** AMD R290X BF4 EDITION - WE ARE NOW TAKING PRE-ORDERS / DEPOSITS!! **
- Thread starter Gibbo
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How bad does my motherboard restrict me with this R9 being PCi-e 4.0?, would I have a substantial bottleneck?
I've really been wondering about both AMD and Nvidia's pricing recently...
I mean is this really going to be ~£500?
The 7970 has been dropping in price substantially lately, and can now be had for ~£230, and performance per £ is meant to get better every generation. So by rights the R9 290X should perform a minimum of twice a 7970, which it most likely will not.
The 7970 GHz edition was just shy of 100% faster than the 6970. And now the 7970 is roughly the same price as the 6970 was. So that means between the 6970 being out and now, we've only just about got to double for our money (or slightly less than that), and if the R9 290x is going to be £500 or more, then performance per £ will actually go down (at the top-end anyway).
So in summary, in about 3 years performance per £ has less than doubled. It's a bad time to be a PC consumer.
End rant.
I mean is this really going to be ~£500?
The 7970 has been dropping in price substantially lately, and can now be had for ~£230, and performance per £ is meant to get better every generation. So by rights the R9 290X should perform a minimum of twice a 7970, which it most likely will not.
The 7970 GHz edition was just shy of 100% faster than the 6970. And now the 7970 is roughly the same price as the 6970 was. So that means between the 6970 being out and now, we've only just about got to double for our money (or slightly less than that), and if the R9 290x is going to be £500 or more, then performance per £ will actually go down (at the top-end anyway).
So in summary, in about 3 years performance per £ has less than doubled. It's a bad time to be a PC consumer.
End rant.
Why undercut competition by £100-£200 to force them to lower their prices, when you can simply join in the eating of the big ol' pie. As long as your GPU has a price/performance that is competitive with the competition, you can both make mad stacks of cash.
Do note, however, that the smaller the fabrication gets, and the newer the process, the more failures you get during the process. Only after a year or so of refining a manufacturing process can you get a great pass rate, this goes for both CPU's and GPU's. I'm not condoning these absolutely retarded prices (anyone that defends that what you're buying is actually worth in excess of £500 is delusional), but I guess it puts it into perspective. Also there is no other competition with AMD and NVidia, every one who rises gets bought out (see 3DFX), and it would take billions of dollars and at least 10 years of R&D to get into the market and provide something competitive.
yep last two years ha took the **** in gpus pricing. top end gpus used to stick between 400-500 now they are close to double !
best thing is at 1080 you can get cards that like the 7950/7970 oc well will get quite close and cost 5 times less. enthusiasts stuff always is dear but its almost like they want us to buy consoles
If they come in at £500 im just buying a console and getting another 50" screen, will be cheaper than a PC upgrade this year. Will wait until next year to see what the AMD dominated console market has done to the games on PCs and buy accordingly.
yep last two years ha took the **** in gpus pricing. top end gpus used to stick between 400-500 now they are close to double !
best thing is at 1080 you can get cards that like the 7950/7970 oc well will get quite close and cost 5 times less. enthusiasts stuff always is dear but its almost like they want us to buy consoles
Let's hope that things going back to AMD releasing cards after Nvidia will be good for prices. All this crazy price hiking started with AMD getting to 28nm before Nvidia (releasing the HD 7000 series before Nvidia released the GTX 600 series), but supposedly Nvidia is going to bring out Maxwell on 20nm before AMD's 20nm offering.
So here's hoping some time next year we'll be able to get something twice the power of the R9 290X for ~£300. That'll bring performance per £ back to reasonable levels.
Smaller process =/= linear performance increase. Take Haswell for example, the die shrink from IVB created an almost non-existent performance increase, merely improved upon power draw. We'll see smaller and smaller improvements over longer periods of time until somebody starts learning how to stack upwards and deal with the heat.
Number of transistors gets you roughly linear performance increases. The reason Sandy bridge to Ivy bridge to Haswell resulted in a ~20% performance increase in total is because Haswell has barely any more transistors to Sandy bridge. Intel has been making their cpu die's smaller and smaller, meaning they get more efficient but not faster.
If you wanted to extrapolate how much performance you could get from the 22nm process if you used it to keep the die size the same as sandy bridge (which was 32nm, so i.e. double the transistors), then Haswell 'should' be 8 core/16 threads (for an i7). So you'd have twice the cores/threads, plus the performance-per-clock improvements that Haswell has over sandy bridge.
Don't think that smaller nodes don't bring the performance increases they used to, just realise that Intel aren't going for performance any more, they're going for efficiency and integrated graphics.
Caporegime
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The price hiking happened well before 28NM.
The X1950XTX,8800GTX,8800 Ultra, GTX280,GTX480, and GTX580 were all around £400 to £500(or thereabouts) at launch.
The GTX780 and Geforce Titan raised the prices to £475+ too.
These were all the fastest cards at launch. Only the GTX285 and HD5870 broke the mould.
The HD7970 3GB launched at the same price as the GTX580 3GB,while being faster,having surround gaming out of the box,overclocking better and having more potential for driver improvements.
The HD7950 3GB launched at around the same price as the GTX580 1.5GB,hence being cheaper than the GTX580 3GB,while having surround gaming out of the box,overclocking better and having more potential for driver improvements.
The Galaxy MDT GTX580 1.5GB was one of the few GTX580 cards to have surround gaming and cost as much as an HD7970 3GB.
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You've hit the nail on the head there by comparing the HD7000 series to the GTX 500 series.
Part of the reason the price hikes happened is because AMD priced their cards relative to the GTX 500 series, but they 'should' have been priced against the GTX 600 series. But since Nvidia didn't release their series till much later, AMD had a monopoly on the new generation/processing node, and therefore a monopoly on performance, so they could charge what they liked.
Then in come Nvidia, late to the party, and have better performance for their die sizes, and they're not interested in a price war, so they just price their cards relative to AMD's inflated prices.
So I'm just hoping that if AMD go second this time, and/or if both companies release their 20nm offerings close together, then the prices will be more reasonable.
OCUk is only 1 of 2 e-tailers in the UK to get the pre0orders from AMD. They've sold 150 so far and have at least 200 allocated to them
Soldato
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Totally agree. Strange. How you can preorder withour knowing the actual final price (which perceivably could be anywhere between £500 and 700) or before any reviews have been released let alone nda lifted. Blind buying?
I'm not sure of the purpose really - the pre-order is refundable, and is a mild expression of interest, hardly anything committing. Wonder how AMD will handle the pricing...
They could just push their luck and ask £800, and alienate their consumers. Will see how many will think to pull out of the pre-orders, or whether they'd follow through!
They could just push their luck and ask £800, and alienate their consumers. Will see how many will think to pull out of the pre-orders, or whether they'd follow through!
purpose is " we got 300 pre orders already " because you have only paid 99 pound which will tempt even people who wont buy in the end when the actual price is released. would be interesting to see how many dont buy once price is launched 
more pre orders looks like it will be more successful launch and also drives the hype and makes others buy.
if they just put the proper price straight off the bat with no results to back em people would be cautious and not purchase a many. just marketing.
more pre orders looks like it will be more successful launch and also drives the hype and makes others buy.
if they just put the proper price straight off the bat with no results to back em people would be cautious and not purchase a many. just marketing.
Pre ordering something without specs, final price or details is kinda like funding a kickstarter project.
Bit too much of a gamble :/
Also having the pre order at 99, when the end product will not retail for anywhere near that, is just plain misleading.
Bit too much of a gamble :/
Also having the pre order at 99, when the end product will not retail for anywhere near that, is just plain misleading.
