Hd5870 - $299

[Kylzer]

According to a fresh report by Donanim Haber, AMD's next performance graphics accelerator, the Radeon HD 5870, codenamed "Cypress" is expected to be aggressively priced, at US $299. At that price, it intends to be highly competitive against GeForce GTX 285 from NVIDIA. The secret-sauce behind the price could be the 40 nm fab process on which the GPU is being built, which allows upping transistor counts while maintaining significantly smaller die-sizes compared to 55 nm.

There is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the specifications of the GPU, including what level of performance with existing application could it end up offering. Some sources, such as ChipHell, which are one of the first to leak pictures of components related to various Evergreen family products claim the Cypress GPU to have an almost 100% increase in stream processor counts compared to RV770, while others remain conservative expecting it to be around 50%. With this kind of a pricing, Cypress could trigger market-wide changes in GPU pricing, if it ends up with a good price/performance ratio at $299.

Cypress is expected to be launched on 22 September, close to two weeks after the company unveils the Evergreen family of DirectX 11 compliant GPUs on September 10. Market availability is expected in October. In related news from the same report, the enthusiast-grade accelerator that uses two of these GPUs, codenamed "Hemlock", is expected to be out in November.

SOURCE

[Pontos]

We can expect HD5850 at $250 then?
Sounds good, as long as these have a noticeable performance gain compared to their HD48xx counterparts

[GoldenTiger]

That would be a sweet treat ! Hopefully Bing cashback will be on at that time for an even lower price .

[CQSTELUSH]

If there are the same performance leaps like the ones from 38x0 to 48x0... well, that could be a hit. A big one!

[RPGWiZaRD]

Just as I predicted several times. Due to this price I don't expect "more" than 30~50% (depending on settings and game) performance gain for HD 5870 over a HD 4890 though which is currently selling around $200 tag. If it was faster than that then it would both heavily affect both NVIDIA and ATIs previous gen sales too much and the price in this business is always adjusted accordingly so the old can be still sold alongside with the new. But would that be a bad deal? $100 more for 30~50% more performance (stock vs stock comparision) and DX11 support, I think not.

[LiquidReactor]

Just as I predicted several times. Due to this price I don't expect "more" than 30~50% performance gain over a HD 4890 though which is currently selling around $200 tag. If it was faster than that then it would both heavily affect both NVIDIA and ATIs previous gen sales too much and the price in this business is always adjusted accordingly so the old can be still sold alongside with the new.

40%-50% performance gain would still make it a close competitor to HD 4870x2. $300 might be AMD set price but you can be sure that all the etailers will jack up the prices.

[RPGWiZaRD]

40%-50% performance gain would still make it a close competitor to HD 4870x2. $300 might be AMD set price but you can be sure that all the etailers will jack up the prices.

Nah, I'm pretty sure the standard design by some manufacturers will be sold at $299 and then OC editions a little higher. Maybe in US there can be slight price premiums at launch but at least the last few years I haven't seen much of those in middle europe for example. Hopefully this means around 250 EUR for that standard design, the cheapest HD 4890 now goes for ~150 EUR in Germany for example.

Will be interesting what HD 5850 ends up at though, if it's gonna be only a downclocked 5870 or also have lesser amount SPs etc can become quickly a $250 vs $199 price tag difference.

[orangekiwii]

I think this generation will be similar to ones of the past.


Sig it its true

[bill_d]

Just as I predicted several times. Due to this price I don't expect "more" than 30~50% (depending on settings and game) performance gain for HD 5870 over a HD 4890 though which is currently selling around $200 tag. If it was faster than that then it would both heavily affect both NVIDIA and ATIs previous gen sales too much and the price in this business is always adjusted accordingly so the old can be still sold alongside with the new. But would that be a bad deal? $100 more for 30~50% more performance (stock vs stock comparision) and DX11 support, I think not.

people said the same thing about the 4000's when the price come out before benchmarks
but when the 4000's came out ati stop the 3000's soon after
but it will affect nvidia and that's what amd may want

[Sadasius]

Will take a Hemlock for $600... Maybe two for $1200!

[initialised]

Hemlock, pure poison. I want two of them!

[HKPolice]

$299 is too low. Performance will be around GTX 295 level so expect prices to be slightly lower than that. I'm betting $399 for the 5870 and maybe $299 for the 5850. The source is either wrong or wasn't clear about which model the pricing was for, it only listed "cypress" pricing of $299, but the 5850 is cypress as well.

[gosh]

I think 299 is very low too. Maybe they want to grab a huge chunk of the market before Christmas, otherwise it would be foolish to not make some more money of it.

[zerazax]

Well the 4870 was supposed to be $299 and the etailers jacked it up to $349 for a while, though that was also due to limited quantities

That said, if ATI is going for volume and trying to undercut Nvidia market share then $299 for a card that is faster than a 4870x2 would be sweet

[ripken204]

ya i also think this is just too good to be true.
even if it is a 30% increase in performance, that is still a huge increase imo.

[RPGWiZaRD]

I think 299 is very low too. Maybe they want to grab a huge chunk of the market before Christmas, otherwise it would be foolish to not make some more money of it.

Well what if the 1200 SPs, slightly more ROPs & TMUs than 48xx rumored specs are correct? That would in practice translate to performance increase along the lines as I previously suggested. If so $299 makes perfectly sense. But what are the real specs, that's the question. With 1600 SPs like some people thinks (which fits within a "reasonable" die size still), then $299 is clearly too cheap. I'm strongly leaning towards 1200 SPs at this point.

However like you say if it comes close or matches GTX 295 in performance, $299 sounds like a too good deal, if that's the case maybe we see another price hike we saw last time to $350 and would still put a pressure on nvidia. :p TBH NVIDIA's been overpriced especially the GTX 285 and 295 cards while ATI's cards being so much more reasonable priced this last few months. Just compare HD 4890 @ $199~220 and 4870x2 @ $370 vs GTX 285 @ $330 or GTX 295 @ $499!

[Kylzer]

Well the HD4870 cost about £210 when it came out here so i would gladly pay around 300 for it, If the performance is 40%+

[HKPolice]

I think 299 is very low too. Maybe they want to grab a huge chunk of the market before Christmas, otherwise it would be foolish to not make some more money of it.

Exactly, there is no reason why ATi can't charge $399 for a card that performs as fast as a GTX295 which costs $499 MSRP and retails for around $460.

When the 4870 was released, the GTX280 was still king so ATi couldn't charge more than $299 but the tables have turned this time.

5870 will be king so ATi can charge whatever they want, then lower or keep prices steady depending on nvidia's response (GT300).

[Farinorco]

Well what if the 1200 SPs, slightly more ROPs & TMUs than 48xx rumored specs are correct? That would in practice translate to performance increase along the lines as I previously suggested. If so $299 makes perfectly sense. But what are the real specs, that's the question. With 1600 SPs like some people thinks (which fits within a "reasonable" die size still), then $299 is clearly too cheap. I'm strongly leaning towards 1200 SPs at this point.

Performance depends on clocks as much as on the number of processing units. It maybe has 1200SP, maybe 1600SP. But the new Cypress is supossed to be "more than 2 TFLOPS" of computing/shading power. Given that previous generation was 1 TFLOP (HD4850), that means doubling the computing/shading power... not a 30/50% increase.

¿Maybe they want to take advantage of the few months without DX11 competitors to regain market share with aggressive pricing?

[RPGWiZaRD]

Well if that 2tflops+ is actually true then I'd say for HD 5870 that 1600 SPs (or close to it) figure makes more sense but it would cost like $399 and HD 5850 is the one targeted for $299 spot. It just doesn't feel like ATI would go for such huge jump in theoretical throughput for this series but maybe that's their "surprise". It's so close to the release now (at least paperlaunch if nothing else), they've done a fine job keeping trusted leaks away from public.

[Chad Boga]

ya i also think this is just too good to be true.
even if it is a 30% increase in performance, that is still a huge increase imo.

This is a proper new generation architecture, if ATI can't be 80 to 100% faster than a 4870, then they have failed.

Well if that 2tflops+ is actually true then I'd say for HD 5870 that 1600 SPs (or close to it) figure makes more sense but it would cost like $399 and HD 5850 is the one targeted for $299 spot. It just doesn't feel like ATI would go for such huge jump in theoretical throughput for this series but maybe that's their "surprise".

What makes you say that?

ATI must be expecting Nvidia to bounce back after a less than stellar GT200 series, they would be fools to think they can just coast.

[Eastcoasthandle]

The low price (if true) should be a good indicator of above average yields.

[iTravis]

I think the $299 price point is appropriate just like what they did when launching the HD4870. This is good news for early adopters as I'm one of them but I think I still need to read more reviews before jumping on it on the first day. Sure the specs might look good on paper but I'd rather see real world performance against other cards before making my decision. Having said that, if the HD5870 is close to or beat the HD4870X2 then I'm so in for one.....Hemlock.

[Sparky]

This is a proper new generation architecture, if ATI can't be 80 to 100% faster than a 4870, then they have failed.


What makes you say that?

ATI must be expecting Nvidia to bounce back after a less than stellar GT200 series, they would be fools to think they can just coast.

80-100% increase, otherwise a failure? Please. We don't usually see that much on each new generation from either ATI or nvidia

[bill_d]

I think the $299 price point is appropriate just like what they did when launching the HD4870. This is good news for early adopters as I'm one of them but I think I still need to read more reviews before jumping on it on the first day. Sure the specs might look good on paper but I'd rather see real world performance against other cards before making my decision. Having said that, if the HD5870 is close to or beat the HD4870X2 then I'm so in for one.....Hemlock.

want to know if Hemlock is just a x2 or something more
if it's like past x2's i'll just get two 5870's

wonder if EK has samples, will need blocks