Argh, AMD/nVIDIA pricing is infuriating me

TheRealDeal · 20 Feb 2012 at 16:28

iB CoMpL3XiTy said:
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).

Why wait for a 7950 1gb as the 3gb version already prices well against a gtx580 1.5 gb.

iB CoMpL3XiTy · 20 Feb 2012 at 16:49

TheRealDeal said:
Why wait for a 7950 1gb as the 3gb version already prices well against a gtx580 1gb.

Because you play at 1080P and want GTX 580 performance for cheaper?

Biffa · 20 Feb 2012 at 16:56

iB CoMpL3XiTy said:
Because you play at 1080P and want GTX 580 performance for cheaper?

You can do this now with a 7950, its already cheaper than the GTX580 and offers similar performance :confused:

TheRealDeal · 20 Feb 2012 at 16:58

iB CoMpL3XiTy said:
Because you play at 1080P and want GTX 580 performance for cheaper?

Some people dont like to wait and as said above you can do this now. You can also get a lot more performance from overclocking the 7950.

iB CoMpL3XiTy · 20 Feb 2012 at 17:01

Ok well cool, I'll wait for the 1.5GB version as I play at 1080P and don't have money to through away at VRAM I wont use.

dave_beast · 20 Feb 2012 at 17:14

iB CoMpL3XiTy said:
Ok well cool, I'll wait for the 1.5GB version as I play at 1080P and don't have money to through away at VRAM I wont use.

As long as you don't mind playing with reduced AA etc. Some titles are utilising up to 1800mb at 1080p now.

RavenXXX2 · 20 Feb 2012 at 17:15

^^ What titles?

iB CoMpL3XiTy · 20 Feb 2012 at 17:20

dave_beast said:
As long as you don't mind playing with reduced AA etc. Some titles are utilising up to 1800mb at 1080p now.

Very few games will use that much, even if a game uses slightly more VRAM than 1.5GB will I notice it? (genuine question)

Besides which I don't mind playing at 1080P with No AA.

se_vietboi · 20 Feb 2012 at 17:46

New generation means its supposed to have a better speed/price ratio. If things didn't get cheaper, back when 6800 Ultra's were £350, GTX 580s would have been like £2000 today lol.

PGdude · 20 Feb 2012 at 17:46

iB CoMpL3XiTy said:
Ok well cool, I'll wait for the 1.5GB version as I play at 1080P and don't have money to through away at VRAM I wont use.

If only I could live with just 1.5GB of VRAM. I don't think the games I want to play would let me get away with it :eek:

iB CoMpL3XiTy · 20 Feb 2012 at 17:56

se_vietboi said:
New generation means its supposed to have a better speed/price ratio. If things didn't get cheaper, back when 6800 Ultra's were £350, GTX 580s would have been like £2000 today lol.

AMD's cards will come down in price when there's healthy competition from nVidia

arc@css · 20 Feb 2012 at 17:57

4 x AA comes at quite a price.

Nelly · 20 Feb 2012 at 18:11

To the OP: I dont see what the problem is, you have GTX 260 SLI and you have waited all this time to upgrade, graphics cards are not that expensive, bite the bullit and upgrade and enjoy, or save abit more money.

Freddie1980 · 20 Feb 2012 at 18:50

iB CoMpL3XiTy said:
AMD's cards will come down in price when there's healthy competition from nVidia

Will they? The prices of the current 40nm cards have held steady for over year. I suspect price fixing.

iB CoMpL3XiTy · 20 Feb 2012 at 18:58

Freddie1980 said:
Will they? The prices of the current 40nm cards have held steady for over year. I suspect price fixing.

Yeah

555BUK · 20 Feb 2012 at 21:46

Price fixing only works if people are prepared to pay the fixed price. By artificially inflating prices AMD & NVidia hasten the demise of PC based gaming. As both parties now provide GPU's for games consoles, tablets, smartphones and laptops, perhaps they no longer care for desktop PC users. If the number of users is dropping in favour of PS3, XBOX's and laptops, production costs as an average increase and prices go up. Higher pricing creates a self fulfilling prophacy.

With Intel becoming more and more interested in powerful CPU based integrated graphics, perhaqps it is the right time to get out and concentrate on other sectors. The majority of gamers use low end graphics anyway, and Intel could have this mass market and very profitable sector all sown up within 5 years.

two00lbwaster · 20 Feb 2012 at 22:34

Marine-RX179 said:
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.

This was exactly what I was trying to say.

Nelly said:
To the OP: I dont see what the problem is, you have GTX 260 SLI and you have waited all this time to upgrade, graphics cards are not that expensive, bite the bullit and upgrade and enjoy, or save abit more money.

BF3 and an imminent arrival of 3xDell U2312HM monitors that I want to play BF3 on and preferably on all three. The problem is that, currently, GTX260 SLI barely works on mainly low settings, but for 2xAA, at 1680x1050.

The reason that I can't buy an expensive gfx card is that I'm saving up for a ring for the gf, and she's getting the monitors for me (she says she won't buy me an expensive gfx card as they are too small for the money)

That means that it'll be probably June time when I'll have about £150 to spend on as good a gfx card as I can get for the money, and I was hoping for GTX660/HD7800 series card, but I just can't see them fitting into that budget with the current ridiculous pricing structure that AMD has set.

P.S. BTW guys, less of the breaching forum rules in the thread please. Also, I never said I had issue with the HD7900 series pricing per-se, my issue is with the performance price ratio of the HD7700 series, and what it means for the HD7800 series.

two00lbwaster · 20 Feb 2012 at 22:41

ALXAndy said:
Then you didn't read them all. IE - the more sensible ones.

Looks and sounds like the conclusion from a CPC review. Excellent mag that I subscribe to

two00lbwaster · 20 Feb 2012 at 22:49

Random Guy said:
To the OP, the thing that is infuriating you is basic pricing strategy - AMD (or more specifically, the AMD re-seller like Power Color, XFX etc.) is skimming the market as much as possible to make the maximum return on each unit. They would be stupid not to, given that there are no competing cards on the market at the moment.

Exactly, however, the infuriating thing is that they are making me wait whilst skimming other muppets that are buying the stock.
For me it has always been a case of £150 or less on graphics cards, and I was hoping that the die shrink would see me get HD6950ish performance for current HD6870ish prices(which would then drop after introduction.)
I had 5x GTX260s when I was folding that I slowly bought over a number of months. I'd never have bothered with getting the GTX275, or GTX285, for the minimal performance improvement that they were offering for the additional £100 odd.

andybird123 · 20 Feb 2012 at 23:01

7970's have started dropping to 390 already, a bit more competition should see things get interesting