ATI cuts 6950 allocation

[555BUK]

I still believe that price will be more dependent on performance and demand than production cost. ATI can clearly sell these at a good profit, well below whatever NVidia can afford to sell the 580's at, but they will want to make as much money as possible.

*If 6950/6970 performance is less than GTX 570/580 then clearly ATI will need to undercut NVidia by a comparative margin. As the top card GTX580 pricing will remain relatively unchanged.
*If 6950/6970 performs equally, ATI will still undercut NVidia, but by a lesser ammount. NVidia may have to drop pricing slightly.
*If both ATI cards outperform their counterparts there willl be no need for ATI to sell at lower prices. If performance is 30% greater than Fermi (as posted by Raven), ATI can charge £400+ and make a killing ON THE 6970. NVidia will be forced to drop Fermi to a point where it is price competetive and ATI can still cream in the cash without large reductions. People will always pay a premium for the top card.

It is by no means a give that ATI will take the performance crown. It seems likely, but strange things happen.

we shall see.....

 

[vorticalspace]

So hold on, you're telling me that having a higher volume product with lower profits doesn't work?

You should probably go and tell the whole manufacturing industry this since it will be news to them.

Out value/Out Perform/Out Market. That is how you swing customers to your brand, and bring volume to your products and therefore profit to your company and shareholders.

Fair points

But i'm pretty sure AMD/Nvidia aren't trying to swing a bunch of propeller heads on a tech forum.

High end GPU's is not where they make their money and tbh, i've wondered for a long time why they even bother.

It seems to me that the major benefit of high end GPU's to AMD/Nvidia is so they can justify a higher price point for their low/mid range cards.

If high end cards didn't exist, I bet you a pound to a piece of brown stuff that low/mid range GPU's would be cheaper.

 

[Journey]

Well it's beneficial to all (customers) if what Raven stated is massively incorrect, it would be better if this card was only slightly faster than a 580GTX no more than 10%, this would allow some great competitive pricing from ATI and would force Nvidia to counter this with a price reduction.

I will be paying attention over the next few hours when the 570GTX reviews and pricing are revealed, as that is where the most sales from the high-end cards are to be made.

 

[Rroff]

I don't see them pricing the 6970 under the 580 at release if its significantly faster, it restricts their ability to manouvering on price.

 

[Skyrocket]

What people tend to forget is that.
Yes 580 / 480 are bigger .
But Nvidia orders many more tmsc wafers.
More wafers = cheaper cost
+ Nvidia is tied to tmsc. Amd are not and will
Move to globalf eventually.
Any guesses who tmcs sell wafers cheaper to? Nvidia or amd?

 

[jigger]

HD6850 = GTX460. £140 - £150

HD6870 = GTX460. £160 - £190

HD6950 = GTX470-HD5850 £229 - £280

HD6970 = GTX480-HD5870 £279 - £300

HD6990 = GTX580. £350 - £450 depending on what two cores are used.

If ATI are producing large numbers of cards then the prices have to be lower and vice versa. I'm sure some of the UK retailers will try and inflate prices for the first week, then fall inline with EU/US prices. You can order from the EU easily enough nowadays anyhow.

 

[Rroff]

HD6990 = GTX580. £350 - £450 depending on what two cores are used.

I'd have thought £450 is going to be the very lowest for this card, even if its 2x mid level cores these dual GPU cards usually have a premium on them, especially as nVidia has no answer to the 6990 currently.

 

[bru]

remember AMD have already told us the 6970 will slot in just behind the 5970, so i certainly can not see it ending up 30-40% faster than a GTX580 on average. maybe in an odd benchmark, but thats like showing a benchmark where a GTX580 is nearly twice as fast as a ATI 5870....ie not very Representative of the general situation.

 

[bru]

HD6850 = GTX460. £140 - £150

HD6870 = GTX460. £160 - £190

HD6950 = GTX470-HD5850 £229 - £280

HD6970 = GTX480-HD5870 £279 - £300

HD6990 = GTX580. £350 - £450 depending on what two cores are used.

hehehehe have you heard the one about the two nuns on a bycicle

 

[Rroff]

HD6850 = GTX460. £140 - £150

HD6870 = GTX460. £160 - £190

HD6950 = GTX470-HD5850 £229 - £280

HD6970 = GTX480-HD5870 £279 - £300

HD6990 = GTX580. £350 - £450 depending on what two cores are used.

The 6950 will probably be going up against the 570 which will be more expensive than the 470 at release, probably close to £300 it makes sense for AMD to drop the price of this card under the 570 as that will immediatly make it more attractive, but they have no reason to drop too far below as it will sell in shedloads. Which means its likely to be around the £280 mark, which means the 6970 would not be around the £300 mark as its too close to the 6950. Which would put the 6970 in the £360+ ball park. Personally tho I'd be unsuprised for it to launch slightly over £400 including VAT.

 

[vorticalspace]

Without their professional gpu market, they'd be DEEP in the red, the 470gtx loses cash per core, the 460gtx is being sold basically at cost, probably a loss on the 768mb ones, the 260gtx was sold at a loss, the 275gtx was probably sold at cost and the 280gtx/285gtx had to be sold way below what Nvidia wanted.

Simple question:-

Why do Nvidia bother making consumer grade GPU's?

Would it be true to say that gaming GPU's are currently a side line for Nvidia and therefore as you suggest, heavily subsidised by their professional market sales.

Most companies can sustain a loss making product line for so long before having to act.
By your reckoning, Nvidia have been in the business of losing money on consumer grade GPU's for at least the last 2 years if not longer.

Does their dominant position in the professional market afford them this luxury.(to lose money)

 

[Mr Krugga]

What people tend to forget is that.
Yes 580 / 480 are bigger .
But Nvidia orders many more tmsc wafers.
More wafers = cheaper cost
+ Nvidia is tied to tmsc. Amd are not and will
Move to globalf eventually.
Any guesses who tmcs sell wafers cheaper to? Nvidia or amd?

They used to have two completely different contracts for buying the wafers. Iirc, AMD bought working GPUs only and Nvidia had whole wafers no matter what the yields were. It's probably Nvidia that buys cheaper wafers but it doesn't matter as their GPUs are generally larger.

 

[555BUK]

Simple question:-Why do Nvidia bother making consumer grade GPU's?

You could equally ask why AMD continue to produce consumer processors when they lose money and get spanked by Intel. NVidia do atleast have a competetive product (performance wise), but ATI are causing them big problems.

I think NVidia's biggest problem was the TSMC 40nm process not being as productive as they believed. 470/480 yields were much lower than expected and even now things are bad.

 

[Skyrocket]

mansell is clearly faster then hamilton.

schumacher is going to be the 6990. Now that will be 30-70% faster than 580GTX.

 

[Sidney James]

remember AMD have already told us the 6970 will slot in just behind the 5970, so i certainly can not see it ending up 30-40% faster than a GTX580 on average. maybe in an odd benchmark, but thats like showing a benchmark where a GTX580 is nearly twice as fast as a ATI 5870....ie not very Representative of the general situation.

Didn't they say that before the 580 came and they held back 69**? could be the situation has changed.Would agree that performance won't be as much as 30-40% higher though.

 

[jigger]

The 6950 will probably be going up against the 570 which will be more expensive than the 470 at release, probably close to £300 it makes sense for AMD to drop the price of this card under the 570 as that will immediatly make it more attractive, but they have no reason to drop too far below as it will sell in shedloads. Which means its likely to be around the £280 mark, which means the 6970 would not be around the £300 mark as its too close to the 6950. Which would put the 6970 in the £360+ ball park. Personally tho I'd be unsuprised for it to launch slightly over £400 including VAT.

The HD6950 is replacing the sub £190 HD5850. £250~ RRP.

The GTX570 is replacing the sub £230 GTX470. RRP 299~ RRP ?

You seem to be ignoring ATI will probably be looking to sell 10-20 times the amount amount Nvidia will, and the more the cards cost, the less they can shift, so the more it costs ATI. ATI have to sell a lower price to up the turnover.

Nvidia can't make many cards so they Have to sell at a higher price to make up for the poor turnover. Only a retarded person would try to apply a Nvidia type pricing strategy with ATI's high production numbers and vice versa.

 

[Jokester]

The 6870 replaced the 5770 though and it's RRP is something like $50 more than the 5770 at launch.

 

[MichaelM]

I swear the past few pages have just been people going around in circles talking about price points and sales figures, same arguments brought up again and again and again

 

[MoodyB]

The 6870 replaced the stillborn 5830.

The 6850 was more in the 5770 price ballpark.

 

[jigger]

I would have said the HD6870 replaced the HD5830, and the HD6850 replaced the HD5770.

We are meant to get HD6750 and HD6770.

Edit: Snap. Moody beat me to it.