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Argh, AMD/nVIDIA pricing is infuriating me

The same can be said about the 580, an unlocked ~25% oc'd 6950 can outpace a stock 580 for half the price!

I bought 2 for this reason and they absolutely murder a single 580, that at cost of less than £400 v £440 for the cheapest single 580 at the time.

Given the above, you wouldn't think much 580's would have sold but they did, because there is a market for them, the same as there is a market for the 79**'s.

They are also faster than a highly clocked 7970@1080p which I game on too.

The 580's were only 10% faster than the 480's they replaced, but that didn't stop the upgrade to 580's either.

I'm in no way saying go out and buy a 79** as it's a very expensive toy to own indeed, in the same way as the 580 and every previous gpu king is very expensive, nothing at all has changed!

PDXLAN was just another marketing ploy to atempt customers who crave the fastest tech not to purchase a 79**, at the moment it's damage limitation the same way the pre fermi marketing was being spun.
 
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555BUK said:
Why would AMD aim their 7970 againt a graphics card that always sold extremely poorly because it was massively overpriced? The GTX 580 3GB was never mainstream and few review sites ever gave it positive comments. It was a niche card that never sold because it was too expensive. Do you think AMD will release their 1.5GB 7970 at GTX580 1.5GB prices? The only reason the 3GB 7970 cards have $15 of extra VRAM is so that AMD can justify charging £100 more for them. Just like NVidia did with the laughable non-upgrade that was the 3GB GTX580.

Once the 7970 1.5GB version arrives, benchmarks will show exactly the same as they did for the 1.5GB vs 3GB GTX580's. There will be absolutely no difference within almost every game at almost every resolution. 3GB is currently overkill, and even 2GB is probably more than most people need. 1.5GB should hit the sweatspot for most people.
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See this is interesting I actually moved from 480gtx sli to one 7970, didn't cost much extra in all honesty after the sale. Performance is similar in the games I play, in fact I don't notice any difference. One thing I was suprised at though was vram usage, with skyrim heavily modded I was coming up with vram limits on my gtx's, not now with the 7970 where in some instance I am using over 1800mb of vram. So the extra ram does have uses.

My main reason for moving across though was downsizing, I moved from a very large case with multiple rads to a much smaller one, two 480's would have killed my chances of watercooling with reasonable temps in a much smaller enclosure.

I was going to wait for keplar but to be honest I having a feeling it's going to be dissapointing. Too much smoke around it.

Price is price if you are not happy with it or cannot afford it or choose not to pay for it then don't. No point whining, for a premium product you pay a premium price - end of. Ever since I have been gaming it has always been the same way.

If you want to be pedantic about it, if you actually adjust for inflation and currency fluctuations you will probably find the card is actually less expensive in real terms than when ati brought out the x1900xtx or nvidia the 8800gtx. I paid at least £450 for that 5/6 years ago, whcih I work out at about £580 quid in today's money.
 
dave_beast said:
OcUK's biggest Nvidia fanboiiii perhaps? :p
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My recent history is HD4870 to HD5850 to HD5850 SLI to GTX480 to GTX580. I wanted to jump to the 7970 this time around, but the price is just too high, or rather the performance is not what I wanted for the price.

I don't think that I am a fanboy, although I do express my opinions and at the moment they are anti-AMD from a price/performance point of view.

I wanted a good reason to upgrade my GTX580, but AMD have not given me one. If Kepler turns out to be just as poor I will deal NVidia equal or more criticism for keeping us waiting so long.
 
555BUK said:
I disagree, and so do all of the reviews I have read. The GTX580 1.5GB was expensive, but it offered by far the best performance for it's generation. Most, if not all review sites raved about it.
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Then you didn't read them all. IE - the more sensible ones.

review.jpg


But alas, sense never comes into the equation when buying enthusiast gear.

You're right about most sites raving about it. They would, it wasn't their money they were spending. I maintain. When high end "enthusiast" level stuff comes to market logic and sense go out of the window. The 580 shouldn't have been a success, but it was. It did nothing at 1080p that a 570 or 6970 could not do, but it was still a massive success.

That doesn't mean it was right.

555BUK said:
The GTX580 3GB was a different beast. It cost an extra £100 and offered zero performance increase. Some sites even showed it to be slightly slower than the 1.5GB version due to slacker memory timings or whatever reason. The 3GB was a bit of a stinker and never really sold.

There was MASSIVE difference between the perceived value for money for each of these cards.
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Forgetting the primary reason that the 3gb 580 was invented. Which of course was to run in SLI and power three screens, leaving enough texture memory to deal with such resolutions.

From memory (pardon the pun) Nvidia's VRAM costs a lot more than AMD's cheaper memory. I know in the past Nvidia used far more expensive rambus stuff. Hence, 1.5gb extra of the stuff comes at a cost that is then passed onto the consumer.

Thankfully most saw sense and realised that at 1080p they didn't need 3gb vram. However, had they seen more sense they'd never bought a 580 in the first place.
 
555BUK said:
I disagree, and so do all of the reviews I have read. The GTX580 1.5GB was expensive, but it offered by far the best performance for it's generation. Most, if not all review sites raved about it.
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From the reviews I have seen it can be changed to this:

'all of the reviews I have read. The 7970 is expensive, but it offers by far the best performance for it's generation. Most, if not all review sites rave about it.'
 
As people have said...top-end card will always be poor value, due to being the fastest card that aim at customer that got too much money to spend...however the problem at the moment it isn't just about top-end card charging a premium...the problem is with the current pricing model with "new gen card offering worse price to performance ratio than previous gen card", due to rather than only charging a huge premium for the fastest card over the 2nd fastest card, the pricing is be worked backward from the most expensive card going from top down to bottom. As a result, we end up with cards like 7770 which is around £30-£50 more than where it should be priced at.
 
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BTW lest we forget that the 580 wasn't strictly a new card either. It wasn't new technology, just a revision.

It was what the 480 should have been. If it were a new card, on a new tech, and battered the 7970 into submission then I can easily see Nvidia charging a record high.
 
rallyslag said:
Dont know. But i have only seen these sub £400 prices today , and all overclockers main competition are still at simillar prices as overclockers ..
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Powercolor HD 7970 £439.99 on OCUK

Same one elsewhere £419.74

And that was just a quick Google.


So If I were to buy two (which I eventually will) I would save an instant £40.
 
dave_beast said:
What, the 3gb 580 :p err, no

So if the 7970 1.5gb is cheaper than "£380 to £400" on day 1 then that's fair pricing right?
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You never said 580 3GB's, you said 580's, and >95% of those sold were 1.5GB versions. Only people with more money than sense bought the 3GB version.

In my opinion the 7970 3GB should have been launched at sub £400 with the 1.5GB version arriving at £330ish, as a direct replacement for the 6970 and competitor to the GTX580.

If the 7900's were not overpriced, so many people would not be talking about it.
 
555BUK said:
You never said 580 3GB's, you said 580's, and >95% of those sold were 1.5GB versions. Only people with more money than sense bought the 3GB version.

In my opinion the 7970 3GB should have been launched at sub £400 with the 1.5GB version arriving at £330ish, as a direct replacement for the 6970 and competitor to the GTX580.

If the 7900's were not overpriced, so many people would not be talking about it.
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Only people with more money then sense buy a HD 7970 3GB unless they play at 1600P/eyefinity/3D... both the GTX580 3GB and HD 7970 3GB are niche products, not main stream at all.

If you want competition for the 1.5GB GTX580 wait until March for the HD 7950 1.5GB (which still really isn't main stream tbh).
 
555BUK said:
You never said 580 3GB's, you said 580's, and >95% of those sold were 1.5GB versions. Only people with more money than sense bought the 3GB version.

In my opinion the 7970 3GB should have been launched at sub £400 with the 1.5GB version arriving at £330ish, as a direct replacement for the 6970 and competitor to the GTX580.

If the 7900's were not overpriced, so many people would not be talking about it.
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So now you want to compare 7970 3gb with 580 1.5gb because the price suits/fits your argument? :o
 
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