AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series Price Cuts, New Game Bundle Inbound
by Ryan Smith on August 20, 2012 9:00 PM ESTIn another quick shift in the hyper-competitive performance video card market, AMD sends word this afternoon that they are enacting some price cuts that will be taking effect later this week. This latest round of price cuts comes hot on the heels of last week’s launch of the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which saw NVIDIA introduce their first 28nm performance video card at $299.
The bulk of the cuts here will be for the 7800 series, where the 7870 in particular is finding itself somewhat displaced after the launch of the GTX 660 Ti. The $299 660 Ti isn’t necessarily in direct competition with the already-cheaper 7870 – which had a street price of around $279 last week – and since AMD had already quietly shuffled prices around ahead of the GTX 660 Ti launch, we weren’t expecting any further changes here. But it would appear that the gap between the 7870 and GTX 660 Ti is closer than AMD would like.
As a result the 7870 will be getting a slight price cut to push prices towards $249. This would make the card a full $50 cheaper than the GTX 660 Ti, which is apparently the kind of leverage AMD wants right now.
Meanwhile because the 7870 is getting a price cut, so is the 7850. AMD is expecting the street prices on the 2GB 7850 to fall to around $209 after the price cuts take effect, putting it $40 below the newly repriced 7870. The 2GB 7850 has been averaging $239 in the past week, so this would represent a price cut of around $30. Meanwhile the extremely rare 1GB version of the card would end up below $200, though given how few of those cards exist it’s hard to say if it will hit AMD’s $189 price target.
Alongside those price cuts the 7800 series will be receiving a new game bundle promotion in a few weeks. The AMD Gaming Evolved title Sleeping Dogs will be AMD’s latest bundle, replacing the outgoing DiRT Showdown bundle. This will sit opposite NVIDIA's existing Borderlands 2 promotion, which went live last week. As with past bundles this is being done at a retailer level, so it’s primarily geared towards online retailers (e.g. Newegg) that can quickly bundle vouchers with new cards.
| Second Summer 2012 Radeon HD 7000 Series Price Cuts | |||||||
| Card | Launch Price | Spring MSRP | Summer MSRP | Second Summer MSRP | |||
| Radeon HD 7970GE | $499 | N/A | N/A | $499 | |||
| Radeon HD 7970 | $549 | $479 | $429 | $429 | |||
| Radeon HD 7950 | $449 | $399 | $349 | $319 | |||
| Radeon HD 7870 | $349 | $349 | $299 | $249 | |||
| Radeon HD 7850 | $249 | $249 | $239 | $209 | |||
| Radeon HD 7770 | $159 | $139 | ~$119 | ~$119 | |||
| Radeon HD 7750 | $109 | $109 | ~$99 | ~$99 | |||
Meanwhile, along with the 7800 series the 7950 is also technically getting a price cut. We say “technically” because AMD seems to be rubber stamping price cuts that have already happened. The 7950 has been readily available below its $349 MSRP for quite some time now, and AMD’s new MSRP of $319 reflects the price of cards that are already available.
Finally, it should be noted that despite AMD’s official announcement we wouldn’t be all that surprised if only a few cards ended up reaching these new MSRPs. AMD lists their MSRPs as “starting at”, which means that AMD is listing the price of the cheapest card. This is largely how the previous round of price cuts played out, so pickings right at these new MSRPs may be slim.
| Post-Cut Summer 2012 GPU Pricing Comparison | |||||
| AMD | Price | NVIDIA | |||
| Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition | $469/$499 | GeForce GTX 680 | |||
| Radeon HD 7970 | $429/$399 | GeForce GTX 670 | |||
| Radeon HD 7950 | $319/$299 | GeForce GTX 660 Ti | |||
| $279 | GeForce GTX 570 | ||||
| Radeon HD 7870 | $249 | ||||
| Radeon HD 7850 | $209 | ||||
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philipma1957 - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
wrong. if you buy a hd7950 when you don't game do some bitcoin. makes about 30 bucks a month. so don't say the card costs 320 or 350 vs 400 for a gtx 670.the card cost 250 if you figure in some bitcoin money.
RussianSensation - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
I don't want to start a flame war. Many people ignore bitcoin, the electricity cost isn't worth it for them (Hawaii, Europe) or they aren't interested in learning about it. So I only bring it up from time to time. However, I totally agree with you that with bitcoin mining on the side, HD7900 series cards start to look even better.With the value teetering around $9-10 mark, that starts to add up over the course of 5-6 months, to the point where eventually the card is paid off fully :)
http://www.bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
In 5-6 months you've put years of use on it, and it might just die, if it hasn't already by then - I've seen many cook before that length of timefourzeronine - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
Wait what? Nobody cares about compute?First off, wrong.
Secondly, nVidia's solution for compute is closing the source and charging more for less performance because CUDA is "special".
Third, for graphics professionals, extremely important. When I am not gaming I am simulating and reconstructing geometry. AMD is the absolute choice for users like me and many others in my field. Even the afford ability of the module architecture in the CPU's is VERY good for me (even at this early stage). Just about all my computing at this point is very multi threaded/openCL accelerated. People are ignorant to the fact that AMD is currently focusing on a specific audience. But alas, I'm sorry, but this is where its all going. Your comment is ignorant.
TheJian - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
In IT we be quadros/firegl's for this stuff and it makes users very happy. No argument there.Like it or not, Cuda is fast when used. Even two years ago when benched by Toms in ps5 filters. Which was the easiest to google :) You can google cuda perf all day. Top link in the list below. "Photoshop cuda acceleration" pops that up.
Not saying opengl opencl are bad...Just pointing out cuda is fast too.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adobe-cs5-cuda...
Filters though, don't count on PS itself. :) as they found out two years ago.
From page 2 in that article (more than just ps is augmented):
"Adobe boasts that very large projects can see up to a 10x performance gain from Mercury. Nvidia promises “performance gains of up to 70 times” for visual processing tasks. While we’re more inclined to lean toward Adobe’s number, given some of the GPGPU results we’ve seen in the past, such claims don’t sound infeasible. "
I tend to believe adobe more too...LOL. But toms wondered 2 years ago.
"Turn on CUDA, though, and nothing else matters. Our job finishes right around three minutes regardless of HT or core counts. Without CUDA, the best Photoshop can manage is 12 minutes. The difference is like night and day." 4 times faster isn't bad.
Patflute - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - link
A huge majority of people buy $300-500 graphics cards to mine and most people do not know or care about bitcoin mining. Also why would I leave my computer on and stress the hardware to it's limits for such a small profit?Most people do not compute, get it through your head.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
bitcoin isn't compute, the rage3d fools lied about it.If they could think straight they would have known even 4850's excel in bitcoin mining vs the nVidia equiv....
IT'S NOT COMPUTE.
It's another "idiotic lie because amd fanboys are stupid or pathological", or both.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
You don't do crap but play to make flower pics on flikr.Another braindead lying amd fanboy with cryptology as an answer.
Another LIAR.
TheJian - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
ROFL...Score. :)RussianSensation - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
http://www.techpowerup.com/170575/Graphics-Shipmen...- Nvidia's desktop discrete shipments dropped 10.4% from last quarter
- AMD saw gains of 2.5% in the discrete desktop category
AMD is now delivering better performance and price/performance in nearly every price level from $100-$499. Great for competition!