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The battle for Xmas sales is hotting up overall, but the surprising news from the channel is just how well received the AMD move to ‘R9' was. While new products were introduced, a quick look at several BIOS dates/product IDs showed that some were simple refreshes. But it seems to have worked. Which has caused an issue. KitGuru checks for cuts.
While the world + dog is focused on the graphics battle between Radeon and GeForce, there are several layers of ‘friction' within each organisation/its partners.
Let's say that AMD partner one decides to move lock, stock and two smoking heatsinks to the new R9 etc branding – with a full range of 260/270/280/290 products.
At the same time, AMD partner two thinks ‘Well, there are a lot of the 7000 series chips around – and the differences are not huge – let's keep our focus on the familiar.
All well and good, but both partners have huge numbers of cards in stock across the world – and only one of them will be right about the focus of consumer demand.
It turns out that AMD nailed its launch, as far as messaging gamers/enthusiasts that the new cards are the way to go.
The problem?
Well, any partner who was gambling on a ‘soft' launch and slow take-up, is going to be disappointed – and they are now sitting on stock.
The solution?
We're hearing that AMD has begun price moves to make products like the Radeon HD 7850 more attractive. These cuts might not be more than £10-30, but that might be enough to stimulate desire for the older cards – allowing the channel to be cleaned.
If you have been waiting to buy one of these from a company like HIS, then it looks likely that a drop is heading your way.
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KitGuru says: It happens every time there is an ‘EOL' (End Of Life), and you might even get some nVidia price moves to counter this. Watch the ‘Today Special' deal spaces online!
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Well apparently the drop was not enough back then but is today. Thanks to AMD and retailers taking advantage of coin mining and overpricing the AMD GPU’s selling them at a price that’s way way to high. AMD is now paying for it big time. But they brought it on themselves. You don’t ever ever ever take advantage of the consumer if you want to survive. That is the most important rule to follow in marketing. AMD does however today have their GPU’s priced very fair now. I purchased one, I bought a R9 270 for $179, and it’s Basically a 7870 that cost over $300 bucks just last year, And some R9 270’s are even for $149 like the power color at newegg, and it even has dual fans. So it’s obvious AMD is at’least trying now. I know allot of 7000 series card owners who are very angry over this knowing they paid sometimes over 100% more for their GPU. But the point is the 7000 series should have never been priced that high to begin with. This is why I am glad that we have two GPU companies competing with each other. For the first time in years during the Nvidia 600 series and AMD 7000 series I actually purchased a Nvidia GTX 650 Ti over the AMD 7850. It was similar in performance and priced at $119, You could not even find a 7850 for less than $180 at that time. The GTX 650 Ti may not have had as much horsepower and only 1GB instead of 2GB like the 7850, But it did it’s job admirably and did exactly what I needed it to do until AMD’s prices went down and until I could dig up enough from my budget to get a higher performing GPU. There was also another thing I learned from the Nvidia GPU, They had much better and much smoother drivers than AMD’s. Actually going back to AMD from a Nvidia GPU is challenging with how bad the drivers are. That is also a very important thing AMD needs to work on. I wonder if AMD having the same driver problems that they have had over three years has anything to do with the overpriced 7000 series causing money loss. It seems almost like they fired all the driver developers except that one screw up who is always overriding everyone who has a good idea that he dislikes because he has to have the credit. (We all have worked with one of those) LOL. I just hope AMD can finally overcome their driver problems. However regardless if the R-200 series stays competitively priced against Nvidia as it is now they should have no problems with profits. They should sale like hotcakes.