will probably continue to offer another 15% or so greater performance with the GTX680 and charge a $150 price premium for it. The did this with the GTX285 over HD4890, with the GTX480 over the HD5870 and with the GTX580 over the HD6970.

AMD tries to capture price/performance, and NV goes for all out performance on the high-end. Although, GTX460 was a nice mid-range card and GTX590 wasn't really better than the 6990 this time.

I just hope there are more hardware demanding games and more gamers buy discrete GPUs. Seeing Intel now crossing 60% overall graphics market share isn't pretty.

 

[Silverforce11]

It's all the past, once they break their TDP limit for single gpus, they aren't going to back down.

Imagine releasing the next high end at only a 30-40% improvement, it wont even matter if they advertise its amazing perf/watt. Users want high-end to be all about performance.

 

[3DVagabond]

Ya, I think HD6950 was the star of the show for AMD this generation, just like HD5850 was before that. It offered near premium level of performance with slight tweaking for $230-275. Not sure if AMD will be as generous with the HD7950.



Even if Kepler is faster at the same $400-450 price level?

Based on AMD's small die strategy (Ya, I know HD6970 really ballooned away from that), I think AMD will want to stay below $400 for their 7970 and rather position their HD7990 as the top end offering. NV will probably continue to offer another 15% or so greater performance with the GTX680 and charge a $150 price premium for it. The did this with the GTX285 over HD4890, with the GTX480 over the HD5870 and with the GTX580 over the HD6970.

AMD tries to capture price/performance, and NV goes for all out performance on the high-end. Although, GTX460 was a nice mid-range card and GTX590 wasn't really better than the 6990 this time.

I just hope there are more hardware demanding games and more gamers buy discrete GPUs. Seeing Intel now crossing 60% overall graphics market share isn't pretty.

We've got 2 completely new arch's coming. While it might be as you say, it just as likely won't. They've shown they are willing to push the "sweet spot" strategy right to the wall. They will likely go with the biggest part that they can get good yields on and put 2 of them on a single board and cool. The 7800 can fill that Sweet spot for perf/$.

 

[Rifter]

So nobody remembers the intentional FUD campaign last AMD launch?
Ok, I must have imagined it then. My bad.

I remember. Seems like the typical AMD fanboy's have there blinders on and have selective memory about it. Not surprised though.

After the BD launch and them hangin there own marketing director out to dry i dont understand how anyone can take anything AMD says seriously right now.

I'll eat my hat if the new high end(7990, or 7970 or whatever the decide to call it) is out by xmas and we are able to have one in our hands this year.

 

[boxleitnerb]

I just hope, AMD fixes their shimmering AF. Apart from that, I wish they would give us more options to put these babies to work. Plain MSAA (and MLAA/FXAA lately) just don't cut it anymore. AMD should enable their SGSSAA for DX10/11 as well and improve compatibility of their AA in general.

Also - and this is for both IHVs - I hope for a downsampling feature in their drivers, with custom filters of course. Not very efficient performance-wise, but often the only possibility to get AA at all. This will be an interesting match

 

[Saico]

Kepler is faster

at the same $400-450 price level

Conflicting statements.

 

[RussianSensation]

Conflicting statements.

Huh? He said he'll buy an HD7970 with "no hesitation".

I responded with: "Even if Kepler is faster at $400-450?" <The price level he is willing to pay for an HD7970>

I.e., translation: what if NV launches a faster card at the same $400-450 price level?

Did you get confused by the "same" $400-450 price level part? The word "same" is attributable to the noun phrase "Price Level", not to the low and high price ranges of $400 and $450. Obviously $400 and $450 are not the "same".

For example, "Apple sells MacBook Airs at $1000-1300. Asus offers several SKUs of Ultrabooks at the same "$1000-1300" price level."

What is conflicting about my statement?

Or are you suggesting that NV won't have anything faster at the $400-450 level? GTX570 is a little bit faster than the HD6970 at 1920x1080 at the moment, and it's priced lower. So it's conceivable that NV may sell a faster card at the same price as AMD's offering.

 

[Saico]

The post above really makes me wanna flame hard. But... but...

If Nvidia launches a faster card than it's competitor, Huang will always charge 200-500$ premium price. That's why we will never have

a faster card at the same $400-450 price level

from Nvidia.

 

[Rifter]

The post above really makes me wanna flame hard. But... but...

If Nvidia launches a faster card than it's competitor, Huang will always charge 200-500$ premium price. That's why we will never have from Nvidia.

really, then explain the current 570 pricing.

 

[RussianSensation]

The post above really makes me wanna flame hard. But... but...

If Nvidia launches a faster card than it's competitor, Huang will always charge 200-500$ premium price. That's why we will never have from Nvidia.

So cards like the GeForce 3 Ti200, GeForce 4200, GeForce 6600GT/6800GT 7800GT, 7950GT, GTX260 216, GTX460 had a huge price premium over the ATI competitors?

Bullet-proof facts, I see.

The GTX590 is $200-500 more expensive than the HD6990?

Why does a GTX570 sell for $290 while an HD6970 sells for $320?

I also wasn't aware that a $420 GTX580 is $200-500 more expensive than AMD's fastest single-GPU card, the HD6970.

What about the $200 GTX560 Ti? It's $20 cheaper than its competitor - the HD6950 1GB.

And the $160 GTX560? Is it also way more expensive than its competitor - the HD6870?

Perhaps where you live, you are unfortunate enough to experience local vendors price gouging NV products in your country?

 

[Rifter]

So cards like the GeForce 3 Ti200, GeForce 4200, GeForce 6600GT/6800GT 7800GT, 7950GT, GTX260 216, GTX460 had a huge price premium over the ATI competitors?

Bullet-proof facts, I see.

The GTX590 is $200-500 more expensive than the HD6990?

Why does a GTX570 sell for $290 while an HD6970 sells for $320?

I also wasn't aware that a $420 GTX580 is $200-500 more expensive than AMD's fastest single-GPU card, the HD6970.

What about the $200 GTX560 Ti? It's $20 cheaper than its competitor - the HD6950 1GB.

And the $160 GTX560? Is it also way more expensive than its competitor - the HD6870?

Perhaps where you live, you are unfortunate enough to experience local vendors price gouging NV products in your country?

Thats the only thing i can think of, or he's just another AMD fanboy spreading BS.

 

[Saico]

Lol. I don't believe you're THAT stupid. You were talking about FASTER Nvidia cards, yet in all your examples Nvidia's cards are slower than their Radeon counterparts.

Besides what's the point of posting cherry-picked prices after rebates? Huh? Post the 600$ price for 580 when it just launched.

a faster card at the same $400-450 price level

as 350$ 6970. Yeah yeah... I see what you've done here.

I won't even mention prices for 480/5870, 590/6990...

 

[3DVagabond]

really, then explain the current 570 pricing.

The 570 is a binned chip, not fully functioning. Anything you get for it is bonus income. That's part of the reason 580's are so dear. That's the chip they make money on.

The 6970 is the top bin chip. It's the chip AMD makes money on. You can get plenty of 6950's that will run full shaders and full clocks for a lot less. They are not the top binned chips though and therefore sell for appreciably less for the same reasons the 570 does. Even though they will typically run as full Cayman chips, they are not guaranteed to do so. They, like the 570, are not the best grade chips.

The 570 and 6970 fulfill different roles for the two companies and aren't really comparable, except they happen to offer similar performance.

 

[AtenRa]

Post the 600$ price for 580 when it just launched. as 350$ 6970.

GTX580 was released at $499
GTX570 was released at $349
HD6970 was released at $369
HD6950 2GB was released at $299

GTX560 Ti was released at $249
HD6950 1GB was released at $259

 

[Rifter]

Besides what's the point of posting cherry-picked prices after rebates? Huh? Post the 600$ price for 580 when it just launched

The 580 was never $600, you really need to get a grip on reality here.

 

[Saico]

GTX580 was released at $499
GTX570 was released at $349
HD6970 was released at $369
HD6950 2GB was released at $299

GTX560 Ti was released at $249
HD6950 1GB was released at $259

MSRPs not the real prices. Nuff said. Stop failing.

 

[Grooveriding]

Plain MSAA (and MLAA/FXAA lately) just don't cut it anymore. AMD should enable their SGSSAA for DX10/11 as well and improve compatibility of their AA in general.

This is not really a reasonable request. SGSSAA is a huge performance hog, it's something you can enable in older games, but is useless in modern games because of the performance hit.

FYI, you can enable it in Crysis 2 and it offers little IQ improvement and absolutely destroys your framerate @ 4X.

I agree about MLAA/FXAA; these are trash AA modes and I don't use them. I understand the rationale of enabling AA at a small performance hit and that with so many games using deferred shading, it's about the only solution to not kill framerates. But, it looks like s**t! It blurs your entire screen and reduces the quality of textures.

Two games I play that use it, Red Orchestra 2 and BF3, I leave it off in both because it just ruins IQ horribly.

MSAA is just fine imo. It looks great at 4xAA and up and is enough for me. Exception being BF3. I'm playing with 4xMSAA and it's nice for what it works on, which isn't a whole lot, but it comes at a huge performance hit - especially at high resolutions.

 

[boxleitnerb]

This is not really a reasonable request. SGSSAA is a huge performance hog, it's something you can enable in older games, but is useless in modern games because of the performance hit.

FYI, you can enable it in Crysis 2 and it offers little IQ improvement and absolutely destroys your framerate @ 4X.

I agree about MLAA/FXAA; these are trash AA modes and I don't use them. I understand the rationale of enabling AA at a small performance hit and that with so many games using deferred shading, it's about the only solution to not kill framerates. But, it looks like s**t! It blurs your entire screen and reduces the quality of textures.

Two games I play that use it, Red Orchestra 2 and BF3, I leave it off in both because it just ruins IQ horribly.

MSAA is just fine imo. It looks great at 4xAA and up and is enough for me. Exception being BF3. I'm playing with 4xMSAA and it's nice for what it works on, which isn't a whole lot, but it comes at a huge performance hit - especially at high resolutions.

Well, AMD and Nvidia want to sell CF/SLI. And with Kepler/SI being supposedly again 60+% faster, I don't see the point in gaming at 100+fps.

True, even 4xSGSSAA (which is enough) costs roughly 50%, but it looks so good. Crysis 2 has FXAA, not SGSSAA. Have you ever played Just Cause 2? It just looks horrible without any kind of SSAA. Massive shimmering on textures and shaders almost everywhere. I don't want to play without SGSSAA anymore, no way. And more choices are always good.

Problem with MSAA is, that it doesn't combat shader and texture aliasing. TSSAA only works on certain textures, i.e. transparent ones. I played Crysis with MSAA and it did almost nothing to smoothen the image. Turn on TSSAA and you get a huge performance hit anyway, so why not turn on SGSSAA after all.

AMD surprised everyone when they reintroduced SGSSAA in their HD5000 Series. And now look where we are today:

• No SGSSAA in DX10/11 or OpenGL
• No AAA in DX10/11 or OpenGL unless the dev specifially implements it
• Blurry "slow" MLAA
• No downsampling (aka OGSSAA)

It's not only about speed, it's also about the result that you get on your screen. Some people don't care if it shimmers and crawls like an anthill. Others do. Some progress in this area would be greatly appreciated, especially by the enthusiasts they want to sell their highest-end cards and CF to.

 

[Silverforce11]

I agree about MLAA/FXAA; these are trash AA modes and I don't use them. I understand the rationale of enabling AA at a small performance hit and that with so many games using deferred shading, it's about the only solution to not kill framerates. But, it looks like s**t! It blurs your entire screen and reduces the quality of textures.

MSAA is just fine imo. It looks great at 4xAA and up and is enough for me. Exception being BF3. I'm playing with 4xMSAA and it's nice for what it works on, which isn't a whole lot, but it comes at a huge performance hit - especially at high resolutions.

I use post AA on medium, it doesn't blur textures much and give you that washed out feeling on the screen. High definitely is too much blur for my taste. 4x MSAA has a similar effect to the texture edges, it blurs it in BF3 due to the implementation of deferred MSAA tracking mesh edges. It also doesn't work on most of the scene, for a huge perf hit, its worthless.

Post AA on medium gives a nice scene with relatively little aliasing.

 

[Silverforce11]

Even if Kepler is faster at the same $400-450 price level?

Unlikely. If both companies push the transistor count limit at 28nm, performance will be very similar. Or AMD may go for a 75&#37; die size vs NV and get nearly 90% perf. In the first scenario, prices will be similar. In the 2nd scenario, AMD can price their cards much lower given TSMC's poor 28nm yields, smaller chip, higher yield is the general rule. NV will continue to price their faster products for a premium for scenario #2.

Whichever route they go, the least likely is the small die strategy, its just not going to happen with all the recent trend of GPUs consuming crazy power and consumers are fine with it, as long as performance is good. Edit: If AMD go with the small die strategy, they will lose big time with NV smacking them down with raw performance. Mid-range and up, users don't buy cards for the perf/watt. They buy it for perf/$$ and in the enthusiast segment, often just for raw performance above all else. Bragging rights is very important for brand recognition.

 

[Borealis7]

Well, AMD and Nvidia want to sell CF/SLI. And with Kepler/SI being supposedly again 60+&#37; faster, I don't see the point in gaming at 100+fps.

I sure do! 120Hz screens and 3D. we'll always need more POWA to enable game developers to implement new technologies. for instance, Ray Tracing which we are YEARS away from seeing at viable performance. so for now we'll settle for Tessellation.

 

[boxleitnerb]

I sure do! 120Hz screens and 3D. we'll always need more POWA to enable game developers to implement new technologies. for instance, Ray Tracing which we are YEARS away from seeing at viable performance. so for now we'll settle for Tessellation.

True. I was only speaking about my own needs. Those who want more quality turn it on, those who want more fps don't. Hasn't it been like that forever?

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

So cards like the GeForce 3 Ti200, GeForce 4200, GeForce 6600GT/6800GT 7800GT, 7950GT, GTX260 216, GTX460 had a huge price premium over the ATI competitors?

Bullet-proof facts, I see.

The GTX590 is $200-500 more expensive than the HD6990?

Why does a GTX570 sell for $290 while an HD6970 sells for $320?

I also wasn't aware that a $420 GTX580 is $200-500 more expensive than AMD's fastest single-GPU card, the HD6970.

What about the $200 GTX560 Ti? It's $20 cheaper than its competitor - the HD6950 1GB.

And the $160 GTX560? Is it also way more expensive than its competitor - the HD6870?

Perhaps where you live, you are unfortunate enough to experience local vendors price gouging NV products in your country?

LOL, even more BS. ARs aren't upfront prices. Presenting them as such is misleading. If you want to use a cost argument, mention what everyone will pay. Same thing for people mentioning MicroCenter with Intel CPUs.

The cheapest GTX 570 is $325 with $5 shipping, but it's an ECS model, and they're not really well-known GPU vendors, so $330 final. If you bother with rebates, you may get back $30 in one-three months. The only problem is that's a reference model with bad components, but models with third-party heatsinks can be had for only $10 more or so. The HD 6970 is available with a third-party heatsink by Gigabyte for $340 with $8 shipping, or a reference model by Sapphire for $350 with free shipping. If you want to bother with rebates, you may get $30 back in a few months, too. For the price, the GTX 570 (third-party PCB model, that is) is better, but not by much. If you're gonna game at very high res (2560x1440 or higher), the HD 6970 takes the upper hand. For 1920x1200, including with two GPUs, the GTX 570 is a better buy.

The GTX 560 Ti I don't even know why you bother bringing up. It's about 8% slower than the HD 6950 1GB, and it's not really priced better. It's also based on a Performance market architecture instead of an Enthusiast one. Cheapest GTX 560 Ti is a Gigabyte card with a third-party heatsink for $220 plus $7.50 shipping. That brings it at $227.50; $207.50 AR. The cheapest HD 6950 1GB is from XFX, which admittedly I don't trust because of their shifty practices, but it's $240 with free shipping. $210 AR. There's also a much better Sapphire model for the same upfront price that has a third-party heatsink. If you bother with the rebate it's $225. The price difference is small and the HD 6950 is faster, based on a superior architecture and consumes less power, so it's a better buy.

The GTX 560 doesn't make sense. On Newegg the cheapest card you can get is a $185 Galaxy model with free shipping. $160 AR. The cheapest HD 6870 is a $180 model from more recognized Sapphire with free shipping. $160 AR. They're the same speed, but the HD 6870 consumes a significant amount less power, costs a bit less, and you can get it from a much more recognized manufacturer. Easy choice, really.

The only recent NVIDIA card that I could say is definitely competitively priced is the GTX 570.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Unlikely. If both companies push the transistor count limit at 28nm, performance will be very similar. Or AMD may go for a 75&#37; die size vs NV and get nearly 90% perf. In the first scenario, prices will be similar. In the 2nd scenario, AMD can price their cards much lower given TSMC's poor 28nm yields, smaller chip, higher yield is the general rule. NV will continue to price their faster products for a premium for scenario #2.

Whichever route they go, the least likely is the small die strategy, its just not going to happen with all the recent trend of GPUs consuming crazy power and consumers are fine with it, as long as performance is good. Edit: If AMD go with the small die strategy, they will lose big time with NV smacking them down with raw performance. Mid-range and up, users don't buy cards for the perf/watt. They buy it for perf/$$ and in the enthusiast segment, often just for raw performance above all else. Bragging rights is very important for brand recognition.

Nope. They're keeping the small die strategy. It's worked fine for them since the HD 4000 series and they're able to get the same performance as NVIDIA in all but the top card while costing them lot less to manufacture, being a lot easier to manufacture, consuming less power, and also being comparatively cheaper to buy. The Cayman die is 389mm2, while GF110 is 529mm2. Clearly a huge difference; GF110 is 36% bigger. For that much, it enabled them to get 10-15% higher performance comparing the top cards based on both architectures, so clearly NVIDIA isn't "smacking them around". If anything, it's AMD's engineers that were much smarter. Making large monolithic dies means higher costs of manufacturing, very high power consumption, lower yields, and not a whole lot more performance.

 

[Silverforce11]

I think you need to factor in why NV's GPU division keeps on making a huge profit. Their brand recognition is huge. The gtx580 may be a bad buy for a lot of users, but because its still the top dog, ppl flock to buy low-end and mid-range NV gpus. That and the HPC sector dominance.

28nm will be huge its pent up from several generations on 40nm. They will be going all out or they going home, IMO. The small die strategy has given them a platform and support (market share) base to enable a shot at the crown.