AMD plans new round of Radeon price cuts, Sleeping Dogs bundle

As expected, it didn't take long for AMD's response to Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 660 Ti to arrive. According to Anandtech, the company will be enacting a new round of price cuts later this week, which will be affecting the……

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They'd better come down more than that. The 660 Ti was meant to compete directly with the 7950 and beats it in nearly every comparison (in fact, it even competes favorably with the 7970 in some games), yet is $10-$20 cheaper than the 7950. Not to mention nVidia has a promotion right now where if you buy one of the Ti's you get Borderlands 2 with it.

AMD needs to come down another $30-$40 if they really want to compete. It's all about getting the best bang for the buck.

I thought the 7950B was the response to the 660 TI. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6152/amd-announces-new-radeon-hd-7950-with-boost

I wonder what the score will look like when overclocking both 660ti and 7950. I have the 7950 and that thing just shoots through the roof in overclocking, from stock 800mhz to 1200mhz (50% overcock). I am wondering if 660Ti 's overclockability is as good as the 7950. anyone with a 660ti care to chime in?

If so, the 7950B is going to be even more expensive than the 7950. And looking at that AnandTech article, the benchmark increases from the standard to the B model aren't that significant. A 4 frame average increase over all the games tested.

Looking at Techspot's review of the Gigabyte 660 Ti, except for a couple of games (Aliens vs. Predator & Metro 2033), the 660 Ti beats the 7950 in all other games, and many by a significant amount - 20 fps or more. So that 4 extra frames per second that the B model generates still isn't going to cut it if you're looking at that value alone.

We'll have to see pricing and side-by-side comparisons, but I'm thinking AMD is still going to have to do some price drops to compete - especially with the Borderlands 2 tossed in as bait with the 660 Ti purchase.

For howzz1854, here's the TechSpot report on the Ti OC:

http://www.techspot.com/review/565-nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti/page12.html

I wonder if it's possible for TS to include BF3 in the overclock comparison. I know my 7950 at 1200mhz is equivalent or faster than even 7970 Gigaherz edition, which puts it way beyond an overclocked 660ti on TS's benchmark test in Crysis 2. and I know I am not one of the only few out there with 7950 clocked up to 1200mhz, I've seen many beyond that mark.

hummm

Just curious howzz - what's the temp on your GPU with it OC'd to 1200mhz? That's a damn serious OC - thinking you're running liquid nitrogen or something as a cooler...LOL.

In techSpot's review for the GTX 660 ti they use Catalyst 12.6 that doesn't have the performance boost for 7000 series. In every review I've read the HD 7950 beats the GTX 660 Ti, not to mention that this card overclocks way better! A HD 7950 is simp'ly a better buy than a GTX 660 Ti specially for future games!

Well darkzelda, I hate to disappoint you, but here are a few reviews that don't jive with what you said:

Maximum PC - 660Ti cards beat the 7950 in 7 out of 11 comparisons
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/nvidias_new_sweet_spot_gpu_three_gtx_660_ti_cards_reviewed

TweakTown - Ti wins in 13 out of 18 categories (including heat, noise and power consumption)
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/48...gb_power_edition_video_card_review/index.html

BitTech - Ti wins in 6 out or 8 categories (and this one includes 7950B)
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/08/16/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-2gb-review/1

Guru3D - Ti wins in 14 of 18 categories
http://www.guru3d.com/article/msi-geforce-gtx-660-ti-power-editon-oc-review/1

And in TechSpot's review here, with the exception of Metro 2033 and Aliens vs. Predator the 660 ti shows better results in every other category. Right now the 660 Ti is simply the better card with the better pricing, there's no denying it.

the 7850 will hopefully be on sale often for less then 200 then. Then ill pick one up.

It was, but that originated from AMD's PR not Sales.
The BIOS flash boost feature* was introduced primarily to get reviewers to test the GTX 660Ti against an overclocked 7950 without having to fight an impossible deadline of getting a revised 7950 w/boost onto store shelves, while the price cuts are an attempt to retake marketshare back from Nvidia's GTX600 series- which is a double edged sword kind of deal since constant price cutting isn't usually commensurate with a premiere brand ( a public perception problem in marketing), and secondly, it knifes the resell market esp. for those who bought cards at the initial MSRP's...which means that Nvidia cards tend to hold their value in the resell market since Nvidia cards generally don't fall far from the initial launch price. On the other hand, cheaper cards** mean a better deal for consumers- albeit at the expense of AMD's financial earnings.

* A complete waste of time for the "consumer" since anyone proficient enough to BIOS flash a VGA, is likely competant enough to manually overclock their card using much less voltage than the "fail safe" 1.12v applied in the BIOS flash.
** Anyone with a keen eye would notice that these prices have already been in effect for a few weeks in many markets- especially if you factor in mail-in rebates.

I recently upgraded the heatsink fan to an aftermarket acelerro Extreme 7970. before with the stock none reference cooler it was hovering 85~90c at 1200mhz in a 70F ambient temp, and VRM was insane at 95~100c. now with the acelerro extreme in 85F ambient temperature it stays at 60c, and VRM at less than 70c. I believe I have maxed out the power draw for the two PCIe plugs, because at 1200mhz I feed it 1.225volt, and everything is peachy, furmark, heaven, Crysis2 benchmark all stable. but if I push it pass 1.23volt... it card actually will shut down in power intensive games like Metro. so I believe I've maxed out the power draw. it's too bad, because I would love to see how much higher this Tahiti can go if I had more power.

That's some really nice overclocking. And very manageable temps with the aftermarket cooler. Have you clocked it on the original Crysis to see what kind of frame rate you can get?

I know I did that a while back and the performance improvement was quite a bit, can't remember since I don't really play C2 anymore. I play BF3 more often and comparing stock 800mhz to 1200mhz the difference average FPS goes from roughly 35fps to 48~50fps in relatively intense scenes, Ultra mode 2560X1440. which is why I am really interested in seeing the overclocking score between the two. because in my case that's an impressive 37% of frame rate improvement, wonder how much in % frame rate improvement the 660 will get.

I should point out that the memory overclock also plays a huge role tho. I couldn't achieve the performance mentioned above with GPU core frequency alone. the memory was bumped from stock 1250 to 1600. and the performance improvement started to take off once beyond 1400mhz.

the 7950 isnt quite there yet, but newegg already has a 7850 or 2 for less then $200.

correction... I just got home and fired up the game and did a quick FRAP on Gulf of Oman map. stock 800mhz is 40fps @ultra 2560~1440, with a quick hotkey (thanks to Afterburner) at 1200mhz is 56fps, so that's 40% increase.

Again, very excellent OC howzz. So one last question - what's the native resolution on your monitor?

2560X1440. it's actually a 27inch apple LED display. one of the reason I bought the 7950 is due to the native mini display port support. so yes... all testing above were done in 2560X1440 res.

Incorrect we used the 12.7 drivers.