AMD Level Up Bundle

[LtMatt]

TL : DR

Spoiler

Hot on the heels of last month’s expansion of AMD’s Never Settle Reloaded game bundle, which saw Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon added across the board, AMD is back once again with another expansion of their game bundle program.

The latest rendition of AMD’s program will see AMD launching a new, smaller game bundle to run alongside the Never Settle Reloaded bundle. The new bundle is to be called the Level Up bundle, with the complete package being dubbed the Level Up with Never Settle Reloaded bundle. Level Up won’t add any new games to AMD’s bundles – the game industry is between major launch periods anyhow – but instead Level Up will see AMD offering a greater number of their bundle games with most of their video cards.

With the exception of the 7990 at the high-end and 7770 at the low-end, most AMD bundles are composed of a subset of four games: Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Blood Dragon, and Tomb Raider. Level Up will see most AMD bundles expanding by one more game, going from 3 to 4 and 2 to 3 respectively, and generally resolving the oddites of some cards including Tomb Raider while other cards include Crysis 3. Specifically the 7900 series and 7870 will become complete sets, with the 7900 series adding Tomb Raider while the 7870 will add Crysis 3. Meanwhile the 7850 remains unchanged, and the 7790 will get a third game with the addition of Tomb Raider.



Notably, unlike past AMD bundle expansions, Level Up doesn’t completely replace Never Settle Reloaded. Instead it is a bundle that is running concurrent to Never Settle Reloaded. Technically Never Settle Reloaded is unchanged, with the additional games coming from the Level Up bundle. The significance of this separation being that these are two bundles with two different vouchers, making it possible to start and end each program separately while cleanly avoiding the issue of changing a bundle in the middle of its run. At the same time AMD is being especially specific this time around that Level Up is a “while supplies last” offer (though this is technically true for NSR too), so all signs are pointing to Level Up being a more temporary offer, at least for now.

Throughout all of this it’s worth pointing out that game bundles are traditionally based around buying large number of copies of a title in advance. So besides the more straightforward benefit of increasing the value of their cards, the separate and temporary nature of Level Up may be AMD using the opportunity to burn off excess Crysis 3 and Tomb Raider keys.

All things considered the expansion of AMD’s game bundle is not unexpected, as AMD’s success with Never Settle programs means that they will continue using game bundles to increase the value of their products and offset at least some of the need for price cuts. But even this was admittedly earlier than we figured any additional expansion would arrive, so this comes as a pleasant surprise. More interesting perhaps, the 7790 which launched only a bit more than a month ago is already down $10 on average and has seen both Blood Dragon and Tomb Raider added to its game bundle, so we’re still seeing some price cuts alongside these larger bundles. Overall with 7790s going for as little as $110 after rebate, and 7870s for as little as $220, game bundles are clearly becoming an increasingly large part of the complete package for AMD video cards, with all of the benefits and drawbacks thereof.

Source:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6957/...loaded-program-again-launches-level-up-bundle

 

[Marine-RX179]

...and the GTX760Ti and GTX770 has just instantly become (even more) poor value, before it is even launched...

 

[minizx]

It makes the msi 7870 on offer for £160 this week even more tempting for me

 

[bru]

...and the GTX760Ti and GTX770 has just instantly become (even more) poor value, before it is even launched...

Well to be honest it makes the AMD bundles a little sweeter but I really don't see how you can say it makes an unreleased set of cards poorer value.

 

[Martini1991]

Long winded way of saying they've fleshed out the never settle reloaded bundle per series

 

[Gregster]

This is very exciting. I was interested in the "Never Settle" bundle but it wasn't quite there but now it is the "Level up" bundle, it just makes me want it more. This for sure will turn people away from the 7 series from Nvidia.

On a serious note, there is some good games there but it would be better for AMD to make some noise in the GPU releases.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Well to be honest it makes the AMD bundles a little sweeter but I really don't see how you can say it makes an unreleased set of cards poorer value.

Well, the info so far implied Nvidia is going to release the 760Ti (670 rebadge) at £260+, comparing that to the 7950 with 3GB vram 384-bit bus and now 3 instead of 2 tops games, it makes the Nvidia's offering look even more worse than before.

 

[pgi947]

^yep looks to be a rehash of previous bundles, still good value though.

This must surely mean the other games we know are going to end up in AMD bundles (bf4, grid2 etc..) are being held back for the new cards.

 

[Gregster]

Well, the info so far implied Nvidia is going to release the 760Ti (670 rebadge) at £260+, comparing that to the 7950 with 3GB vram 384-bit bus and now 3 instead of 2 tops games, it makes the Nvidia's offering look even more worse than before.

Do you have anything to back that up? I have been following the "rumours" threads but nothing at all from Nvidia. I remember the Titan was much faster than a 690 on the early rumours..... I also heard that if you say "Gullible" slowly, it sounds just like oranges.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Do you have anything to back that up? I have been following the "rumours" threads but nothing at all from Nvidia. I remember the Titan was much faster than a 690 on the early rumours..... I also heard that if you say "Gullible" slowly, it sounds just like oranges.

The thing is, even if the 760Ti was launch at £200-220 instead of the rumoured £260, the card is still poor value comparing the the 7950 with 3 games at £230.

If they are gonna launch the 760Ti at 560Ti launch price range, then yea...it could be attractive. I mean think back to the 560Ti 1GB vs 6950 2GB back then...GPU wise both are around the same in terms of performance, but 560Ti 1GB was at £160-£180 and the 6950 was at £220 and had double the amount of vram (plus some could unlock); fast forward to today...I just don't see how the 760Ti could be bang for bucks at £200+, unless it is for the people who "must have Nvidia, no AMD please".

If Nvidia actually gonna launch the new cards range at lower prices than we all expect, then of course it is welcomed.

 

[Gregster]

You keep using £ for release prices, which you just can't do. (for the record, I paid £218.18 for my 560TI on the 28th January 2011 from OcUK). You seem to want a miracle of the 760TI being released at sub £200 and with games and frankly you and I know that isn't going to happen.

AMD launched the 4870 at $299 and the 4850 at $199
AMD launched the 5870 at $379 and the 5850 at $259
AMD launched the 6970 at $369 and the 6950 at $299
AMD launched the 7970 at $549 and the 7950 at $449

Nvidia launch the 280 at $649 and the 260 at $399
Nvidia launch the 480 at $499 and the 470 at $349
Nvidia launch the 580 at $499 and the 570 at $349
Nvidia launch the 680 at $500 and the 670 at $400

When you take those price points, I would be more worried about AMD's future prices being "Value for money" at least with Nvidia, they consistently charge a lot.

 

[Marine-RX179]

You keep using £ for release prices, which you just can't do. (for the record, I paid £218.18 for my 560TI on the 28th January 2011 from OcUK). You seem to want a miracle of the 760TI being released at sub £200 and with games and frankly you and I know that isn't going to happen.

AMD launched the 4870 at $299 and the 4850 at $199
AMD launched the 5870 at $379 and the 5850 at $259
AMD launched the 6970 at $369 and the 6950 at $299
AMD launched the 7970 at $549 and the 7950 at $449

Nvidia launch the 280 at $649 and the 260 at $399
Nvidia launch the 480 at $499 and the 470 at $349
Nvidia launch the 580 at $499 and the 570 at $349
Nvidia launch the 680 at $500 and the 670 at $400

When you take those price points, I would be more worried about AMD's future prices being "Value for money" at least with Nvidia, they consistently charge a lot.

You forgetting one thing though...Nvidia in the pass has ALWAYS had the lead with performance in the pass gens (even the GTX570 was generally considered faster than the 6970 despite the lack of vram). This gen (is the is probably the first time that AMD clearly has the lead, better hardware spec and at a lower price, due to how Nvidia pushed a mid-high range up to become the flagship for the 600 series, and giving use 256-bit bus cards rather than 384-bit bus cards like they always had in the pass. But that wasn't enough, they have to rebadge the GK104 range AGAIN to the 700 series. It's fine to be "consistently high price", if they can remain "consistently ahead"....however this is not the case at the moment...the Nvidia cards are asking for a premium despite they are falling behind in performance.

Yes the price hike for AMD 7900 series launch price is indeed worrying, but at least it was based on the fact that it was clearly equal/ahead of the previous gen Nvidia's GTX580 and Nvidia didn't have new cards out at the time; this time the position has been switched, but the problem is the GK104 base cards is not gonna match/beat AMD's last gen 7900 performance...Nvidia NEED to have the GTX770 up against the 7950, and the GTX780 up against the 7970 to maintain the performance lead. We all know that the GTX760Ti/GTX770 ain't gonna be much faster (more like gonna be slower in many cases) than the 7950, and considering they are claiming these to be "new gen" cards, I don't see how they think can they even ask for same/higher price than a faster/equal performance 1 year old card with 3 free popular games.

 

[Gregster]

I won't disagree with past performance favouring Nvidia and the 7970 Vs 680 was no different till AMD released the 12.11 drivers. For sure, AMD are doing well with current pricing and games and I don't argue with the fact that AMD are the tops for price per performance. I do argue with rumours being passed as fact and until something is set from Nvidia, I wouldn't be quoting rumours as fact.

Not having a dig btw and you make some good points I do have a concern over future gen pricing being out of reach for the general public but a lack of sales could encourage a reality price back.

Anyways, I am going off topic and should be discussing Never settle/Level up

 

[cainer]

Level Up will see most AMD bundles expanding by one more game, going from 3 to 4 and 2 to 3 respectively

on first reading i thought they said "retrospectively"