No way they will price GTX970 successor at 500-550USD.We talking about 300mm2 GPU.This is no way flagship.
GTX670 = $399
GTX670 4GB =
$459
GTX680 2GB = $499
GTX680 4GB =
$579
Die size
294mm2
HD7970 = $549
Die size
352mm2
I put up
with this because with bitcoin mining I paid $0 but such perk isn't available in 2016 so...if a GPU costs $600+ it better be the real flagship. That's just me and I know most people will not care and will just want a faster card no matter what the die size is, etc.
They need some card in 300-400USD range and that will be 1070.
1080 will cost same as GTX980 500-550USD.
Ya, for $300-400 they'll probably use a cut-own GP104. It's also possible for them to introduce 3 mid-range cards.
Remember last time NV did exactly that with 660Ti.
Tying this back to AMD, AMD could do the same thing.
Why GTX970 cost 320USD when it was at same level as 700USD 780TI?AND why GTX980 cost 550USD when it was 15% faster than 700USD 780TI?
650-1000USD will cost big pascal GTX980TI/TITANX successor.
Same with AMD.
We'll see. Before NV dropped the true $700 flagship 780Ti, they first milked the market with $500 680, then $650 780 and only by end of 2013 did they release the real flagship 780Ti for $700.
780Ti ended up 2X faster than 580. Looking at it another way? Why would AMD/NV release a $650 flagship that's 80-100% faster than Fury X/980Ti in 2016 when they can just release a $550-650 card that's 30-40% faster in 2016, profit from it, then another $650 card 30-40% faster in 2017. It's exactly what both of them did to us starting 2012.
There is another reason for using this strategy -- you have something new to up-sell in 2017. Back in the days, all one had to do was buy just 1 flagship in a generation and there was no incentive to upgrade until next gen:
FX5900U vs. FX5950U, 6800U vs. 6800UE, GTX280 vs. 285, GTX480 vs. 580
9700Pro vs. 9800XT, X800XT vs. X850 XT PE, X1900XTX vs. X1950XTX, HD4870 vs. 4890, etc.
But then someone got smart and said hmm...why would we give them 80-100% increase for $650 when we can split the generation into parts and slowly trickle down the performance increases? This always makes them (us gamers) feel like out GPUs are outdated by next year's card and we maximize profits by marketing each new faster card as that year's new flagship. Brilliant, brilliant. :wub:
That being said, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if RS was right. I'd probably just wait another year for the bigger dies to come out and for some DX12 games to actually launch at that point. Maybe add another two 290s if I can find someone selling them with blocks mounted just for laughs while I wait.
I would love to be wrong. Considering the new way of launching GPUs since 2012 is working so well for one of them (record profits, record profit margins, record revenues, record market share) and the other has no $$$ to just magically pull off a chip 80-100% faster just like that as they are severely lagging behind in perf/watt, it stands to reason that more likely than not the company on top will milk the next gen just like they did us with their last 2 and the company behind will be content just to keep up. You pretty much know which firm is which.
In any case though, even if the 2016's cards are just 30-40% faster than 980Ti, that's still a heck of a lot better than what we get in the CPU market so I guess can't be too negative . 30-35% faster @ 1440p than Fury X would actually be a viable upgrade for 290/290X users.