ATI partners don't want to reduce prices

[Spike]

Wow... this thread was like "ATI partners don't want to reduce prices". Then it was like "blah blah everyone guessing costs blah blah nvidia more expensive blah blah no it's not blah blah" It's almost like this thread is no longer about ATI partners not wanting to reduce their prices... weird...

Personally I am very happy they don't want to reduce their prices anymore. I bought my 4870 512 for $230 after cashback (better price than the 260 which I also considered at the time) and since then I have seen the 1GB version and the 260 core 216 continue to drop in price. If they go any lower I may have to off myself for jumping the gun and spending too much on a vid card for the second time! This is getting as bad as when I bought the 8800GTS 512 at launch for $330 only to have it drop to $200 just a few months later, dang you ATi and nVIDIA!!!

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: Spike
Wow... this thread was like "ATI partners don't want to reduce prices". Then it was like "blah blah guessing tech specs blah blah nvidia more expensive blah blah no it's not blah blah" It's almost like this thread is no longer about ATI partners not wanting to reduce their pieces... wierd...

Yeah if it doesn't get back on track a mod may as well lock it.

This is getting as bad as when I bought the 8800GTS 512 at launch for $330 only to have it drop to $200 just a few months later, dang you ATi and nVIDIA!!!

I spent $600 CAD for the 8800GTS 640 when it came out. Lasted about a year then the 8800GT came out which was the same for like half price. I vowed never to spend that much on a vid card again.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Putting my popcorn aside, back to the OP.

When it comes to a price war between the two camps, AMD has the advantage IMO. Lets break this down. Originally the GTX280/260 were released with an MSRP tag of $599/$449 dollars IIRC. Skimming through the technical data sheets and observations showed these cards using expensive PCBs, a rather big HS (compared to anything else on the market), other accessories like backplates and what not. These incur what looks like a very negligible increase in overall cost, but when we talk about quantities in the tens of thousands, even an extra $2s increase is hurting the margins. Based on speculation over at B3D, the GT200 was delayed for 7 months mostly due to manufacturing issues. I mean we are talking about a 576mm^2 chip with 1.4billion transistors. Thats about ~110 chips per wafer, and roughly ~90 being usable.

Now the competition came out with a chip that was 260mm^2 big, and it performed at around 90% of the full fledged GT200 core. Thats almost twice more chips per wafer compared to nVIDIA. Economically, this is a very good advantage since you can meet the demand when price cuts do indeed occur. This is what has happened. Cards that retailed for $449/299 not so long ago is now battling out for the ~$169 market. Compared to the original GTX260, we've seen them cut down on power regulating section of the PCB, cut down on PCB layers, cut down on the stock cooling, cut down on the DVI connectors and so forth since yields/power characteristics have improved with the transition to the 55nm process. Yet can nVIDIA meet the demands of consumers when this card is selling for $169? The GTX285/295 all use the GT200 core, so per every wafer some selected portion will definitely end up used in the 285/295 SKUs.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: chizow
If the mods see my comments as over the line that's fine, they can ban me if they like but I'm not going to apologize for the comments or refrain from using valid English words that accurately describe the person in question when that person has repeatedly demonstrated my comments are justified.

As to what end, its simple, I'm not going to stifle my opinion or censor myself knowing there's 3-4 pedantic <insert whatever shiny happy term you like> waiting to try and find some insignificant fault in what I've written. If they do so repeatedly I'm not sure how you expect me to react.

In this case, its obvious certain individuals would rather focus on the irrelevant or even go as far as to fabricate quotes rather than focus on my actual points. The words I use may rub some folks with gentler sensitivities the wrong way, but they're certainly not unjustified or inaccurate.

chizow I am not disputing whether or not your opinion is valid, nor am I disputing whether or not you are justified in stating your opinion.

Rather I am merely suggesting that while having the right to speak is one thing, having the wisdom of knowing when to not exercise that right is a far more valuable attribute in a forum where public opinion can become the judge, jury and executioner.

(and rightly so as this tends to be an efficient form of self-governing towards the pursuit of elminating/discouraging trolls and thread-crappers)

Anyways, I promised you I wouldn't be that kind of fellow poster that rants about morals at all the time, so let me get off this self-erected soap-box before I lose whatever remaining humility I have about myself. You're smart enough to know how to pick your battles in pursuit of winning whatever war you think you need to be waging here, you don't need my unsolicited advice adding to your annoyance with this thread's active posters.

Originally posted by: thilan29
I spent $600 CAD for the 8800GTS 640 when it came out. Lasted about a year then the 8800GT came out which was the same for like half price. I vowed never to spend that much on a vid card again.

See that just doesn't strike me as such a bad deal, at least not as terrible as you make it sound. Basically for a 300CND premium you got to use that hardware for a full year more than the people who waited year before stepping up to that performance level.

That's less than $1CND per day but in exchange you got to enjoy all that gaming time ever so much more.

Now if all you did was play minesweeper then yeah, piss-poor investment ROI there, but if you played blockbuster games where the min framerates were challenged on lesser cards when eye-candy was turned up then I'd say you made the smart investment for your entertainment dollars. :thumbsup:

 

[imported_Asianman]

Spending an overtly execessive amount on an videocard is always going to depreciate quickly. You'd be loosing less investing on wall street at the moment

Anyway, back to the topic, ofcourse ATI's partners don't want to reduce prices. Of all the partners, only Sapphire and HIS are exclusively ATI, all other vendors also sell NV cards. For them, one more ATI sale with less revenue (I don't know about profit) is most likely taking away from a NV sale. And if sapphire wants to lower prices via mail in rebates, they would sell a lot of cards without generating a lot of revenue. Keeping competitiveness is a good thing, ATI is just being too greedy on market share. They should be working to save themselves in this economic situation, rather than attempt to strangle NV.

Also, even if they cost less to produce, which they most likely would considering the difference in yields, memory bus, transistors, coolers, raw materials, smaller die and all sorts of other stuff, it doesn't mean they have to cut profits down to a minimum. They should be cutting back production, selling at a price point where they are competitive with NV without sparking another price war. As well as raising profits, it'll take some pressure off AMD's processors. Considering Intel is trying to crush AMD and ATI has a successful product that could compete with its competition while making a profit, I don't see how sparking a price war with NV would help their current status.

Oh yes, AMD, if you are looking for a new financial advisor, I am currently unemployed:laugh:

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: chizow
LMAO. Are you kidding me? You're an idiot, this is why no one is going to come to your aid when it may seem as if I'm using ad hominem or personal attacks.

Irrelevant rubbish. A sound argument shouldn't rely on trash talking.

The words I use are accurate observations backed by continuous behavior and comments from you that justify the use of such strong verbage.

This is why I mentioned your ego trying to make this a personal issue. You don't grasp the fact that your observations and words are not accurate by default and are not justified simply because you think so.

Didn't someone just get banned for similarly misquoting a source while trying to prove a point? Funny, I could've swore you were actively involved there as well, did you not learn a lesson?

What lesson was there for me to learn? I haven't misquoted anything.

To complete the quote:

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: WelshBloke
Apart from the fact that you pulled all those numbers from your arse. :roll:

No, not really. The only numbers I guessed on were the % per SKU, but I still based that off of distributions I've seen in various places like <Steam survey or Yougamers/3DMark....

Yep. I quoted that too:

Originally posted by: chizow
...The only numbers I guessed on were the % per SKU, but I still based that off of distributions I've seen in various places like Steam survey...

The reason why I stopped there was to highlight the part in which your lie took place: the Steam survey being used as a basis for your numbers.

Not completing a quote isn't against the forum rules, nor any in English literature - especially if one designates where he/she is skipping parts or stopping it. These are done with "..." sections.

Point to the mistake in my quotations when you accuse them of being false.

I mean, if you want to shift from looking at the material you based your data on to grammar we could do that. After all, you have yet to address any of the points I made regarding your analysis of said sources.

There's no point in responding to the rest of your idiotic ramblings, you've already demonstrated you're too incompetent to understand simple concepts and are just focused on showing us all the limits of your pedantic fixation on the irrelevant. Only a true simpleton would try and draw such literal parallels to claims that were acknowledged to be guesses LMAO.

Quite the contrary, I understood them to be guesses from the second I read them. So did WelshBloke.

When he claimed you made up the numbers, he was correct. It was a guess. The numbers you show do not match any of your sources.

Yet you refuted his comment with "Not really..." and further claimed to have based your SKU percentages on sources such as the Steam survey.

I've already gone over in detail how the Steam survey doesn't help in this process at all - beings how all it does is report the percent of GTX 2** / 4800 owners there are across all GPUs present in the survey. Expecting it to aid in guessing SKU percentages per wafer is a waist of time.

Thus, you lied about using it as a basis in your percentages - an obvious fact, especially since recreating your numbers is easy to do utilizing only one out of the three sources you claimed to base them on: the 3D mark 06 page.

After I showed how you came up with such guesses - and only guesses they were - you have left those findings uncontested and are now back peddling - saying the numbers present in them weren't ever meant to be accurate. You've disagreed with WelshBloke's assertion that they were bogus numbers and are now trying to hide behind a guise that they are just that - bogus numbers.

In addition to all of this you've concentrated on personal insults. Not a very good counter argument. All you've accomplished is showing that my findings were correct.

But, the whole ordeal began with you not willing to put your ego aside and show enough humility to acknowledge your numbers were probably off. Re-proportioning the sample populations to your discretion hardly constitutes as accurate. This I-am-always-right complex is a reoccurring theme with you, one that has caused you to derail threads in arguments with some of Anandtech's own moderators.

The guesses you made were, of course, to refute themes of the 4870 being cheaper to produce. I'd say we don't necessarily need guesses of SKU percentages per wafer to determine this, as ATi wants to make profit on the 4870 as well as the board partners. Beings how further price cuts jeopardize this, we can assume we're getting fairly close to the amount it actually takes to produce it. The only variable that we don't know is how small of a profit margin is ATi and it's board partners are willing to take per card at this point? $15? $20? $50? $10? Hard to say.