Is it me or is anyo9ne else not that excited about the 7900 release

[drunkenmaster]

The 8800gtx was both $599 on launch, so cost more, just with a hugely stronger pound back then, and I'm sure it was around £400 on launch.

Likewise, it offered what is similar to the current comparison, it was WAY faster than the 7900gtx, it wasn't anywhere near that much faster over a x1900xtx.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2116/25

There are plenty of games in that review where the 8800gtx doesn't even beat the AMD previous gen by 50%, but offers 70-90% over the 7900gtx.

Sound familiar? Likewise, the 8800GTX used 15-20% more power than a 7950gx2, and almost 50% more power than a X1900xtx, which it was often only 50% faster than.

You don't get more performance without more power, that is just the way it is. What would have happened if the PCI-e limit was 100W back then and that limited the 8800gtx stock clock speed to 30% lower, and it was only 20% ahead of a 580gtx in some games..... get the idea?

The 7970 is a cheaper RRP than the 8800gtx(just not here when the pound is a LOT weaker), the 7970 has a similar performance gain over its own gen, and the oppositions gen as the 8800gtx, the ONLY difference here is the TDP limit stopping stock clocks being higher.

The pound is screwing UK customers, no doubt, and with every gen price gouging is getting worse, every single launch see's a range of prices and prices go up on multiple cards throughout the day across several sites as they all see what they can get away with.

 

[drunkenmaster]

That kind of model doesn't really work with GPUs, and to some extent CPUs.

However, it is the replacement for the 6970.

But the competitions cards are faster than the 6970 and cost more.

The 7970 is faster than the 580 and hence costs more than that.

I really can't see it dropping below what the GTX580 is, simply because it's faster.

Not true, at all, this is where people are just wrong and allowing these prices to happen.

The 8800/480/580gtx all launched at roughly the same prices, one of them was months ahead of AMD's new gen, one of them was 6 months behind, and one of them was weeks ahead.

AMD's pricing has changed dramatically, because the die size has jumped around dramatically over the years, from a huge R600, to a tiny 4870, to a much bigger 5870, to a slightly bigger 7970.

The 7970 is over priced, as its die size isn't significantly bigger, though we don't know wafer costs, they are up but we don't know how much, and this looks possibly set to go up painfully every new generation.

The silicon itself doesn't cost more(not really) but to get smaller and smaller lithography its taking more stages in production, we're talking about chips taking 4 weeks to make, maybe 6 weeks, the more stages you add you're talking about adding days or weeks in production which reduces the capacity of a fab significantly.

AMD are cashing in on the 7970, make no mistake at all, but to say its worse value than other high end cards, or worse than before is laughable. The x1900xtx was hugely expensive years ago, the 8800 ultra, x800 xt pe.

It's only worse value than the significantly improved value AMD have offered in the past 3 generations.

 

[Things change I've changed]

The 8800gtx was still offering overall better performance than it's previous gen cards compared to what the 7970 is offering over it's previous gen and current gen nvidia cards, you can say it's 'similar', but it was a lot better imo from looking at the figures, (I'm talking stock speeds), also do you really see the 7970 lasting as long the the 8800gtx?, and the problem isn't just the price of the cards out of the gate, it's the fact that they are taking so long to drop in price, the 570's and 580's have kept their price for nearly a year now, that's ludicrous, I don't see how the value of the pound is to blame there, the pound has been crap against the dollar since around Jan 09, it hasn't changed much since then.

 

[phill1978]

i echo a comment made earlier. at £420 id think most people would benefit from a larger crystal clear 1440p IPS deep colour monitor for gaming than they would adding an extra 2x AA and some imperceptibly smoother shadows on games.

madness

 

[FreeStream]

Not true, at all, this is where people are just wrong and allowing these prices to happen.

The 8800/480/580gtx all launched at roughly the same prices, one of them was months ahead of AMD's new gen, one of them was 6 months behind, and one of them was weeks ahead.

AMD's pricing has changed dramatically, because the die size has jumped around dramatically over the years, from a huge R600, to a tiny 4870, to a much bigger 5870, to a slightly bigger 7970.

The 7970 is over priced, as its die size isn't significantly bigger, though we don't know wafer costs, they are up but we don't know how much, and this looks possibly set to go up painfully every new generation.

The silicon itself doesn't cost more(not really) but to get smaller and smaller lithography its taking more stages in production, we're talking about chips taking 4 weeks to make, maybe 6 weeks, the more stages you add you're talking about adding days or weeks in production which reduces the capacity of a fab significantly.

AMD are cashing in on the 7970, make no mistake at all, but to say its worse value than other high end cards, or worse than before is laughable. The x1900xtx was hugely expensive years ago, the 8800 ultra, x800 xt pe.

It's only worse value than the significantly improved value AMD have offered in the past 3 generations.

I never said it was better/worse value. It's launch price is what I expected it to be.

*Had a X1900XT, X1900XTX and X1950XTX *

If it's selling out then it is priced right. Simple as that really.

You'd be daft to sell a better performing product for the same/less than something slower.

It seems that it's a concept some people miss here. AMD are a company and hence seek to maximise profit.

If a person *thinks* it's overpriced, then that is down to them

I think we are on the same wavelength... :S

 

[starfighter]

If you can't afford it then don't buy it.

Top end cards have offered more performance than the previous gen in the past and high end cards have been cheaper in the past. But equally high end cards have been not as good and also even more expensive. I don't think this is a bad upgrade tbh and not that expensive either.

This is the way it is this time around. If you aint got the dough and your current card plays games well enough then wait for the next lot of cards.

Plenty of people need an upgrade now and have the money.

The 8800GTX was a great card yes but nVidia milked it by renaming the chip about 10 times because ATI couldn't beat it but they have also brought out a few lemons, brand loyalty is for idiots.

 

[V F]

If you can't afford it then don't buy it.

Why do some people keep doing this. I've seen people very capable of affording it and spending £800+ on camera lenses rather than a high end graphics card.

Did you know some rich people like value for their money? while some others have no objection throwing money away...

 

[PhillyDee]

i echo a comment made earlier. at £420 id think most people would benefit from a larger crystal clear 1440p IPS deep colour monitor for gaming than they would adding an extra 2x AA and some imperceptibly smoother shadows on games.

madness

You are assuming people are upgrading from a 6970 or whatever.
I have a 5850, and have no need to upgrade yet. Maybe I might catch these in 6 months time, or wait for the gen after. Like you say, no need, everything plays well enough!

 

[dave_beast]

1920x1080 on a 25" monitor

I've upgraded from a 6870 to 7970, I play Crysis2, on the 6870 I could run medium settings with vsync on, any higher settings would be jerky and drop below 30fps (DX9 standard res) now i'm running on DX11/Hi res at a silky smooth 60fps on my 7970.

Doubt any other single GPU card except for overclocked 580/6970's could attain this - Reason enough to justify my upgrade to 7970.

 

[Things change I've changed]

If you can't afford it then don't buy it.

Top end cards have offered more performance than the previous gen in the past and high end cards have been cheaper in the past. But equally high end cards have been not as good and also even more expensive. I don't think this is a bad upgrade tbh and not that expensive either.

This is the way it is this time around. If you aint got the dough and your current card plays games well enough then wait for the next lot of cards.

Plenty of people need an upgrade now and have the money.

The 8800GTX was a great card yes but nVidia milked it by renaming the chip about 10 times because ATI couldn't beat it but they have also brought out a few lemons, brand loyalty is for idiots. Just buy what you think is best.

This has nothing to do with how much disposable income people have or brand loyalty , plenty of people have enough money on here, that doesn't mean that they should buy every card that comes out, people don't get rich or well endowed by being frivolous with their money, there is a sensibility to purchasing a product no matter how rich your are, turning this into a "your poor" argument is childish.

I have enough money to purchase many 7970's but I don't like buying a product where it's asking price is more than I feel it should be, not to this degree, it takes the fun out of it, yes expensive cards have been released before, yes it has to be priced this much because it's faster than Nvidia's fasted single die gpu, so as I've already it said, has to command a higher price because of that, but my problem is that in this current climate it's feels overpriced due to the prices of 570/580 not dropping in nearly a year which automatically means that the 7970's have to sit on top of an already inflated price, I'm not blaming ati.

If I'm annoyed at anything I'm annoyed that gpu's aren't dropping in price at the rate they did in past generations, and that has a negative impact on the price of newly released high-end GPU's, personally I was probably never going to purchase a 7970 anyway even at a cheaper price, I'm team green, "ahhhhhhh" you may be thinking, but no, this has as much a negative impact on me also because this will inevitably lead to the same problem with nvidia's next top end card/s which is what I'm worried about, and trust me, you won't hear me making an excuse for their pricing even though I favour their cards, I just want cheaper gpu's all around, I don't see why some people have a problem with others voicing that.

 

[starfighter]

Whats your point though, I also wish everything was cheaper. Should we all stop buying gfx cards until they bring down the prices.

You already have a decent card, I have a 4870 so I am buying one because I want to play some games.

You arn't excited about it because you arn't buying one. Thanks for the info.

 

[Things change I've changed]

Whats your point though, I also wish everything was cheaper. Should we all stop buying gfx cards until they bring down the prices.

You already have a decent card, I have a 4870 so I am buying one because I want to play some games.

You arn't excited about it because you arn't buying one. Thanks for the info.

I'm posting in thread that's titled "Is it me or is anyo9ne else not that excited about the 7900 release", this whole thread is going to generate posts that could be meta tagged with "thanks for the info" due to the very nature of the question posed, and yes, maybe we should refrain from purchasing cards at these prices, I will be, the problem is certain people on here becoming very defensive.

 

[albert]

1920x1080 on a 25" monitor

I've upgraded from a 6870 to 7970, I play Crysis2, on the 6870 I could run medium settings with vsync on, any higher settings would be jerky and drop below 30fps (DX9 standard res) now i'm running on DX11/Hi res at a silky smooth 60fps on my 7970.

Doubt any other single GPU card except for overclocked 580/6970's could attain this - Reason enough to justify my upgrade to 7970.

Well this is my 6950 playing Crysis 2 on DX11/Hi res at a solid 50FPS. £500 for 10FPS more

 

[chaotic_uk]

Well this is my 6950 playing Crysis 2 on DX11/Hi res at a solid 50FPS. £500 for 10FPS more

i am seeing 24fps most of the time in that vid ?

 

[albert]

i am seeing 24fps most of the time in that vid ?

It was recorded with FRAPS@30fps ...... silky smooth

 

[dave_beast]

Well this is my 6950 playing Crysis 2 on DX11/Hi res at a solid 50FPS. £500 for 10FPS more

Didn't pay anything near £500 lol, and like above, I never saw 50fps on the Afterburner overlay
And if I turned off vsync i'd probably get a helluva lot more fps, but hey, I like vsync

 

[easyrider]

You arn't excited about it because you arn't buying one. Thanks for the info.

Its not that...I could buy 4 if I wanted...

Fact is it just isn't worth the price tag

Simples

 

[3dcandy]

at risk of sounding like a grumpy old man (bah humbug) things like this don't excite me because I remember the days when a new product would come out that would be twice as fast as the previous fastest thing...
These days a 25% improvement is massive...

 

[drunkenmaster]

The 8800gtx was still offering overall better performance than it's previous gen cards compared to what the 7970 is offering over it's previous gen and current gen nvidia cards, you can say it's 'similar', but it was a lot better imo from looking at the figures, (I'm talking stock speeds), also do you really see the 7970 lasting as long the the 8800gtx?, and the problem isn't just the price of the cards out of the gate, it's the fact that they are taking so long to drop in price, the 570's and 580's have kept their price for nearly a year now, that's ludicrous, I don't see how the value of the pound is to blame there, the pound has been crap against the dollar since around Jan 09, it hasn't changed much since then.

But that is just the point, what is stock speed. The 8800gtx wasn't TDP limited, there weren't arbitrary pci-e slot limits, but where would the 8800gtx stock speeds have been if there was and the slot couldn't use more than 100W.

The problem here is without question TDP limits, look at every generation AMD and Nvidia, 80% per gen is no problem, but just about the lowest power increase this had was 40% over the previous gen, and the highest almost 60% more. The 7970, maybe 10% more power.

But this is the thing, getting a 8800gtx to overclock more than 15%, difficult, the "stock speed" on most gpu's over the past decade(anything but the top bin is irrelevant) tend to be around 5-10% below the maximum stable overclock on the reference cooler. Sometimes a bit more not much more.

The 7970 can clearly go 30% higher, and that is with limited tools and testing, and a crap reference cooler and cards that are now pushing well beyond 300W. To anyone unbiased the 7970 stock speed SHOULD be MUCH higher, and has been chopped due to TDP. I've said and I will say the same, if Kepler's big card comes out sub 300W, it will be underclocked and, meh. But its "real" speed will be where a stable easy overclock is capable of getting at whatever power level that uses.

Pretty simply the 7970 should be 1150Mhz bare minimum, stock speeds, at that point the difference between it and the 580gtx is almost exactly the difference between the 8800gtx/x1900xtx, and also 70-100% faster than the 6970, which is exactly where you'd expect the card to be..... which should further back up exactly where the clock speeds/tdp should be.

I never said it was better/worse value. It's launch price is what I expected it to be.

*Had a X1900XT, X1900XTX and X1950XTX *

If it's selling out then it is priced right. Simple as that really.

You'd be daft to sell a better performing product for the same/less than something slower.

It seems that it's a concept some people miss here. AMD are a company and hence seek to maximise profit.

If a person *thinks* it's overpriced, then that is down to them

I think we are on the same wavelength... :S

Yes and no, the simple idea that AMD has been winning on in the past 3 years is, we can charge a huge amount and not sell that many cards, or we can charge a lot less and sell exponentially more cards, and make more profit overall.

The simple fact is that with the 7970 at £350, Nvidia(till something kepler launched) would sell handfuls of cards, right now with the 7970 at £450 + they aren't a worse option, slower, but priced in a way that its fair performance/value.

That is the point here, if AMD sold this card at £380, and had strict instructions with companies to not massively price gouge, then Nvidia sales would drop through the floor. Ultimately a 530mm2 core is still very expensive to make and selling them all for sub £200 would be a loss leader, so Nvidia would stop any more production or lose almost all their sales, THAT is a win win for AMD.

They could have all but 100% of the high end sales till Kepler launched if it was priced cheaper, instead they are making a higher profit on a far smaller number of cards.

There is of course, supply, but ultimately all you'll have is unhappy customers who paid £450+ for a card that in 6-8 weeks with better supply, could cost £350.

Meh. value has been the cornerstone of their strategy for 3 years, and if it was failing, sure, change it, but it wasn't. AMD have been more competitive with Nvidia than ever before.

Even with poor availability if the 7970's were listed everywhere at £350-380 instead of £100 more than that, then people would wait for stock rather than quite a lot of them going Nvidia instead.

So more profit per card, or less profit per card, more sold, and winning sales from people that would otherwise choose Nvidia, all together, its likely to be more profitable to go for cheaper cards and screw the competition.

Meh, its still hard now to tell where the real pricing is with UK retailers playing the "raise it till even the stupid people stop buying" game.

 

[Locky]

But that is just the point, what is stock speed. The 8800gtx wasn't TDP limited, there weren't arbitrary pci-e slot limits, but where would the 8800gtx stock speeds have been if there was and the slot couldn't use more than 100W.

The problem here is without question TDP limits, look at every generation AMD and Nvidia, 80% per gen is no problem, but just about the lowest power increase this had was 40% over the previous gen, and the highest almost 60% more. The 7970, maybe 10% more power.

But this is the thing, getting a 8800gtx to overclock more than 15%, difficult, the "stock speed" on most gpu's over the past decade(anything but the top bin is irrelevant) tend to be around 5-10% below the maximum stable overclock on the reference cooler. Sometimes a bit more not much more.

The 7970 can clearly go 30% higher, and that is with limited tools and testing, and a crap reference cooler and cards that are now pushing well beyond 300W. To anyone unbiased the 7970 stock speed SHOULD be MUCH higher, and has been chopped due to TDP. I've said and I will say the same, if Kepler's big card comes out sub 300W, it will be underclocked and, meh. But its "real" speed will be where a stable easy overclock is capable of getting at whatever power level that uses.

Pretty simply the 7970 should be 1150Mhz bare minimum, stock speeds, at that point the difference between it and the 580gtx is almost exactly the difference between the 8800gtx/x1900xtx, and also 70-100% faster than the 6970, which is exactly where you'd expect the card to be..... which should further back up exactly where the clock speeds/tdp should be.



Yes and no, the simple idea that AMD has been winning on in the past 3 years is, we can charge a huge amount and not sell that many cards, or we can charge a lot less and sell exponentially more cards, and make more profit overall.

The simple fact is that at £300, Nvidia(till something kepler launched) would sell handfuls of cards, right now they aren't a worse option, slower, but priced in a way that its fair performance/value.

That is the point here, if AMD sold this card at £380, and had strict instructions with companies to not massively price gouge, then Nvidia sales would drop through the floor. Ultimately a 530mm2 core is still very expensive to make and selling them all for sub £200 would be a loss leader, so Nvidia would stop any more production or lose almost all their sales, THAT is a win win for AMD.

They could have all but 100% of the high end sales till Kepler launched if it was priced cheaper, instead they are making a higher profit on a far smaller number of cards.

There is of course, supply, but ultimately all you'll have is unhappy customers who paid £450+ for a card that in 6-8 weeks with better supply, could cost £350.

Meh. value has been the cornerstone of their strategy for 3 years, and if it was failing, sure, change it, but it wasn't. AMD have been more competitive with Nvidia than ever before.

Even with poor availability if the 7970's were listed everywhere at £350-380 instead of £100 more than that, then people would wait for stock rather than quite a lot of them going Nvidia instead.

So more profit per card, or less profit per card, more sold, and winning sales from people that would otherwise choose Nvidia, all together, its likely to be more profitable to go for cheaper cards and screw the competition.

Meh, its still hard now to tell where the real pricing is with UK retailers playing the "raise it till even the stupid people stop buying" game.

I agreed with DM if AMD priced this correctly they would fly off the shelves and dare I say it, make more money. if they was priced correctly I would have bought three.