Yeah, like the “idiots” who buy Mercedes or Armani. There’s nothing idiotic about preferring the high end - sure you can clothe yourself with a suit from Winners instead of Canali, but people like luxury items.
I don’t think that 500 is as high end as some of the previous stuff we have seen (600+)
It’s $550, and while you’re right that we’ve seen cards cost more, it’s pretty close to the top.
The 7970 is the first mass-market chip on the 28nm process. As such, they obviously aren’t getting high yields, and won’t until they refine their process, which takes a long time. They won’t have the opportunity to drop prices without taking a loss for at least half the product cycle, and even then, it’s still 380mm2. That’s one huge-ass chip-- sandy bridge intel CPUs are 150mm2 and they’re on a 32nm process. The size alone means it’ll remain expensive. Prices will never substantially drop, instead it’ll be replaced with a cheaper, faster, chip.
They [I]definitely abandoned the “sweet spot” strategy.
But it’s significantly smaller than a 580 which still sells for over $500. I don’t think there is any question this is a temporary price point until nVidia launches their 28nm cards. If those come in at $5-600 and are faster than the 7970 then AMD can slide the price down. Or maybe nVidia will come in over the top and try to sell a 6 billion transistor 680 gtx for $700…
I have high hopes for the 78x0 cards. 6970 performance for $200 would be awesome.
If a bit disappointing for people like me, who bought 6970s over the summer. :P
Pfft, then what would you have used to play all the games that came out this fall? A… 5850?? How uncivilized.
Unless something changes dramatically I have purchased my last ATI card. I was an Nvidia user for years and I will be again.
Lol, I run with almost everything on the high end… Certainly not top AA or those crazy high end custom shadows people are doing in skyrim, but still very pretty.
I bought a 6950 over the summer and have been happy with it. It runs fast and quiet. Still, after having had ATI-specific problems in Skyrim, doing the driver dance to get Rage running okay, and having watched all the pretty PhysX videos for Arkham City (bought but not yet played!), I decided to make a lateral move to the equivalent NVIDIA card. And since a little research shows I can still sell my 6950 on ebay for almost the cost of the 560Ti that’s replacing it, I think that’s win/win.