[techpowerup] Radeon HD 7970 FOB Price Cut to $475

[JAG87]

Why are they even doing this?

Simple. Because it's overpriced for it's performance against it's OWN brand, not even the competition.

I guess some of us were right... Cough.. Cough

Yup, lots of time wasted arguing on the internet. This is even before Nvidia's competition, even worse than the GT200 pricing fiasco.

At least $475 is not bad, even if after Kepler they have to re-adjust to $400, an early adopter shouldn't feel too bad.

$550....

 

[3DVagabond]

Likely the biggest reason for the price drop is because the 7950 is delayed. Where they had 2 highend sku's there's only going to be 1 now. The AIB's now need to by more 7970's and they are getting a price break because of that. There's also a huge price gap (~$200) in AMD's lineup with the price left at $550.

 

[Oyster]

I can think of two possibilities:

1) PC enthusiasts have been craving a video card upgrade for quite some time. AMD may think that a lot of people are desperate now and these people WILL take the plunge and upgrade @ $475 without waiting for better alternatives. As a result, regardless of what nVidia comes out with, people would have already upgraded by then and would have no incentive to spend an additional ~$500 so soon. Overall, such a move could cannibalize nVidia's offerings.

2) AMD has witnessed Kepler's prowess which totally annihilates the 7970? And that nVidia is on the verge of releasing Kepler sooner?

Just thinking out loud...

 

[Arkadrel]

Oyster

I think latest rumors, say sometime in Nvidia's Q1, which for them is from Feb-april. Also that apperntly their supposed to start with smaller cards released first, and go from buttom and up.

Potentially that means you could have 4-5 months or something without a kepler card to challenge the 7970.

 

[badb0y]

"Legit Reviews reached out to AMD and they said that they were not aware of a price drop and that the original price reported by Donanimhaber is incorrect. LR still expects to see cards listed for $550 when they go on sale next week. "
http://legitreviews.com/news/12143/

lol

 

[bryanW1995]

I guess some of us were right... Cough.. Cough

Good choice AMD you just made yourself some more sales and good will from the pc gaming community.

They probably got better yields than anticipated and are trying to maximize their profits.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

"Legit Reviews reached out to AMD and they said that they were not aware of a price drop and that the original price reported by Donanimhaber is incorrect. LR still expects to see cards listed for $550 when they go on sale next week. "
http://legitreviews.com/news/12143/

lol

Humm... A $550 card that probably won't remain a top end card for very long, and the 8150 is still $270... AMD seems to be delusional in their pricing.

 

[AtenRa]

9th January will see a HD7970 launch at $549, that is the retail price with $475 FOB.
There is no Retail price cut until now as far as i know.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Is it still worth almost $500 just for a few months on top?

Seems like a card best served for multi monitor users, everyone else who isn't grossly under powered should probably wait and see what happens.

It's still worth it to me mainly because you will have the fastest card for those months, and then when kepler comes out the performance difference between the two will be a non factor.

You're talking about cards that are going to be getting over 60fps constant for the average user at all settings for probably the next 1.5-2 years. So who cares if you 7970 gets 60fps in a game and the gtx780 gets 70 fps. The performance difference at those framerates is pointless.

If it was going from 25 fps to 35 fps it would actually make a difference. The performance of these 28nm GPU's has finally come to the point where game development won't punish them until we get a new console generation which is projected in 2015.

Buy now and don't worry.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Unless you have a 120Hz screen, I'm thinking the difference between the 780 and 7970 will be greater than 17% though... The real question is when it will arrive.

If you already have a higher end setup, 5850 CF or better, you'd probably be better off waiting since the chances of you running out of power between now and when Nvidia responds is highly unlikely.

The difference between the 7970 and the 580 in current major titles such as Skyrim and BF3 at common resolutions is very small. Not that I have a 580, I went price vs performance this time and the 7970 isn't offering anything compelling for someone with that mindset.

 

[3DVagabond]

Unless you have a 120Hz screen, I'm thinking the difference between the 780 and 7970 will be greater than 17% though... The real question is when it will arrive.

If you already have a higher end setup, 5850 CF or better, you'd probably be better off waiting since the chances of you running out of power between now and when Nvidia responds is highly unlikely.

The difference between the 7970 and the 580 in current major titles such as Skyrim and BF3 at common resolutions is very small. Not that I have a 580, I went price vs performance this time and the 7970 isn't offering anything compelling for someone with that mindset.

Why wait for something that, A, You have no idea when it will be released, and B, you have no idea how it will perform?

Someone could wait to see if prices are going to drop after launch, but that strategy hasn't paid off recently.

 

[at80eighty]

<brown nosing> IDC, you rock </brown nosing>

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Unless you have a 120Hz screen, I'm thinking the difference between the 780 and 7970 will be greater than 17% though... The real question is when it will arrive.

If you already have a higher end setup, 5850 CF or better, you'd probably be better off waiting since the chances of you running out of power between now and when Nvidia responds is highly unlikely.

The difference between the 7970 and the 580 in current major titles such as Skyrim and BF3 at common resolutions is very small. Not that I have a 580, I went price vs performance this time and the 7970 isn't offering anything compelling for someone with that mindset.

You think that the 780 will be more than 17% faster, but I know that the 7970 is all the card I will need for 2+ years. So why wait when the performance I need coming from a 5870 is already here, and like I said before going from a card that gets 100fps in a game at 1920x1080 to one that gets 120fps is pointless.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Thought a process shrink means it will be cheaper. Maybe cause the competition is still quiet

 

[MrK6]

Thought a process shrink means it will be cheaper. Maybe cause the competition is still quiet

Eventually. Not when it's only 1% of TSMC's capacity and they're only turning out ~5,000 wafers a month.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Eventually. Not when it's only 1% of TSMC's capacity and they're only turning out ~5,000 wafers a month.

Is that card worth the price?

 

[MrK6]

Is that card worth the price?

You bet it is.

I want a 1.3GHz GPU in my signature sometime next week.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I didn't think there would be non-reference GPU's out at launch for the 7970. Only the 7950, but yeah, I will have one of those 1.3ghz gpu's when they are available.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

You bet it is.

I want a 1.3GHz GPU in my signature sometime next week.

1.3GHZ still 3.79 TFLOPs vs 2.7TFLOPs 13 pecent or so for 200usd more

 

[MrK6]

I didn't think there would be non-reference GPU's out at launch for the 7970. Only the 7950, but yeah, I will have one of those 1.3ghz gpu's when they are available.

I don't think they are either, but I will overclock the heck out of mine.

1.3GHZ still 3.79 TFLOPs vs 2.7TFLOPs 13 pecent or so for 200usd more

I think you need to check your math.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

I don't think they are either, but I will overclock the heck out of mine.
I think you need to check your math.

Thats roughly

 

[Pantalaimon]

Thats roughly

Are you serious? From your numbers (3.79 - 2.7)/2.7=0,404

That's ~40% more TFLOPS. According to you, that 'roughly' translate into 13% difference?

 

[Arkadrel]

1.3GHZ still 3.79 TFLOPs vs 2.7TFLOPs 13 pecent or so for 200usd more

GPU gets QuickSync:

Fundamentally VCE is very similar to Quick Sync &#8211; it&#8217;s based on what you can accomplish with the addition of a fixed function encoder &#8211; but AMD takes the concept much further to take full advantage of what the compute side of GCN can do. In &#8220;Full Mode&#8221; VCE behaves exactly like Quick Sync, in which virtually every step of the H.264 encoding process is handled by fixed function hardware. Just like Quick Sync Full Mode is fast and energy efficient.

With VCE AMD is also targeting Quick Sync&#8217;s weaknesses regardless of the mode used. Quick Sync has limited tuning capabilities which impacts the quality of the resulting encode. AMD is going to offer more tuning capabilities to allow for a wider range of compression quality. We don&#8217;t expect that it will be up to the quality standards of X264 and other pure-software encoders that can generate archival quality encodes, but if AMD is right it should be closer to archival quality than Quick Sync was.

want to do Raytraceing?:

@LiuKangBakinPie

theortical flops arnt everything.... look at the ACTUAL differences in performance, between the 6970 and 7970, their pretty big (sometimes 50&#37;-100% differnce(ei twice as fast)).

* these are all at stock settings.

 

[Grooveriding]

I spoke to my customer rep at an etailor I shop with here and asked him where we can expect to see the 7970 go for. He told me expect to see $520 to $575 prices on launch day depending on vendor. Also said they have stock of everything from all the usual vendors

I'm assuming HIS/Visiontek for $520 and XFX, MSI and Asus for $575.

This is in Canadian dollars btw, but should translate fine to US dollars as our currencies are on par.

OCUK has some stock as well, this is from earlier last week I think.

 

[Arkadrel]

Humm... A $550 card that probably won't remain a top end card for very long, and the 8150 is still $270... AMD seems to be delusional in their pricing.

Once drivers mature, more or less any game, you play the differnces will look like this:

Here you see:
6970 = 42 fps
7970 = 65 fps (thats 54&#37; more)

here you see:
6970 = 77 fps (faster than a 580 in this game)
7970 = 123 fps (thats 59% more).

Here:
6970 = 52 fps
7970 = 73 fps (thats 40% more)

Here its 45% faster.

Here the 7970 is 48% faster than the 6970.

Here the 7970 is 58% faster than the 6970.

Here the 7970 is 40% faster.

Here the 7970 is 77% faster than the 6970.

Here the 7970 is 57% faster than the 6970.

Here the 7970 is 70% faster than the 6970.





Its all about how much work, has gone into the drivers.... these cards where probably rushed out with badly optimised drivers. So in some games, they dont look impressive vs the 6970, while in others (where they did more driver work) they look alot better.

Give it a few months of driver updates, and the 79xx series will look alot better compaired to the 6970 than it does now.

So already there are games where the 7970 is 40-50% faster than the 6970, at stock speeds.
And the 7970 overclocks like a mother****er, so much so that it can end up faster than a 6990 or 590.

Delusional? nope, this card is like 40-50% faster than their 6970.
It beats the 580 by ~25-30% or something, thus its worth paying 50$ more than a 580 1,5gb to get, hell its still cheaper than the 3gb version of the 580 (the 7970 have 3gb as well).

Think of it in terms of how much a 590 costs? this card is cheaper, and a single gpu (no mircostuttering, no sli profile issues), and overclocked is faster than a 590.

its worth its pricetag.