Quote Originally Posted by kgk View Post
Hopefully we'll see a number of price shifts when Kepler debuts so buying 7970 at MSRP right now seems a waste for most people unless you're doing benching, bitcoin mining or prefer AMD's Eyefinity.

I mean for the average user/gamer (yes I realize this is XS), unless you're really hurting for a GPU upgrade, why not wait a month to see what pops up from NVidia before plopping down over $600. The price changes alone would probably be worth it. And by then you'll hopefully start seeing more non-reference 7970's if you're really a die hard AMD fan. For someone who runs 2560x1600, the 7970 gets a whopping 8.5 more average fps in Metro and 5.7 more average fps in BF3 at high resolution/detail level compared to a card that's well over a year old. I mean if 7970 and Kepler are supposed to be grouped together in "next gen", I see no incentive to jump in until we can see performance/price comparisons to Kepler. I'm not saying that as a "Zomgz AMD sux0rs, NVidia rulez", I'm saying it because with no competition yet in the "next gen", the 7970 can sit there and AMD can charge whatever they see fit.

I generally prefer to stick with the fastest single GPU card of a current "gen" once both companies have presented their product (barring any obscene pricing). Sometimes that's been ATI, sometimes that's been NVidia. Loyalty to a GPU manufacturer (or any consumer electronics company) is for rubes and shut-ins.
I would like to see some price shifting as well but I'm not so sure we will with the first keplers hitting the market, the top performing card will always command a premium even if its only marginally faster. Unless the card nvidia launches is going to be a direct competitor performance wise it will hit at a different market and price segment without affecting the price of high end cards.

However if Nvidia manages to perform on par with the 7970 then there's a good chance we'll see some price adjustments from AMD.

I have no particular bias either on hardware, it all boils down to what I need for what I'm willing to spend when I'm ready to buy.

All my htpc's have AMD cards while my gaming and work systems I ended up with Nvidia hardware, that's just the way the cards fell.

As with all hardware, there's always something better around the corner, when I'm ready to buy I'm generally ready to buy without putting too much emphasis on whats around the corner, there's always something. If something that much better comes out it's fairly easy to sell off old hardware on ebay or friends.