Micro-stutter is imaginary. Crossfire technology and drivers have improved to the point that its a non issue. 6870/ 6950 CF or 560 ti SLI is the way to go for max performance for $$.
Microstutter...
All I'm going to say is the 7950 3GB will be cheaper than some of you think. Here it's going to be a little more than the 6970 MSRP at launch.
I'm going to sell my 6870s and get one of these babies when they come out. Right after I fool around with my 6870s.
With the usual high demand for the value second tier card I bet the price will settle closer to $499 for the 3GB and $469 for the 1.5GB.
Then your retailers are making some serious profit on those cards. I know what cost price and MSRP for the 7950 will be, but I can't say.
That depends. This is an axial style fan which, by design, is much quieter than a radial/blower style seen in many reference designs. It's tough to say without some dB readings.61% fan? That is gotta be pretty loud.
I thought the next gen was supposed to bring major increases in performance for cheaper prices, not price performance based on the last gen.
I don't understand the pricing. Why come out a year later with a card that is the same performance as a last gen card and price it the exact same? 580's are hitting 400 dollars now and AMD prices this card at 400-450? I thought the next gen was supposed to bring major increases in performance for cheaper prices, not price performance based on the last gen.
GTX580 for $400? Where? Cheapest I see is $450, and the only reason prices have dropped is BECAUSE of the HD7970.
If an HD7950 is $450 with 3GB RAM and performs equal to a GTX580, then it's better value.
3GB GTX580s are still $550, and it's only a few models of 1.5GB that have dropped to $450 or so.
Here's a better question:
Why come out a year later with a card that's faster than the previous gen from the competition, and price it so your margins are reduced both for that card, and all your cheaper cards too due to pricing pressure across the board?
Remember, AMD only has a single 28nm GPU at the moment. Everything else is 40nm, and that covers the $30 to $350 bracket, which is where most cards are sold.
Sacrificing profit at the high end with pressure prices (e.g. $350 for an HD7950 that outperforms a GTX580) means all their other cards need to be reduced as well to seem reasonable, and to maintain a competitive level of pricing against NV who will be forced to reduce prices.
That means that on 95% of your sales, you just dropped ALL your prices without anything reducing costs, because they are all still the same cards.
(Which is a very good reason not to buy an HD7xxx until NV release something which should, hopefully, drive prices down. They are too expensive compared to what people hope for and want/expect, but there are sensible reasons for it from AMD's perspective. Don't like the high prices? Do the sensible thing and don't buy until they go down. Plus if you wait until NV come out with something, you can make an informed decision and buy the best value card).
According to some here, that shouldn't happen.
Competition is needed to drive prices down, absent competition means its a bad time to buy.
Micro-stutter is imaginary. Crossfire technology and drivers have improved to the point that its a non issue. 6870/ 6950 CF or 560 ti SLI is the way to go for max performance for $$.
GTX580 for $400? Where? Cheapest I see is $450, and the only reason prices have dropped is BECAUSE of the HD7970.
If an HD7950 is $450 with 3GB RAM and performs equal to a GTX580, then it's better value.
3GB GTX580s are still $550, and it's only a few models of 1.5GB that have dropped to $450 or so.
Here's a better question:
Why come out a year later with a card that's faster than the previous gen from the competition, and price it so your margins are reduced both for that card, and all your cheaper cards too due to pricing pressure across the board?
Remember, AMD only has a single 28nm GPU at the moment. Everything else is 40nm, and that covers the $30 to $350 bracket, which is where most cards are sold.
Sacrificing profit at the high end with pressure prices (e.g. $350 for an HD7950 that outperforms a GTX580) means all their other cards need to be reduced as well to seem reasonable, and to maintain a competitive level of pricing against NV who will be forced to reduce prices.
That means that on 95% of your sales, you just dropped ALL your prices without anything reducing costs, because they are all still the same cards.
(Which is a very good reason not to buy an HD7xxx until NV release something which should, hopefully, drive prices down. They are too expensive compared to what people hope for and want/expect, but there are sensible reasons for it from AMD's perspective. Don't like the high prices? Do the sensible thing and don't buy until they go down. Plus if you wait until NV come out with something, you can make an informed decision and buy the best value card).
If you side with manufactures you should, otherwise it's a blow to the head as a consumer. It's backwards thinking as someone making the purchase to agree with what was said there.
The only way you could justify that train of thought was if you had stock in AMD and weren't actually going to purchase the card in the first place as that is the only possible way you could benefit from the situation.
Usually the next gen comes out and dominates the market with much better performance per dollar, but that's not the case right now.
No cooling for anything except the GPU?
Doesn't look like a good card for people who want to overclock if the VRMs are that exposed.
How many times has that happened? From what I remember, the absolute top end card does dominate in performance (7970 does as well) but is rarely priced "cheap". X1950XTX, 8800GTX, GTX280, GTX480, GTX580...these were all priced high.
We don't know everything about the mid-range cards performance or price-wise. Plus I think lack of anything from nV has something to do with the prices as well. Once nV releases something I'm sure the prices will go down.
GaiaHunter said:The last few "fastest single GPU cards" at the time of their introductions.
Clearly price/performance is a distinct hallmark of them...
We aren't talking about the 7970, flagships have always been a bad value. This thread is about the 7950, which rivals a 580gtx but is priced at 400-450. Supposedly the 7870 is on par performance wise with the 6970 from AMD's charts, but it is priced at 299 (the going price for a 6970 +/-20 dollars.)
Hopefully nvidia forces this down.