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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CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Your goose is cooked because the 660Ti is hitting over 1300 core solid, and 7000 memory.Now your idiotic 7950 OC whine is OVER.
RussianSensation - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
OC 7950 walks all over your 660Ti 1300mhz:http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/08/23/galaxy_g...
660Ti 1300mhz is a class below 7950 OC that actually competes with a 670 OC.
Next time do more research before calling someone names.
CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
Answered above wacko.jiffylube1024 - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
I agree on the smart move by AMD. Essentially, they are having their cake and eating it too with the 7xxx series. They got to skim the market with the early release (Nvidia has been doing this for years - remember the 7800 GTX 512MB starting at $600+ and climbing to ~$900 at launch?). Now, AMD are settling in to a more mass-market friendly $200/$300/$400 pricing structure (with some rounding).Of course, this is a direct result of the GTX 680 and 660 Ti being such strong parts, but the AMD cards are still quite attractive, especially the 7850 and 7870 in the sub $300 category, since they have no corresponding competing card from Nvidia.
It's funny how, again and again, Nvidia and AMD converge on price and performance, despite taking radically different approaches initially (ie. small die vs. big die, compute vs. non-compute performance) and then essentially regressing towards the mean in both cases.
TheJian - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
Unfortunately they DIVERGE on profits. AMD has lost 6 billion in the last 10 years, and lost 629 million in the last 12 months. Meanwhile Nvidia has made 2.3billion in the same last 10 years and Nvida has made 473 million in the same last 12 months.http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-p...
http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-p...
Great for consumers, terrible price cuts for AMD. They should have charged more and clocked them higher to begin with, and maybe I could tell you about profits instead of losses then. I cringed when they let Dirk go. AMD only has another 1.5bil to burn through and at this rate they will be out of money by xmas 2014. All they can do is dilute their stock more by selling senior notes again (more bad) or try to get even worse loans at even worse rates since (like america was just downgraded from AAA) since they have been downgraded to basically JUNK bond status. You can't borrow cheaply with bad credit and billions in debt. You can't compete with your enemy with no money for R&D (hence the admitted to giving up the race with Intel). They are about to give up the race with Nvidia. This is a bummer on TWO fronts.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/20/c...
Bankruptcy wouldn't be bad now so we can get someone who has capital behind their IP to get some good R&D going. CPU's are designed 5 years out. We are just seeing the end of AMD's cpu/gpu pipeline run it's 5 year course. Watch the video, it's grim. Then read the link. You can give a fake email to get the report I think...LOL. I'm a registered fool so don't quote me on the fake email ;)
http://www.fool.com/fool/free-report/18/sa-datamin...
The gardner brothers are famous and so is motley fool. They're picking Nvidia as the next trillion dollar company. A bit over the top I think but I'd bet on 100billion and have been putting my money where my mouth is for a while. It's like free money buying their stock right now. Nexus, surface, kindle2, ouya all using tegra 3 selling now or shortly, tegra 4/5/6 were being dev'd stride for stride with tegra 3 (Jen Hsun said they were all 4 being developed at the same time, wayne already in the bag etc). Gpu's are strong and cool, volts awesome OC to 1300 on the 660 and 3 years earlier than AMD to mobile. Fools buy Nvidia like mad :) 4/5 stars from caps. You can dev like this when you have zero debt with 3billion cash and your competition is 2bil in the hole. Bulldozer is the start of the downfall unfortunately. Ceo's and company leads jumping ship right and left is ugly. It's good for consumers now, but we'll all pay in the end. You should load up on NVDA now so you can pay for the expensive Intel/Nvidia stuff later free :) By 2015 we'll all be getting screwed again from both of them.
RussianSensation - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
HD7750 is going for $90-100 on NeweggHD7770 is going for $100-120 on Newegg
HD7850 is going for $180-220 on Newegg
HD7870 is going for $230-240 on Newegg
NV has no desktop competitors for these cards.
NV lost 10% of desktop discrete GPU shipments last quarter:
http://www.techpowerup.com/170575/Graphics-Shipmen...
HD7950 is going for $300-310 , with similar performance at stock speeds, beating it handily with OCing.
HD7970 GE undercuts 680 and outperforms it stock or OC vs. OC.
NV is doing well as a company but its desktop discrete GPU line-up only has 1 good card -- GTX670.
Rory got left with a company who worked for 5 years on Bulldozer and failed. Don't blame AMD's GPUs on how AMD is doing. They don't have a mobile/smartphone/tablet strategy and are uncompetitive in the CPU space. However, in terms of GPUs, AMD has won this generation so far:
1) Better price/performance
2) Better single-GPU performance
3) Better performance/watt for sub $250 cards.
AMD's problems are in execution in other business segments and lack of professional penetration for GPUs. On the consumer side, their GPUs are kicking ass.
CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
nVidia's last generation competes with those cards you idiot - and often beats them, sometimes completely.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Good move on amd's part, I agree... after nVidia right crossed them, decked them again with an uppercut to the crooked jaw, and kicked them in the scrotum bringing them down, it was time amd dodged the wooden chair about ready to be busted over their backside.Good duck amd. Keep going lower and lower and pretty soon you be knocked out and won't be able to get up. At least your fans will have fun looting you on the way down.
RussianSensation - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
Yes, NV hit them card, considering GTX660Ti launched in August 16th and HD7950 came out Jan 31, HD7850/7870 on March 3rd. NV is 5-6 months late. You failed to mention that part.....All AMD did was collect nice profits and let NV catch up, and then NV released a 660Ti that can hardly compete with an OCed 7950 on performance or with a 7870 on price. Good one.CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
amd was catching up with nVidia last generation - how late were they there ?6 months of bad drivers makes them barely to the table first...
In any case, it took amd how many months over a full year to catch the nVidia 500 series ?
Oh yes, they are still trying to beat it with the 7870 and 7850, and THEY HAVE FAILED.
LOL
What were you saying ? LOL