3DVagabond
Lifer
- Aug 10, 2009
- 11,951
- 204
- 106
expecting AMD to price a product which has Titan like performance at anything below USD 550 is highly unrealistic. AMD is not stupid to do that. The realistic price for AMD HD 9970 even if it falls in between GTX 780 and Titan performance is USD 550 - 600. AMD will throw in their BF4 game bundle to sweeten the deal. that in itself would be a killer deal.
AMD is not going to kill margins if they have a competitive product and rightly so. Any well run business needs to extract the best possible price for its products in the competitive marketplace. :thumbsup:
Best case scenario it beats Titan, by a little or a lot doesn't matter, and it's $550. This would actually justify the release price of the 7970, as it would be the same, and at $550 AMD would look like nice guys (Ironically).
Releasing it too cheap does them no good at all. Look at the 5870, a great card at $370 (IIRC?), people still waited 6 months for the 480. As it turns out the 480 was only marginally faster than the 5870, except in tessellation and that only mattered in a couple of nVidia sponsored titles, used heaps more power, way more than the 7970 over the 680, and was one of the loudest cards ever made. Did it matter? Not really. Many people waited all that time for it, skipping the 5870, and bought it anyway. Those who point out that AMD took over marketshare, that was with zero competition from nVidia, and then only barely took over marketshare. As soon as Fermi came out people ponied up. AMD should sell the 9970 for as much as they can, all things considered. Which includes peoples perceptions of good and evil, as this has always been a strong point for AMD. It serves them well to make nVidia look like the bad guys. Hopefully it's $550 and it's worth it (relatively speaking). $650, or more though, is definitely a possibility looking at recent history.