Quote Originally Posted by saaya View Post
1200 on air? holy shT!

and eyefinity is the reason amd should charge more for their cards wtf???
considering 570s cost 100$ more than 560s, the 560 actually looks like the best card to get...

actually, the best price perf card to get is the 560 imo, the best highend card to get is the 570, and the best entry level card to get seems to be the 460...
amds lineup really sucks right now... cant believe they screwed up so bad...
all they got is eyefinity and a theoretical transistor efficiency and die size advantage, and thats it
i dont get it though, amd has the advantage in theory, but they lose in almost every segment in reality...
i guess its cause they were too damn greedy when it came to transistor budgets for their chips, and yields on 40nm are so good now that nvidias chips have good enough yields even though they are larger...

makes sense, with perfect yields double the transistors result in only double the chip cost, and with a chip costing around 35$ thats not a big deal...
so 35$ more and you get almost double the performance... so if yields are good, keeping transistor budgets low and focusing on transistor efficiency doesnt make a big difference

it seems to be a re-occuring ati problem, as most of their refreshes underperform because they keep the chips too small.
in theory, this should mean atis 2xnm chips will rock again though, as there yields will be an issue again and you have to get as much out of your limited transistor budget as possible... but for now... amd cards are just not worth their money imo...

i dont know... nvidia has usually the fastest card, but they charge a bonus for it, fair enough.
then every now and then they have awesome price perf cards, like the 560 now.

ati used to offer the same or MORE performance than nvidias competing products for a LOWER price...
lately ati tries to sell their cards for as much as they can and are really greedy, not offering any great deals for quite a while...
fair enough, charging as much as you can works, but im pretty sure they could have sold more cards if they had cut prices and created an awesome price perf part... the reduced profits per card would have been made up by the increased volume... this is how it used to work for ati... they could have sold their 8500 and 9700 for even more, but they didnt and thats what made them so popular...
You have many good points there.

I personally, have always reacted when people argue with die-size, transistor-count, yield (and other manufacturing costs). Because as you've mentioned correctly "costing around 35$ thats not a big deal...". The real cost is in R&D, PR, sales and such. Manufacturing cost is not a big chunk of the total cost. and that's why the sales-volume becomes a really important factor.

AMD could make a bigger 6970 chip and beat/match 580 actually. They could double the transistor-count (for only 35$ +/- some, not a big deal) without hitting the heat or power usage wall. They could easily spend 35$ (+/- some) and do it, but they underestimated the flexibility of Fermi-architecture. They thought 580 was a 480 + "minor"-improvements, and they wouldn't need more to beat it. they didn't expect such a good 580 really. That was the first mistake in this round.

The second mistake (and even bigger) came when they released 6950-1GB. They spend time and money to make a "change", but they chose to "degraded" the 6950-2GB and use it for a mainstream-fight. In my opinion, it was really bad move, they should somehow (i dunno how) "upgrade" the 6970 to take a fight with 580. This move didn't beat 560, but created a big mess for them too. Now they have many cards that "performs the same for most gamers" on their hand.


nVidia did a really good job with 560. They got the upper-hand over 6950-1Gb/2GB, in performance/OCing/power-usage for most gamers, and they priced it under too, at start!

But the mainstream is not about performance-crown, its' all about price/performance-ratio, and as you mentioned, AMD can still drop the prices and put up a good price-fight. They made a good attempt already at the first day of 560-release, but it will be interesting to see nVidia's counter-attack.

AMD may get problems following nVidia in an aggressive price-war tho, because 560 is a mainstream card, and has been developed for a "cheap" marked, while AMD is using those "degraded" high-end cards to fight. It will be interesting to see how far they can follow nVidia in near future.

It can get really ugly, depending on nVidi's resistivity. 560 got a good price already, but I'm still crossing finger for $199. It will be interesting to see that