AMD cuts Radeon HD 7000-series pricing ahead of dual-GPU launch

Jos

Posts: 3,073   +97
Staff

AMD is following up from the launch of its Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition graphics card, which sought to take the single-GPU performance crown from Nvidia’s GTX 680 late last month, with a new round of price cuts that will affect several of its mid- and high-end GCN based offerings. The move comes as gamers await AMD’s rumored launch of the dual-GPU HD 7990 later this month to take on Nvidia’s GTX 690.

The new prices will go into effect starting today. Among them, the 7970 will have it's price dropped from $479 to $429, the 7950 from $399 to $349, and the 7870 from $349 to $299. These represent a significant drop over the launch prices of $549, $449 and $399 respectively. Here’s the full breakdown:

GPU Launch price Spring MSRP Summer MSRP
Radeon HD 7970 $549 $479 $429
Radeon HD 7950 $449 $399 $349
Radeon HD 7870 $349 $349 $299
Radeon HD 7850 $249 $249 ~$239
Radeon HD 7770 $159 $139 ~$119
Radeon HD 7750 $109 $109 ~$99

As AnandTech notes, since AMD can’t control final card pricing beyond what they charge partners for parts, unofficially some of these prices, or even lower ones, were already available at retailers like Newegg -- right now a Radeon HD 7950 from MSI can be found for as low as $340, for example.

Later this month AMD is expected to launch its dual-GPU Radeon HD 7990, which will go head-to-head against the GeForce GTX 690. Specs will reportedly include two Tahiti XT (Radeon HD 7970) cores packing a total of 4096 stream processors clocked at 1 GHz, 6GB of GDDR5 memory (3GB per GPU) clocked at 1250 MHz, and the ability to drive 6-monitor Eyefinity configurations out-of-the-box.

The card will be launched in limited quantities. Judging by availability of the new 7970 GHz Edition it might take a few weeks until consumers can find AMD’s upcoming dual-GPU flagship in stores.

Permalink to story.

 
Finally competitive again - now to win back the users they upset with their initial pricing structure of the 79xx cards. I, for one, am going to stick with nVidia for a while where the dollar gets me the same performance because of the crazy initial pricing. Once they put something out that really trips nVidia up I'll switch back but if it's close I'll stay where I'm at. This change does make the 7950 vs 670 battle a lot more interesting though - if we actually see further price drops at the retail outlets.
 
When a bang for the buck GPU (Radeon) cost more then a GPU with superior drivers/features (GTX) your going to have a problem.
By the time 256bit cards don't have enough bandwidth, it will be 2-3 years from now and all of todays current cards will be nice and outdated.

LNCPapa said:
This change does make the 7950 vs 670 battle a lot more interesting though
Well AMD had to do something.
Stock for stock the 670 beats the 7970 at 1920 X 1200.
 
The 7850 needed a 20 dollar price drop...at least. why is there a +100 dollar gap between the 7770 and the 7850
 
300USD or 230 quid is still too much to ask for a 7870. 200 quid would be closer to the mark.
Help is on the way.
The only reason HD 7870 cards are so expensive is that there is no direct competition from Nvidia in that market/performance segment - just as the case with the initial HD 7970 pricing. That is about to change- the GTX 660Ti is due to launch in four weeks ( English language article based on the SweClockers report >>here<<)
 
Back