This must blow your mind:
Biostar HD 5770 - $130, no Displayport, no CF bridge, not a single adapter, "no HDMI 1.4"
VisionTek HD 5770 - $130, one DVI, no CF bridge, "no HDMI 1.4"
Asus HD 5770 - $140, $20 rebate, no DisplayPort, "no HDMI 1.4"
Wow, these cards are more expensive than the 6770 and offer less features. In fact if you compare the cheapest same-featured 5770, this
Powercolor 5770, to the
Powercolor 6770, they pretty much share the same features with a minor price difference. But look at the 5770 page,
NEWEGG has dropped the 5770 from $120 to $110. Seriously: "Was: $119.99 Now: $109.99 Save: $10.00" And are we really making a big deal about $10, especially when that price is set by NEWEGG themselves? The price range for any modeled card is way higher than $10. So is this
newly released card is really any more expensive? Not on the average.
And notice how I said
newly. That is very important to the context at hand here. In two weeks, maybe a bit longer, you'll probably see 6770s with rebates or on sale. But the fact is they are launching at the same MSRP as current 5770s. It is extremely rare, if it has ever happened, for a card to launch with rebates. Using rebates as a consideration for the final price of a 5770 to be compared with the 6770 is pretty much ignoring a big chunk of
facts. In doing so we might as well start saying, "The
5750 ICEQ is nothing more than an expensive rebadge of the
Vapor-X 5750. It only has three outputses and comes at slower clocks so it's slower but it's mroe exsssspensive."
Now back to the comparison at hand. I've listed all of the 5770s from newegg with no DisplayPort, and all but 1 are more expensive than the single current DP-6770 on the market. They may come with a CF bridge or offer other things, but you can't add a Displayport and you can't change the HDMI from 1.3 to 1.4. Then most other 5770s, regardless of what features they have, are more expensive
up front, with some end up cheaper or the same price after rebate. Oh and all of those rebates are currently set to end on
4/30/2011.
So why is it we should
only compare the Sapphire models to each other? Purely for cherry picking your argument, as happy is doing? He hasn't given one good reason why we should only look at the Sapphire models and why we should ignore the rest of the market. And the reason why he hasn't give that reason is because there isn't a good reason. Let's see what the market looks like when more manufacturers bring out more SKUs. My bold prediction: They'll be in the same price range as current 5770s.