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 | ||||
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
120 Comments
View All Comments
TheJian - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
LOL at MSAA...8xmsaa in skyrim totally playable even at useless res of 2560x1600 at hardocp (2 of the games unplayable just as said of anandtech's minimums if he had them - most don't show these...Gee? Could it be because many would drop well below 30 making them unplayable? Why did Ryan leave out batman hitting 10fps on 7950 (the avg is only 35.4!)? Heck it runs 10-15 fps for a long time in hardocp's charts. Thats not going to be playable, but Anandtech acts like you'd run these games there on a $300 card. Witcher 2 hitting 16fps on 7950. Pray to god, and you still can't get an overclock to overcome that and get to 30fps... Never mind Batman scores being near single digits.http://hardocp.com/article/2012/08/21/galaxy_gefor...
Just keep saying over and over though...Maybe the cards will slow down and make you right. Note 8xMSAA is more potent than the 4xMSAA Ryan ran in Skyrim (noted by the slight drop in fps at Hardocp). So the card can handle MSAA, just not 2560x1600 all the time, which is why I say no point in running it or the 7950 there and quoting victories for either side (if everything isn't playable above 30fps who would try it?). No 17-27in monitor runs there anyway. And if you actually have the cash for a $850 Dell u2711 you probably have the cash for a 7970ghz/GTX 680 or 690 or dual cards to get rid of the dipping below 30fps altogether. Which is what $500-1000 cards and SLI/Crossfire are for! Get it yet? Still confused?
MSAA comment from the article:
"In Skyrim the overclocked GALAXY GTX 660 Ti GC 3GB can't quite reach GTX 670 performance at 2560x1600 with 8X MSAA, but it comes close. So close you couldn't tell the two apart".......LOL. But that 660 sucks right? Kyle Bennet and Hardocp must be idiots and you're just right. :) OK, I give up, no amount of evidence or proof I can tell you fanboy will get you to drop it. Forget the benchmarks, the 660 TI just can't run MSAA no matter what review sites prove it can... ;) I just believe YOU. Russian's word is worth more than some stinking review site's benchmarks...All bow to the great RUSSIAN...Who cares if Kyle and Hardocp.com proved the 660 TI can run memory at 7.6ghz and OC to 1300mhz, he's an idiot and you just can't do what he proved dang it. You can't catch the gtx 670...He's crazy. :) That MSAA stuff just won't run on that crappy 660 TI. Russian said it's nuts.
TROLL much lately?
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
Ahh... well. thanks again. I feel better after trying much less a few months ago to hammer that home.The excuse is always the same - until it flip flops 100% - first Russian goes wonk with 8xmsaa, then he claims he can't tell the difference to Flunk and his 2x460's above. LOL
Dude, it is INCREDIBLE the crap they pull.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
If anything, AMD lowered prices because of not wanting to confront the hype/propaganda that is going around about the 660 TI, not because their cards are worse. They most certainly aren't anyway and I have no idea what is going onenuff said
Belard - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
Its shocking that ANYONE games in anything lower than 1920x1080, considering that such monitors start out at $120+. And that is considered standard res in my book.Parhel - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
Right. And yet people post these long crazy fanboy rants regarding $300+ GPUs, and insist that the reviews needs to target only those buying $100 monitors. I would bet that most people are using either integrated graphics or a sub $100 card, especially those with sub 1080p resolutions.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
Lowest priced 1920x1200 monitor at the egg, out of 25 currently there is $268.98 delivered.So in your kookball lying rant, $100 = cheapest there is $268.98 ?
I don't know bro - I guess if you didn't lie so large I could agree with you ?
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
Dude, when the amd fanboy doesn't have 5 or 10 bucks for PhysX, for adaptive v-sync, for frame rate target, for ambient occlusion for driver upgrades for YEARS, LONG YEARS to buy the nVidia card over the slower and slightly less expensive according to the amd fanboy penny pincher, they DO NOT have $120 for a monitor, either !:-) reality may in fact bite
fourzeronine - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
for computing the AMD corner went from a no-brainer to who's nvidia?Patflute - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
These are gaming cards, no one cares about computing.C'DaleRider - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
That's not what the nvidia fabois yelled and bleated when the 4xx and 5xx series of cards came out. Amazing what the green sheeple will say to justify their irrational love of a company.