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Why didn't Nvidia just drop the price of the 285?

eyetrip

eyetrip

eyetrip

Soldato
Joined
8 Nov 2006
Posts
9,237
Just looking at the 275, I can't help but wonder why they didn't just drop the price on the 285 rather than introduce the 275.

I mean the price diff from 260 to 275 makes the 275 not worth it, and the price diff from the 275 to the 285 makes the 285 not worth it. In my opinion of course.

Surely they would have been better off making the 285 a similar price to the 4890, without adding yet another model.

Are the people in charge there idiots? Or am I an idiot and their strategy makes sense to everyone but me?
 
The problem is that they wouldn't have something which competes directly with the HD 4980 unless they drop it to sub $300.

From anandtech:

ss.jpg


Above pic is missing the HD 4870 512MB which slots in at around $170-180.
 
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But the 9800GTX+ competes with the 4850, the GTX 260 competes with the 4870. So the 285 could be considered competition to the 4890....
 
It's just for the sakes of one-ups-manship. They have a product that is very slightly faster than the 4890/GTX 275, but is widely considered to be a tier above, mostly due to price and general opinion. It's basically just so they can say 'well ATi's best single core is only as good as our second best'.
 
The 285 is expensive for a few reasons;

1) It's an expensive card to produce. Because of the large die, the GTX200 series is costly and Nvidia aren't making a huge margin on each unit sold. The 275 is cheaper than the 285 to produce due to the narrower memory bus & less RAM, and thus they can sell it at a lesser price and still make an acceptable margin.

2) Their marketing strategy involves concentrating on having a 'Halo' product - ie, the fastest GPUs available. They hope that people will buy their products because they trust Nvidia - after all, if a company can produce the best performing products in the market place, surely the cheaper derivatives should be good as well?

3) Also the 285 @ £300+ is intended to make people feel like they're getting a lot of meat for their money - a premium product, as opposed to a more mid-range item such as a 4870.
 
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The official price for the 275 is $250, you can expect it to drop to sub £200 in a week or two when all the sheep have been ripped off, then it might be better value and slot into its correct pricing slot.
 
Lanz said:
The official price for the 275 is $250, you can expect it to drop to sub £200 in a week or two when all the sheep have been ripped off, then it might be better value and slot into its correct pricing slot.
Click to expand...

The 275 stock seems to be pretty bad. Thats why I'd imagine its so much higher than the HD 4890 which has been creeping towards £200 through the day.
 
285 and 275 have the same die pretty much, they both cost more to make compared to RV770 and RV790. Its better to have the 285 at its current price as some buyers will still buy that and make some extra money for nvidia.
 
From the rumours they are cut down gtx285's so probably no cheaper to make than a gtx285 more the fact they didn't make the grade to become a top end part could be wrong though. So nvidia can use them in this manner and for the buyers its not a bad thing they are a good bit faster than the gtx260's.
 
the OP has a point, the bus, the memory, those are all costs TO THE AIB, not to Nvidia. Nvidia is again selling cores that can run in a 285, for cheaper for another product that "might" sell a lot more than the 285. Nvidia are selling the same core for less, the margins, cheaper pcb and less memory are all price differences to the likes of Pallit, not Nvidia. But the simple answer is Nvidia can't be selling many 285's anyway as its a complete rip off, the 295 offers far better value to be honest, it costs more but has significantly higher performance for a fairly moddest bump in price.

But we can't really tell a single thing about the 275 yet, if you want to buy one of the first batch its pretty decent value, but only one company has them, in very limited quantities with rumours abound that the first batch is for show, the 2nd batch will be based off cheaper 260's, or hell, maybe never appear.

The thing is ATi can easily just sell their card for less, £180 maybe, Nvidia really can't as its already got smeg all margins on anything but the 285 at the moment. If Nvidia can pull large numbers out for supplying the 275 the 4890 price can just drop, if Nvidia turns out to have very very few of these cards around the 4890 has no need to drop its price.
 
Ben M said:
so the only card worth buying is the 260 then? :rolleyes:
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Currently, in my opinion, yes, if you have to have Nvidia. This is from a price vs performance perspective. The GTX 285 at GTX 275 prices (and drop the 275 entirely) would make a lot more sense to me.
 
Ben M said:
so the only card worth buying is the 260 then? :rolleyes:
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he has a point, its the only card in the range that has price/performance at a very good level. The 275 is faster, often by almost nothing for almost 50% more cost, £150/160 for a 260 is very good value these days, £230 for a card that barely beats it and will very very rarely have enough extra power to make a whole new resolution playable, or to increase quality settings much is a bit much. personally i'd take 2fps less to save some £70, but thats just me.
 
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