Rumor that had better be false

[Glorious]

It's cheaper for them to produce, so there shouldn't really be any premium on lower power consumption.

That may not be the case.

Video card pricing is a kind of a black art, but it's more than possible (even likely) that the yield loss of the new node outstrips the advantage of having more dies on a wafer. At least for the first few months anyway.

[flip-mode]

That may not be the case. Video card pricing is a kind of a black art, but it's more than possible (even likely) that the yield loss of the new node outstrips the advantage of having more dies on a wafer. At least for the first few months anyway.

That's mighty gracious of you. According to AMD

How do I feel about our 28nm experience on Radeon; so graphics products. My response to that is that I feel very good. We’ve come out of the shoot running, our yields are bang on where we predicted them to be, and we are supplying product to the market today.

Yes, the quote is from the infamous, SA, but it's a quote SA took straight from AMD's Financial Analyst Day.

[Glorious]

You've lost me. If you're being snarky or something else that I can't pick up on, please realize that I'm not hating on AMD/Global Foundries.

Transitioning to a new node is never easy and yields typically suck at the beginning and improve as the months go by. IIRC 28nm went into volume production just barely four months ago, so we can expect that yields aren't all that great.

The quote you provide is just marketing speak. No numbers were provided, and he simply said that they're meeting their targets. Well, Ok...

I mean, I never said that their 28nm process sucked, I never said they weren't producing in volume, I just made the general observation that the yields likely aren't very good.

Here is just one article saying the same thing I've said, you can find plenty more like it.

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news ... say-execs-

...just as you can find plenty more like it for the introduction of previous nodes.

---

I'm not sure why I got under your skin in this particular thread, but really, I'm not trying to.

[just brew it!]

Yup. Given recent track record, saying yields are "where we predicted them to be" could easily mean "yields kinda suck, but we expected that". If yields are great, why not just come right out and say it?

[flip-mode]

You've lost me. If you're being snarky or something else that I can't pick up on, please realize that I'm not hating on AMD/Global Foundries.

Transitioning to a new node is never easy and yields typically suck at the beginning and improve as the months go by. IIRC 28nm went into volume production just barely four months ago, so we can expect that yields aren't all that great. The quote you provide is just marketing speak. No numbers were provided, and he simply said that they're meeting their targets. Well, Ok... I mean, I never said that their 28nm process sucked, I never said they weren't producing in volume, I just made the general observation that the yields likely aren't very good.

Here is just one article saying the same thing I've said, you can find plenty more like it. http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news ... say-execs- ...just as you can find plenty more like it for the introduction of previous nodes.

---

I'm not sure why I got under your skin in this particular thread, but really, I'm not trying to.

Yikes, no, you didn't get under my skin. Apparently my online social skills are just as bad as my offline social skills. I'm suggesting that if yields are so darn close to where AMD predicted they would be then this isn't a case of "bad yields", as in "worse than predicted so we're going to have to raise prices". And, no offense but that link is kinda stale at this point. It could still be true but it could also be the case that yields have improved since then.

Here's my wild guess: the 7770 will probably perform better than the 6850 if it's going to be priced at $185. The price is more likely to be real than performance rumors at this point since the price was obtained from a retail listing. The performance is just a rumor at this point. And I just have a hard time believing that AMD would launch the thing at HD "6890" prices when it performs like HD 6850. If it really performs like a 6850 @ $185 then reviews are going to be very unkind.

And now getting way off in imagination land, I also can't see the logic of AMD releasing this thing at $185 just because yields are "bad". They've got plenty of time ahead of Nvidia to stockpile and tweak the production process. Logically speaking, why launch at $185 and get a bunch of bad press when you don't have to?

So, again, my wild guess is that performance is higher than the rumored 6850 equivalence.

[clone]

given the launch price for HD 6850 was $179 and HD 7770 is only $6.00 more I don't see the problem.

$6.00 more seems like a bargain for the same performance 16 months later with a smaller die and a simpler circuit board and simpler cooling requirements and needing less robust VRM and power supply circuitry? Did you buy the AMD FX 8150?

Flip Mode AMD offers the fastest single gpu video card on the market for $50 less than it's direct competition and ppl complain.... it retails for $280 less than the 2007 8800 GTX Ultra and still ppl complain, AMD offers up the fastest single gpu for $150 less than the 2001 Gefore 3 debuted at and still ppl complain about it's price...... I get the impression ppl will always complain about price no matter what it is.... even if they get it for free they'll demand money to accept the item and when they get money for accepting it they'll complain about not getting enough.

here is what the situation appears to be.

HD 7770 will be superior to HD 6850 in every way while listing for $6.00 more at launch.

to me this is a bargain, to you this is terrible.... we are talking about $6.00 and ignoring that launch prices are typically higher in the beginning and drop soon after launch.

all of that said I expect that upon it's launch HD 7770 will get lukewarm reviews and minor complaints about it's price because the benefits it offers will be more abstract and not directly tied to Frames Per Second, then about 2 weeks after launch the MIR's will appear if they don't on the day of it's launch and suddenly lukewarm will turn to somewhat hotter.

[chµck]

For those $6, you get:
Lower power consumption, as others have noted
Lower heat production
Probably higher gaming performance
Higher compute performance
True video encode acceleration in a desktop GPU
PCIe 3
DX11.1
Although I do kinda understand your frustration if you currently own a 6850.
I'm a college kid with a 3850 in his laptop, so the jump to a 7000 card in my next laptop will be very nice.

[cegras]

I don't understand how you can say it is $6 more when current prices are 120-130 for the 6850 and 150 for the 6870. If these prices continue to hold after the 77xx launch this is all moot.

I'm not one to succumb to extreme emotions like anger and betrayal, but it is a bit disappointing considering I was abstaining from purchasing a 6870 at the great, great price of 145-150 for 2 months now.

[chµck]

I don't understand how you can say it is $6 more when current prices are 120-130 for the 6850 and 150 for the 6870. If these prices continue to hold after the 77xx launch this is all moot.

I'm not one to succumb to extreme emotions like anger and betrayal, but it is a bit disappointing considering I was abstaining from purchasing a 6870 at the great, great price of 145-150 for 2 months now.

I thought we were looking at launch prices.

[clone]

I'm comparing apples to apples, launch prices are always high, street prices always vary, we are working off a rumor that the MSRP will be $185 but that price will depend on what the card offers over the HD 6850 it competes with.

I'm sure their will be a surcharge of $10 just because it's got an HD 7xxx name on it but if the card is faster, generates much less heat, uses less power, is offered in a passive solution that works properly or if not passive comes in both dual and single slot coolers depending on the vendor then I'd be good with paying a little more.

the launch price might be high but MIR's always show soon after depending on availability.

but it is a bit disappointing considering I was abstaining from purchasing a 6870 at the great, great price of 145-150 for 2 months now.

if price is your only consideration then you should probably buy an HD 6870..... did you really believe that AMD would release a brand new product superior to the previous one by every measure for less money?

is this what ppl are expecting, better performance by every measure for less the moment the part is released?

understand this is all rumors at this point but they seem reasonable and tbh while I'd love to get high end video cards for $50 I don't believe anyone is going to offer them anytime soon.

these companies, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and so on are trying to maximize profits not losses, I don't understand how a launch MSRP that is $6.00 higher than the previous generation is so terrible.... if it's true because as mentioned atm it's all rumors.

[Arclight]

This rumors that 7770 will launch at $185.
This rumors that the 7770 will perform like a 6850.

This shows how the 6850 launched 1 year and 4 months ago at $180.

So if those two rumors are true then AMD is about to treat us to the least progressive GPU launch in history, I think. Heck, that's regressive!

Currently you can get a 6850 for somewhere around $140 before rebate, $120 after rebate.

80W TDP? 128bit bus width? 70-ish GB bandwidth? 16 ROPs? If this card manages to equal HD 6850 i'd be really impressed and given the measly cooling it would require i'd def. buy it if i were building a small budget ECO friendly gaming rig. Coupled with a nice and cool IvyBridge dual core (35W?) it would be incredible. Wonder if this things CF.....2 of them would equal a 6970? For 160W, ha that'd be funny.

[just brew it!]

I thought we were looking at launch prices.

If you take the attitude that launch prices are supposed to go up as performance goes up, how did we ever get to the situation where we can now buy GPUs with 1000x the performance of 15 years ago, while still paying about the same (or less) than we did back then? Why aren't new GPUs launching at prices well into the 5 digits?

We can certainly argue about whether the price differential between these two cards is "worth it". But comparing the launch price of something today versus the launch price of something a year old is just kind of pointless IMO.

[Waco]

But the point is we game on PCs so we have all the bells and whistles, not to run a game so it looks slightly better then a console with a keyboard and mouse.

Speak for yourself.

[flip-mode]

I thought we were looking at launch prices.

If you take the attitude that launch prices are supposed to go up as performance goes up, how did we ever get to the situation where we can now buy GPUs with 1000x the performance of 15 years ago, while still paying about the same (or less) than we did back then? Why aren't new GPUs launching at prices well into the 5 digits?

We can certainly argue about whether the price differential between these two cards is "worth it". But comparing the launch price of something today versus the launch price of something a year old is just kind of pointless IMO.

This. Or, said another way, $185 is a fine launch price as long as we see some performance improvements over what previously launched at that price point. But if we're getting a new product with the same performance as the old product at the same price then the historic price/performance progression is busted.

Some may find value in lower power consumption, higher GPU compute and all the other "side benefits" (not denigrating them by that term, but the fact is that they are side benefits), especially those still lingering on video cards from several generations ago, but gaming performance is still the primary benefit of a new video card. We'll know soon if the performance rumors are true of false, but if the 7770 truly just equates to 6850 performance, then a shift in price/performance progression has occurred such that the target is no longer better performance for the price with each generation, but steady performance for the price, or else higher performance for higher price with each generation. That would be a new pattern, which is why, at this point, I'm betting the 7770 really ends up being equal or better than a 6870 in performance, or else the $185 price tag would not make sense.

Yes, this is a bunch of drama of a silly video card. Participation is optional.

[just brew it!]

Some may find value in lower power consumption, higher GPU compute and all the other "side benefits" (not denigrating them by that term, but the fact is that they are side benefits), especially those still lingering on video cards from several generations ago, but gaming performance is still the primary benefit of a new video card.

Only if gaming is the primary use of said video card...

[flip-mode]

Some may find value in lower power consumption, higher GPU compute and all the other "side benefits" (not denigrating them by that term, but the fact is that they are side benefits), especially those still lingering on video cards from several generations ago, but gaming performance is still the primary benefit of a new video card.

Only if gaming is the primary use of said video card...

Yes. I admit I'm having a difficulty imagining someone being interested in a $180 card without being more than casually interested in playing video games.

[just brew it!]

I admit I'm having a difficulty imagining someone being interested in a $180 card without being more than casually interested in playing video games.

You mentioned GPU computing yourself a couple of posts back.

If the power consumption is low enough to allow vendors to offer versions with passive cooling, that's another big potential selling point for some people.

And games are by no means the only applications that use Direct3D/OpenGL (though I certainly agree that they are the most common use).

Edit: Sure, serious CAD users will probably opt for an even more expensive card (of the Quadro/FireGL variety), but I imagine mid-range consumer cards see some usage in the CAD segment. OpenGL-accelerated content creation platforms (like Blender) are another non-gaming segment where you'd want a reasonably modern GPU.

Edit 2: I could see triple-head Eyefinity support being useful to a fair number of non-gamers as well...

[flip-mode]

I admit I'm having a difficulty imagining someone being interested in a $180 card without being more than casually interested in playing video games.

You mentioned GPU computing yourself a couple of posts back.

If the power consumption is low enough to allow vendors to offer versions with passive cooling, that's another big potential selling point for some people.

And games are by no means the only applications that use Direct3D/OpenGL (though I certainly agree that they are the most common use).

Edit: Sure, serious CAD users will probably opt for an even more expensive card (of the Quadro/FireGL variety), but I imagine mid-range consumer cards see some usage in the CAD segment. OpenGL-accelerated content creation platforms (like Blender) are another non-gaming segment where you'd want a reasonably modern GPU.

Edit 2: I could see triple-head Eyefinity support being useful to a fair number of non-gamers as well...

Devil's advocate:

Passive cooling: yes, I can see this being a big selling point. I can also see gamers who want that being a little irked that the entry fee is that steep. There's a passive 6850 that was on sale for $199 last I checked - when loads of other 6850s were selling for $145. I'm a silence freak myself and I actually considered it for a brief moment. But I ended up deciding that, hey, if I'm buying for gaming then I want more performance than a 6850 that's really just a modest step up from the 5770 I had. And if I'm not gaming then I don't need the 6850 - I can get silence for less.

GPU compute: serious users will probably want something more powerful, or else their not actually serious GPU compute users and so they'd almost certainly choose lower. In other words, for GPU compute, I pretty much don't see any market for mid range - either you need it or you hardly need it at all. For now at least. GPU compute users who are really served best by a midrange product could probably be counted on one hand.

D3D / OGL: same story - either you need all the power you can get or you don't need much. My Autocad and Revit applications use D3D and they're completely happy with fairly low end cards with 1 GB of RAM. Once you get into really intense CAD you're going to want a FirePro or Quadro and then you're having a whole different conversation.

Triple-head Eyefinity: non-gamers can get that for $100 with a 6770 / 5770, right? Maybe that's even a feature of 6670, dunno.

/ devil's advocate

I just don't see the point of this type of card unless you're a more-than-casual gamer - a gamer on a budget.

[ludi]

This just in: Businesses that exist in a free market economy will try and charge as much for their products as the market will bare.

You heard it here, first: the market is best analogized as a strip-tease.

[cegras]

What's the point of comparing launch prices? In one hand, I have a Sapphire 6870 - custom cooled, quiet fan, and of course, 6870 performance which is about double my 4850 - and another, the 77xx, same performance, but higher price. I highly doubt idle consumption will be much different, and load not much either. If the 77xx really performs close to the 68xx series, there really is no value proposition to be had here.

[flip-mode]

The rumors were sadly true. Points for Fudzilla.

[clone]

Fudzilla's rumor got the pricing wrong & the performance wrong.

it retails for $149 and is a little slower than HD 6850 which is not the card HD 7770 was meant to replace anyway, HD 7770 is meant to replace the older but still available HD 5770 which apparently has been a long standing strong seller for AMD is Guru3D is to believed.... it makes more sense from the numbering and initial pricing standpoint I never understood why the focus was on a 77xx series being compared to the previous 68xx series... the numbers didn't line up correctly and a quick look reveals the answer that next month HD 68xx's replacement is being released.

the HD 78xx series is coming out to replace HD 68xx.

[cegras]

If had to buy today, I would go for the 6870. However, today seems to be the last day for MIR on it, and it will mostly jump back up to 170 or so .. which means I'm going to wait until March for the 78xx, then April for Kepler, then it'll be december and I will still be using my 4850 and complaining about Civ 5.

[cjcerny]

The rumors were sadly true. Points for Fudzilla.

I'll never understand this attitude. Last time I checked, AMD isn't a charity. The initial price is set based on what they think people are willing to pay for the card. If they guess high out of the gate, they drop the price quickly. It's just business. If they don't profit from their toil, then they cease to exist. If you don't like the release prices, just wait patiently until they drop and you feel better about purchasing. There isn't any reason to feel like you got shafted because they want more for the card now than you were willing to spend on it. Even the subject of this thread reads like AMD owes it to us to give us their work for less than people are willing to pay for it. Good grief.

[flip-mode]

The rumors were sadly true. Points for Fudzilla.

I'll never understand this attitude. Last time I checked, AMD isn't a charity. The initial price is set based on what they think people are willing to pay for the card. If they guess high out of the gate, they drop the price quickly. It's just business. If they don't profit from their toil, then they cease to exist. If you don't like the release prices, just wait patiently until they drop and you feel better about purchasing. There isn't any reason to feel like you got shafted because they want more for the card now than you were willing to spend on it. Even the subject of this thread reads like AMD owes it to us to give us their work for less than people are willing to pay for it. Good grief.

I think you could understand the attitude if you really tried - understanding it doesn't mean you agree with it. It seems worth quoting myself from the 7770 review comments at this point...

As I've said, sometimes the real problem is my expectations. I want every product launch to be an 8800 GT - a sea change in the price / performance ratio. That's not realistic, I know. But I can't fault myself for wanting a product launch to exhibit even just a skosh of an improvement in price / performance too. I don't think a skosh of disappointment with either the price or the performance is unreasonable here.

I keep going back to what Hattig said how if this has 12 CUs instead of 10 it probably would have seemed so much better.

And yet, your point stands and I think you're right - 6 months from now the 7770 will probably settle to a fairly superb price point.

Edit: I hope it doesn't take eons for Nvidia to come up with a good counter the way it did for the 5770.

To get rid of all drama and hyperbole for a moment:

I want AMD to be successful and profitable. AMD doesn't owe me a damn thing - they can create whatever they want and price it at whatever they want. I'll always buy what I find value in. AMD added a lot to this product on all fronts except gaming performance and there is a lot to be said for that, but there's no cause for excitement over the performance it brings and the price it brings it at. AMD is under no obligation to excite me, and I'm under no obligation to buy AMD's products. Nor am I obligated to keep my mouth shut if I'm disappointed, frankly, though I'm sure a few people a little less nonplussed if I did. But if you want people to only talk about the good and happy things and say nothing of any disappointment, I think that is as unrealistic as anything else.

I'll just put it this way to remove all of the "AMD would / should / could", telling AMD what to do kind of thing:

At $160, there's no chance I'd recommend the 7770 - 6850 or 6870 would be far better deals for the gamer. I'd give a begrudging recommendation at $140 (it's better than a 6850 at the same price). At $120 I'd dub it "The Golden Child".

[cjcerny]

At $160, there's no chance I'd recommend the 7770 - 6850 or 6870 would be far better deals for the gamer. I'd give a begrudging recommendation at $140 (it's better than a 6850 at the same price). At $120 I'd dub it "The Golden Child".

A perfectly valid point, but that's true of all video card releases--and most anything else for that matter, isn't it? That's just a result of "oooh--it's new and shiny and I gotta have it" behavior that we all exhibit from time to time. No need to single out this card/release for that kind of behavior.

[flip-mode]

At $160, there's no chance I'd recommend the 7770 - 6850 or 6870 would be far better deals for the gamer. I'd give a begrudging recommendation at $140 (it's better than a 6850 at the same price). At $120 I'd dub it "The Golden Child".

A perfectly valid point, but that's true of all video card releases--and most anything else for that matter, isn't it? That's just a result of "oooh--it's new and shiny and I gotta have it" behavior that we all exhibit from time to time. No need to single out this card/release for that kind of behavior.

Be consistent then and say that we should never single out cards that are priced great at launch either. 8800 GT, HD 4850 both should have received a "meh". We should just never mention launch prices at all. Then should we even bother reviewing these cards? The point of a review is to say whether it is worth buying - and whether it is worth buying cannot be discussed without discussing the price.

You haven't thought this through. Discussing price is a critical component of evaluating the card. Even at launch. You can't have a moratorium on discussing price for 6 months until prices settle. It's part of the initial discussion and then it's part of a continuing discussion.

[derFunkenstein]

The 8800GT might have "launched" in the $199-249 range, but it wasn't actually available unless you paid quite a bit more at the time of availability. http://techreport.com/discussions.x/13701

Prices settled in late January of 2008 (more or less), and everything became normal. http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14044

The same is/will be true with the 7770 and 7750 (the latter of which is the fastest card you can buy that doesn't require external power).

Prices will come down once old supply is gone. Until then it's time to get your shorts unbundled.

[flip-mode]

The 8800GT might have "launched" in the $199-249 range, but it wasn't actually available unless you paid quite a bit more at the time of availability. http://techreport.com/discussions.x/13701

Prices settled in late January of 2008 (more or less), and everything became normal. http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14044

The same is/will be true with the 7770 and 7750 (the latter of which is the fastest card you can buy that doesn't require external power).

Prices will come down once old supply is gone. Until then it's time to get your shorts unbundled.

Totally agree derFunk. I think I've mentioned I agree with that a couple of times now. But what's with discouraging people from talking about the launch price? Heck, we talk about the future price and we're in "rumor" territory and around here it's pretty common to be told not to talk about rumors. But now we shouldn't talk about the current price either. I guess that leaves us with talking about past prices, at least

[vargis14]

Wonder how much it will cost at best buy??