AMD Radeon HD 7970, 7950, 7870 Price Cuts Inbound. 7970GE Available Next Week?
by Ryan Smith on July 14, 2012 7:30 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon HD 7000
For those of you in the market for a new video card, in case April’s round of AMD Radeon price cuts didn’t quite meet your desires, AMD has ordered up another round of price cuts that will be taking effect on Monday.
The Radeon HD 7970, Radeon HD 7950, and Radeon HD 7870 are all getting official price cuts. The 7970 will be dropping from $479 to $429, the 7950 from $399 to $349, and the 7870 from $349 to $299.
| Summer 2012 Radeon HD 7000 Series Price Cuts | ||||||
| Card | Launch Price | Spring MSRP | Summer MSRP | |||
| Radeon HD 7970 | $549 | $479 | $429 | |||
| Radeon HD 7950 | $449 | $399 | $349 | |||
| Radeon HD 7870 | $349 | $349 | $299 | |||
| Radeon HD 7850 | $249 | $249 | ~$239 | |||
| Radeon HD 7770 | $159 | $139 | ~$119 | |||
| Radeon HD 7750 | $109 | $109 | ~$99 | |||
With all of that said however, as we’re in the middle of a product cycle with partners shipping custom cards, in practice AMD doesn’t have a great deal of control over final card pricing beyond what they charge partners for parts. So unofficially these prices have been in effect for some time since partners and stores have not been holding to AMD’s MSRPs. Indeed as of Friday evening the cheapest cards on Newegg are already below AMD’s official MSRPs, so today’s announcement mainly serves to bring attention to price movements that have already happened.
| Summer 2012 GPU Pricing Comparison | |||||
| AMD | Price | NVIDIA | |||
| Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition | $499 | GeForce GTX 680 | |||
| Radeon HD 7970 | $429 | ||||
| $399 | GeForce GTX 670 | ||||
| Radeon HD 7950 | $349 | ||||
| Radeon HD 7870 | $299 | ||||
| Radeon HD 7850 | $239/$249 | GeForce GTX 570 | |||
| $199 | GeForce GTX 560 Ti | ||||
| $159 | GeForce GTX 560 | ||||
| Radeon HD 7770 | $119 | ||||
| Radeon HD 7750 | $99 | GeForce GT 640 DDR3 | |||
On that note, AMD sends word that their free game promotions will continue to be active for some time, including both the HD 7900 Series Three For Free promotion and their HD 7800/7700 series DiRT Showdown promotion (though Newegg seems to have deactivated it as of this writing).
Finally, we’ve been asking AMD about the status of the new 7970 GHz Edition, which has so far been missing in action. After originally being scheduled to have limited availability in late June with wider availability in early July, the 7970GE has slipped by at least a couple of weeks – an unusual thing to happen to what has otherwise been a punctual AMD. At this time AMD is telling us that most of their partners have decided to launch the 7970GE on their customized premium cards, which has resulted in availability being pushed back. If all goes according to plan, AMD is expecting XFX and Sapphire to have cards available early next week. However prices will bear keeping an eye on since it’s unlikely that partners will stick to the $499 MSRP if they’re using the 7970GE for their premium cards.
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CloudFire - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
Just your lucky day, Nvidia is releasing a 660Ti in August for 300$.zanon - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
As always do check your desired apps, but IMO it's close to a no brainer, with the caveat below. Even at the same price as the 680, the 7970 was better for some applications, particularly if you like to overclock (where it has a lot of headroom both for core clock and memory). Both have their strong points, both in terms of games and more general applications. But vs the 670? Even without any OC it'll get close or exceed it pretty much across the board for stuff that is actually GPU limited. Nvidia does have stuff like PhysX, but then again gets completely slaughtered on compute.The caveat of course is that Nvidia may choose to respond with a round of price cuts of its own. AMD has had a while longer to get its process ramped up since it got to production much earlier, but Nvidia has a smaller part. Might be worth waiting a week or two if you can and see what, if anything, happens, then make the call after that.
hackztor - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
Gtx480 was awesome at computer, and gtx580 went down alot on computer. Most people did not care, because after all you buy a gaming video card to game not compute. Nvidia supposedly software limits their cards to compute to sell more Telsa. Cannot blame them, amd does not sell one like that so it can afford to let their cards do more. Only feature I like from amd is their eyefinity up to 6 monitors, but least nvidia has 3+1 now.Henkuberogus - Sunday, July 29, 2012 - link
Man 670 all day. The only situation where I'd consider the 7970 is triple-screening because that's where it can actually leverage its RAM advantage, but in that case you'd be looking at at least a pair of cards either way.frostyfiredude - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
Great timing, I just picked up a 7870 2 weeks ago! If this was announced earlier I coulda grabbed a 7950 for almost the same price as my 7870...Patflute - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
hahaSlyNine - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
Thats they way it always goes. Then again I got my dad a 7950 for 369$.frostyfiredude - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
Pretty much, I also got Dirt Showdown free with mine where the new price doesn't seem to have it so the deal isn't so bad anymore.RaistlinZ - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
The 7870 was already a bad buy and not worth the price premium over the 7850. Why did you get a 7870 when you could have gotten a 7950 for the same price??frostyfiredude - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
When I was shopping the prices were about as follows:HD7850: 270-290$, 280$ for the MSI Twin Frozer III version
HD7870: 300-350$, 330$ for the MSI Twin Frozer III version (what I got)
HD7950: 390-430$, 420$ for the MSI Twin Frozer III version
So I think my 310$ HD7870 is a decent deal considering my options and my budget. Compared to the HD7850 it's 15% more for 10-25% more performance. Compared to the HD7950 it's 80% the price for 80-95% the performance.