AMD cuts Radeon HD 7900 series prices, bundles three free games

Jos

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The Radeon HD 7970 arrived as the world's fastest single-GPU graphics cards early this year and the lack of competition from Nvidia at the time allowed AMD to have its way with the market, stamping it with an uncharacteristically high retail price of $549. The lower-specced Radeon HD 7950 offered an easier to swallow alternative but still left us waiting for some competitive pressure from Nvidia to force prices down.

Fortunately, that time has come. Starting today, not only is AMD cutting the suggested retail prices for its high-end Radeon HD 7900 series, but it is also throwing in a trio of games for a limited time to sweeten the deal. In a statement the company said that the HD 7970 will now go for as low as $479 and remains "the only enthusiast card available in volume" while the HD 7950 is now "an impulse buy away at $399". In addition, the less powerful AMD Radeon HD 7770 is also getting a cut from $160 to as low as $139.

The free game promotion is being dubbed 'Three for Free' and will include a full copy of Dirt Showdown, Nexuiz and Deus Ex: Human Revolution with each AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series graphics card.

Nvidia may have reclaimed the performance crown with the GeForce GTX 680, but AMD is offering a compelling argument with the Radeon HD 7970 by undercutting its rival by $30-$50 and including three free games. Furthremore, a quick search on Newegg shows GTX 680 products are still out of stock.

Update: AMD just sent us a quick note to clarify that etailers and retailers are just getting the 'Three for Free' promo in place now, so it may not be up and running just yet. It should be in full swing within a couple of weeks.

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Still overpriced IMO. Both the 7970 and the GTX 680 (I'd really like to know Nvidia's profit margins on the 680).
 
No thanks. I am on 560 Ti now, and I'd go with 680 if I really sense a gfx card update.
 
The games can be had through various deals for under $20 for all three, so not a big deal there.
A (7970) is a great bang for the buck card but AMD's setbacks/limited features/issues reside with thier driver/software suite which is still quite inferior to the best there is, Nvidia.
 
"The games can be had through various deals for under $20 for all three, so not a big deal there."
Maybe for Deus Ex. The Dirt game comes out next month. That actually is a deal.
 
It would have been a better deal if it was $479 for after market versions such as MSI Twin Frozr. The reference blower is louder than the fan on HD6950/6970 making it a nuisance at 1150+ mhz overclocks.

I got $ to buy a new GPU but honestly I feel like it would literally be throwing it into the toilet. There just isn't any demanding PC games worth upgrading to from last generation of cards. By the time we get another demanding game such as Crysis, it'll probably be 2-3 years at which point GTX680/HD7970 will be ancient history. Why spend $500 just to go from 0AA to 4xMSAA in BF3? That's just me though but I don't recall a time like this in a long time where upgrading is more for fun rather than necessity. Also, it's not like the upcoming hit titles such as Diablo III, SC2:HofS, Max Payne 3 will be demanding either. Meh, I am waiting until there is actually a valid reason to upgrade other than for e-peen and Eyefinity.
 
What "limited features"? I switched to ATI several years ago and have no desire to return to Nvidia's buggy control panel and ugly color management - if I remember correctly it couldn't restore desktop color settings after I quit a game. Maybe if you ONLY play games that's fine, but for professional work and gaming Nvidia didn't work for me. AMD is making great video cards, even Apple selected them for their Macs over NVidia. Deus Ex HR is an awesome game, really nice bundle they got, not some unknown half-demos usually shipped with video cards. Hope AMD pulls through these tough times and I won't have to switch back to NVidia ever again.
 
Massive troll above me. Nobody actually believes Nvidia's drivers and control panel are inferior to AMD's. They'd have to be insane.
 
What "limited features"? I switched to ATI several years ago and have no desire to return to Nvidia's buggy control panel and ugly color management
Things just might have changed in the intervening years- both in default quality and CP settings. Your statement makes about as much sense as someone "switching to Nvidia from ATi years ago because CCC didn't support custom game profiles, forced AA" etc.
As for "what limited features", I think it's a given that AMD's achilles heel is software. They are a company that reacts rather than drives software implementation (as opposed to the hardware which is generally first class). The aforementioned custom gaming profiles and transparency antialiasing being noteable examples. The fact that Nvidia have introduced a refined (higher i.q. with no greater performance penalty)MLAA in FXAA, has TXAA in the hands of game devs, has adaptive v-sync up and running on day one, and last but not least has implemented a working on-die encoder/decoder (NVenc)...while AMD's VCE feature- touted in the HD 7970 paper launch on 22nd Dec.2011 is still M.I.A.
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even Apple selected them for their Macs over NVidia.
...for one year. This years Apple iterations are destined to be Intel Ivy Bridge iGP (MBA and Nvidia Kepler based GPU's for MBP/workstation
Hope AMD pulls through these tough times and I won't have to switch back to NVidia ever again.
Which is attitute diametrically opposed to the enthusiast, who evaluates each new round of hardware on its merits and buys/recommends accordingly.
 
DBZ. You forgot to mention AMD's essentially non existent openGL support.
I think you'll find that the standard reply from AMD and it's more zealous supporters is that AMD supply the hardware and the current driver so it's up to the devs to make sure the implementation works with them (i.e. It's all the developers fault - an oft repeated theme voiced via guerilla marketing at certain forums *cough*Rage3D 'n' SA*cough*
 
Yup. I heard similar statements about Bulldozer and how it's Microsoft's job to make sure it works to its maximum potential on their OS. Maybe AMD should learn to work with software designers rather than just pushing out their products and expecting people to tailor their software by themselves, as though software designers give two ****s whether or not AMD's hardware works properly.
 
Oh snap. Hating on AMD up in here.

Nvidia does some of the same stuff. I realized I didn't like them as a company when I couldn't have waving flags in Mirror's Edge because the developer had licensed Nvidia's PhysX engine and I owned an ATI card. Twas a sad day.

The AMD vs Nvidia debate is like 2 party politics, you just hate the other side.
 
Those are some really good deals..... plus such a good games. Although I'm hoping for a price drop on the HD 7870. I don't know what's the fuss with the AMD drivers, they work just fine, I have own both Nvidia and AMD and I prefer much more AMD cards, sorry for Nvidia fanboys.
 
Those are some really good deals..... plus such a good games. Although I'm hoping for a price drop on the HD 7870. I don't know what's the fuss with the AMD drivers, they work just fine, I have own both Nvidia and AMD and I prefer much more AMD cards, sorry for Nvidia fanboys.

Uh sorry but DBZ sort of proved you completely wrong above. Good luck next time though, their drivers are indisputably inferior to Nvidia's in every way.
 
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