58XX pricing rumour :-(

[kylew]

Anyhow generally its a gamble undercutting a bigger competitior to increase market share if it turns into a price war 9/10 the smaller one is gonna end up pricing themselves out the market - as a generalisation of a 2 player market as intel doesn't really have much clout in this case. ATI has played the game well recently keeping the prices competitve and keen, staying on the front foot without over-reaching themselves... dropping prices as your suggesting at this point just to increase market share would be unnecessarily exposing themselves and doesn't make good business sense and I don't see ATI doing it out of kindness. From a business perspective it makes far more sense to play the numers I was suggesting as it leaves you a bigger margin to fall back into when the other side strikes back and leaves the competition less maneuvering space.

This itself is speculation though. Look at the 4800s, they've done exceedingly well with them, yet their actions go against everything you describe here.

This is my whole point, they price them at $199 and $299 regardless of how much it costs them to make, weather it be $50 or $80 for example, it's to ensure they're not TOO cheap and not too expensive.

Once they've taken off, they can lower their margins to increase the amount of people buying them.

This is EXACTLY what they've done with the 4800s.

A 4850 started off at £120 for the 512MB, now you can get them for under £80 for 1GB cards.

Loads of people are now aware of the 4800s and how good they are, so they're less likely to think 'ugh, that's surely cheap and nasty, look at how cheap it is'.

 

[Rroff]

No it doesn't go against what I'm saying - tho in my tiredness I've jumped from one point to another without covering the ground between... but the 4800 prices are what I was saying about keeping it competitive and keen... but they have to be careful not to over-reach themselves which is where the 5800 prices come in... setting them too low or too high is going to do a lot more damage to them in the long run.

Selling a large number of units with small margins rather than a small number with large margins can work... I have a friend whos whole business is built around this model... but it needs very careful planning and timing and generally isn't a good idea for a long term business model - a number of times hes been close to crashing out when things have gone wrong partly because it can massively increase your operational costs... as I said before 1 bad batch can potentially wipe out your entire profits.

 

[kylew]

No it doesn't go against what I'm saying - tho in my tiredness I've jumped from one point to another without covering the ground between... but the 4800 prices are what I was saying about keeping it competitive and keen... but they have to be careful not to over-reach themselves which is where the 5800 prices come in... setting them too low or too high is going to do a lot more damage to them in the long run.

Selling a large number of units with small margins rather than a small number with large margins can work... I have a friend whos whole business is built around this model... but it needs very careful planning and timing and generally isn't a good idea for a long term business model - a number of times hes been close to crashing out when things have gone wrong partly because it can massively increase your operational costs... as I said before 1 bad batch can potentially wipe out your entire profits.

That's on the basis of one extreme to another.

We don't know the exact margins, after all margins aren't directly related to price.

Think about it, ATi's 4890 is currently cheaper than a GTX260 by £10. A GTX260 costs more to make than a 4890, but is also a fair amount slower. Especially considering the price difference.

So surely, if nVidia are selling a GTX260 for close to the price of a 4890, the 4890 must be making ATi a lot more money than the 260 is making nVidia when you take the small die size and more simple PCB in to account.

Just because they're selling at price that we perceive to be extremely low doesn't actually reflect how much they're making.

 

[jigger]

Not sure if this is what Kyle said.

If the card cost 100 to build and the required profit is 40% then selling for 140 makes the most scene. Over this price and you are doing two things wrong, inviting competitors and pricing you self out of sales. Under and you are essentially making a loss on every sale.

If you can offer the customer good value, then sales will naturally increase and this means you can save on marketing and advertising cost. ATI seem to have this down to a fine art and I cant see the card being "expensive" as such.

 

[Final8y]

What makes you think I'm upset about you? infact it was far from that
As I mentioned earlier, how you spend your money is up to you and I respect that.

As for able to afford/not able to afford and willing/not willing; that's not my concern, what I'm saying is, people are still too naive with the prices and still taking rumours so seriously. You buy or not buy will not have any impact whatsoever to these companies, unless majority shares the same view as you do.

But the thing is a didn't say what i think the price would be.
So addressing all that to me was not required.
I have not said even once what i think the price will be nether did i say anything about what im willing to having any effect on anyone.

You assumed far to much & think that i was trying to achieve something & because of that im taking everything seriously, i was not.
All i did is make a comment in what im willing to pay. I was not asking the retailers, ati or the users for theses prices or else.

If the prices are higher than what im willing to pay then i will wait just like normal.

You should have looked though the thread & you would see that part i had played in this thread had been very little beforehand because all the speculating from others doesn't matter to me one way or the other.

 

[MR.B]

It's fanboys spouting rubbish, or being extremely technical to the point of despair.

In some cases a card can drop to single digits and back up again so fast that it's never noticed, but benchmarking suits can pick this up. This can drag down the average minimum framerate of any card.

Such a situation can occur when fresh data is being loaded in to the graphics RAM, it's unnoticable and happens very rarely.

It is such things that fanboys use to support their 'claims'.

In reality, the minimum frame rate is generally proportionate to the performance of the card.

If an ATi cand nVdia card are roughly the same performance, they'll roughly have the same min frame rates.

I actually LOL'd when i read that. You have no idea what you're talking about, and i love how you try and get technical to sound like you have any clue of what you're talking about, and completely fail.

Drivers can and do make a big performance difference. Even you should know this.
If card B was more powerful than card A, but card B's drivers were extremely poor, card B with it's better hardware would have lower performance than card A with the inferior hardware.

NV do generally (not always) have better minimum frame rates/more consistent performance because of there drivers and working with game developers, they also have more resources for driver development being a considerably larger company. NV's drivers have more lines of code than Win XP's core.
Apart from all the trouble i had with the 48xx series drivers this is one of the things that stood out to me and made me go back to NV.

Your'll probably call me a fanboy now when i couldn't less about any corporation, but if anyone is on these forums, it's you Kylew.

 

[ebilcake]

Supprised we havent seen any benchmarks yet, usually get some leaked results or some sites post early but this time nothing yet.

 

[gareth170]

this is how see it. if the prices are to high ati won't make much profit/if any because most people won't buy them. there'll be some people that'll buy them due to they got more money than sense..

if ati keeps them at a similar level of price as the 4800 series on released a lot more people would buy them also more profit for ati.

 

[straxusii]

I love it that some people think they know for sure what will be the best price point to generate the most profit for ATI, I'm sure their finance and marketing guys would love to hear from you.

Everyone KNOWS that it is better to sell 10 cards at £250 than 1 card at £300, what no-one KNOWS is what the price point is that will generate the best return for ATI.

 

[gareth170]

deleted

 

[straxusii]

and some people love to add word...

i never said i know for sure...

its only what i feel..

Wasn't in reply to you Gareth

 

[gareth170]

Wasn't in reply to you Gareth

ohhh ok then i'm sorry mate.

because u didn't quote anything i thought it was to me..

 

[555BUK]

A few people have said the 4850 started at £120 but that was at a time when £1=$2. If ATI follow the same pricing model we will be looking at a launch price somewhere close to £150. However, as ATI will be first-to-market with their product I will not be surprised if they ask a higher premium. Remember NVidia's rip=off pricing when the GTX200 series were released....

 

[Sayso]

just wait until Nvidea release there next gen of cards and you will see a dramatic fall in prices, until they get a DX11 competitor they will charge high to milk the entusiast side of the market that will buy them at what ever the price!! (yes thats US!!)
unless you have a need to upgrade (which most of us dont!),i dont see the point!! my moneys on Nvidea this round anyway

 

[RizlaKing]

There is no evidence to suggest ati are going to "milk" anyone and as far as i know they have not stated a departure from the pricing structure they put in place and have stated they would prefer to increase market share rather then max profit. Right now no one knows what they are going to do for sure but at a guess i also believe they will keep the price of the new cards in line with previous releases as they clearly made money on them and the die shrink should increase that profit. I am just going to wait and see what happens and am not getting too far into a debate that is pointless because as i said no one knows for sure.

 

[johny dolan]

http://www.guru3d.com/news/ati-dualgpu-directx-11-card-by-christmas/
It is rumored that the dual-GPU solution will costs a hefty $599. Radeon HD 5870 is set to go on sale for $379-399, while the cheapest entry into the 5800 series, the Radeon HD 5850 is priced in the $279-299 bracket.

These prices are highly speculative, and we expect them to be lower really.

 

[londonbairn]

There's a lot of rumour and debate here, I think the most substantiated claim we could make is that it will be priced competitively against its equivalent part. If this is the 285/295 whatever, then so be it. At the same time I don't think it would be in ATi's interest to charge too high because the few months before NV responds is a great time to build up market share and put to rest some of the propietory features that really isn't in the best interests of the consumer (cough PhysX) and advancing more important things like DX11, OpenCl etc.

Then NV will have to respond and drop their prices then we end up in a mini pricing war (hopefully) and we're all happy.

Pretty sure the cost of these cards is far lower than the NV equivalent, ATi had a good roadmap set out if anyone watched that vid with one of the designers.

 

[kylew]

I actually LOL'd when i read that. You have no idea what you're talking about, and i love how you try and get technical to sound like you have any clue of what you're talking about, and completely fail.

Drivers can and do make a big performance difference. Even you should know this.
If card B was more powerful than card A, but card B's drivers were extremely poor, card B with it's better hardware would have lower performance than card A with the inferior hardware.

NV do generally (not always) have better minimum frame rates/more consistent performance because of there drivers and working with game developers, they also have more resources for driver development being a considerably larger company. NV's drivers have more lines of code than Win XP's core.
Apart from all the trouble i had with the 48xx series drivers this is one of the things that stood out to me and made me go back to NV.

Your'll probably call me a fanboy now when i couldn't less about any corporation, but if anyone is on these forums, it's you Kylew.

So you're calling me a fanboy for saying the minimum framerate stuff is rubbish?

I thought I was the one who didn't know what they were talking about...

When people spout rubbish about the drivers you know they're a fanboy.

I haven't said either is better but rather they're pretty much the same.

Am I a fanboy for not pretending nVidia is superior in everything they do?

 

[kylew]

I love it that some people think they know for sure what will be the best price point to generate the most profit for ATI, I'm sure their finance and marketing guys would love to hear from you.

Everyone KNOWS that it is better to sell 10 cards at £250 than 1 card at £300, what no-one KNOWS is what the price point is that will generate the best return for ATI.

Well we do know actually...

That's been the WHOLE point of most of this thread.

nVidia and ATi make their profits from the mid-level graphics cards.

Edit: This is the second time this image has been posted, but it's pretty much definitive of the 5870 pricing.

It's from the power color website and has been removed since for obvious reasons:

It was originally at this page: http://www.powercolor.com/event/wallpaper/index.htm


This isn't the first time power color have slipped up and announced specs or prices early either.

 

[kylew]

Opps double post