Caporegime
The cost is a factor but imagine we had the die shrink and like you demonstrated a few pages back tonga would have to sell for £130-£150 and full tonga 3/4gb depending on memory bus £160-£200. Meaning the 390 would be in the £200-£300 mark again, but with a smaller die and substantial power savings.
If you owned a 6970 you wouldn't have really bought the 7850-7870 but it was a midrange die shrunk new gen that replaces the 6950/70 with another tier above 7950/7970.
We should see the same again but the lack of die shrink is a bummer.
First i'll get the irony out of the way i had a Saphire 6950 and bought a Gigabyte WF3 7870 for £220, last Gigabyte card i will ever buy.... i replaced that with a Powercolor PCS+ 7870XT.
If AMD are die shrinking and retailing at around the costs i laid out they will no doubt attract new buyers, especially with power consumption numbers being all the rage.
If they are 'cheaper for the higher tier' then yes quite a lot of existing AMD owners have an upgrade path.
But its a long way from what AMD need to do at this point to put themselves back on the map, they need that £300 to £600 range that competes directly with the 980 to GTX Titan-X
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