I just made the same point as #129 in the new article comments about ATIs response:

Anyway I don't think anyone can disagree the x800xl argument was flawed by the time TR published the initial article.

The x800 aspect does have more merit. Since this is the third :p part of this drama there is something I was wanting say when the first part came out specifically regarding the x800. Go read TR's very own review of the Sapphire x800. They point out the expected price of $250 is higher than the MSRP *but* it includes 256MB of Ram instead of the standard-spec 128MB. Based on the additional Ram the reviewer concludes that the higher price is acceptable. So on the one hand TR says it's OK to charge more for more features (that are worth the price), and yet on the other hand they lament about 'higher than MSRP' prices. Well which one is it? This argument may apply to certain x800xl cards as well, manufacturers try to differentiate their products through bundles, hardware features, or whatever. They don't follow the reference design for the sake of product differentiation, then perhaps the higher prices for some cards may be justified just like the x800-256MB. That's not ATI's fault if it's the case.

No I haven't looked at availability or prices for the x800 if someone wants to they can I just found this contradiction hard to understand.

Go to Newegg and take a look at the three X800XLs at/below the MSRP; these are the plain-jane ATI reference cards. Also notice that the three most expensive cards have added features, namely custom heatsinks, dual DVI, and most importantly, VIVO. This is nothing new in the world of video cards; ASUS' 9600XT cost $180 when everyone else's could easily be had for $150 or less. BFG also does the same thing, with their OC cards. This goes for the 6600GT, 6800GT (the real one), 6800U, X700 PRO; you name it, there will always be manufacturers that will sell enhanced versions of a card at higher than the MSRP; this is in no way ATI/nVidia's doing.

At any rate, based on the benchies, a $300-$350 X800XL is a better deal than a $380-$450 6800GT.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=881381

I don't know if someone has already linked this. But just food for thought. Seems there are indeed XL's for $299 or less.

ATI's fake price cuts sought to avoid head-to-head comparisons of cards in the same class, and that is a telling fact.

Tell it like how it is.

With Pixel Shader 3.0 being a standard that even ATI will soon support why would you buy the current line of ATI products?

i must agree with some of the other commenters that this isnt just about ATI .. its fairly obvious that the high prices are simply stores/online shops getting as much as they can out of the fact that there are limited supplies.
not that i blame them. thats how the world works. if you dont like the price, dont buy.

my fault with ATI is they have paper launched several cards about 6 months before they were actually ready.. and done it several times in a row. the products are decent when they finally come out.. its just silly to say a product is launching if it wont be available to buy for 4-6 months.

an no, i am not against paper launches.. i am against claiming that they arent paper launches when its obvious that its only paper you're holding.

paper cuts suck.

Also posted here: http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/8119

--

Looks like I really stirred the pot with this story. I earned some scorn from some folks, and I suppose I deserved some of it for not making myself clear enough on a certain points.

One thing I probably underemphasized is the time element involved in this whole matter. When ATI told us that their X800 and XL cards would debut at $199 and $299, respectively, they also told us to expect the XL cards to become available in about two weeks from the December 15, 2004 review date. The X800s were to follow not long after that. Our evaluation of the Radeon X800 XL, which came during the Christmas buying season, was based on the expectation that the card would be available at or near the suggested retail price within that time frame. Instead, we're now three months into the life of a product whose life cycle would typically be six to nine months, and only recently have they become available at that price (and through some channels, they're still closer to $349 than to $299.) During that time, the price of the competition's cards has dropped. The X800 XL now competes on price against the GeForce 6800 GT, not the GeForce 6800 as we'd expected. My intention was to point out that fact, because it changes how we'd evaluate the XL comparatively.

Virtually no one disputes that the Radeon X800 128MB at $199 simply didn't materialize as expected, by the way. The $199 price point is a much higher volume segment than $299, and you are missing the point if you fixate on the X800 XL drama at the expense of the story at $199.

Another concern that some of you have raised is that I seem to be beating a dead horse by addressing this issue repeatedly. I am sympathetic to that concern, but there's an important consideration you may be missing here. I pledged to get distribution pricing on these cards some time ago, when it started to become clear that there was a mismatch between ATI's stated prices and real-world pricing. The trouble was, I couldn't get pricing info through my sources until recently, because the cards weren't yet available in their systems. I revisited the issue again yesterday because I had new information. My hope is that this will be the end of this story, as far as we're concerned, and we can move on to more enlightening topics.

Finally, to be fair, I should clarify one more thing. The folks at ATI reminded us yesterday that the Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition doesn't quite fall into the same class as the GeForce 6800 Ultra "Extreme" or "OC" card that showed up on reviewers' doorsteps on the eve of the original Radeon X800 series' debut. Those 6800 Ultra "OC" cards were running at 450MHz, and to my knowledge, almost no 6800 Ultra cards ever shipped at that speed. 425MHz was more common; some companies, like BFG Tech and Asus, shipped (and are shipping) cards at 425MHz. ATI, by contrast, says it shipped "tens of thousands" of Radeon X800 XT Platinum Editions. So both the "OC" and the Platinum Edition existed to "capture the flag" of best overall performance, but ATI contends that the PE was not a "stunt card," as I called it. Perhaps that's splitting hairs, but in all fairness, I thought it was worth a mention.

Scott

I got an x700 Pro and I'm very happily playing all my games.

Games. Remember them?

I'll be playing while everyone else argues over this crap.

There was a discussion on shacknews.com that merely uttering "troll' was in fact trolling. I tend to agree with it.

Rather than getting into childish name calling, discuss your points. If your point is that someone is trolling, it's typically obvious enough for others to see. Why waste the time and effort mentioning it?

This article has some good and bad points. The only glaring mistake I noticed was the "$315 6800GT 128MB". Did you even look at the specs on that card? It uses 128 MB of DDR1 at 700 mhz. Even if the GPU on that card is a 16-pipe GT, the performance of the card overall will still be nowhere near that of a "real" GT card, thus the lower price.

What amuses me more are the people who shout "OMG I used to be an ATI fanboi but now I can't believe they paper launched LOLOL I'm buying a 6800GT!"

I've loved all of my ATI cards, and their drivers far surpass nvidia in quality these days (no flames please, that's just my subjective opinion). So pardon me for laughing at those of you who change as the wind blows, but it's going to take a lot more than a couple of paper launches or a few FPS to change my brand loyalty.

Seriously... do you pass on the Mercedes and buy a Volkswagen just because you might have to wait a few months for the Benz? Gimme a break...

Scott, I am dissappointed at your repeated bashing of ATI this issue. Yes, the availability problems were true when you posted the first rant, but Radeon X800XL cards have been readily available all month for reasonable prices. I don't know where you're getting your crazy high prices and lack of availability, but my favorite on-line source is a TechReport advertiser. Here's an example of a 256MB Radeon X800XL for just $290:
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?DEPA=0&description=14...

If you don't trust Newegg, then you can also buy these cards from ZipZoomFly, MonarchComputers, GameVE, CompUSA, etc.

Was this the friday night topic???

Some folks really have a difficult time parsing "supply & demand," don't they?

Regardless of the MSRP for a product, resellers will generally sell it for any price the market will bear--the higher the profit for the reseller the happier he is. (The most obvious example of this is commonly seen in the automobile industry when popular models sell with addendums of sometimes thousands more than the MSRP--the extra profit is all gravy to the reseller.)

Blaming ATi for the fact that its cards are in such high demand that they support market prices higher than the official MSRP is nuts...;) All that means is that people are willing to pay more to get them. (If they weren't the prices would plummet.) Classical supply and demand.

My repect for this site has taken a severe nose-dive. This is hardware "news and reporting" at it's worst.

I fail to see any sound argument in this "news". If you can call this news. Disappointing.

This might have been an interesting story 2 months ago, but it's largely irrelevant now and downright bizzare in some ways, what with presentation of price info from mysterious, unidentified "small vendor" and "major reseller". Anyone who cares to look around can see that X800XL's are available at or below MSRP from any number of vendors and ATI's own online store. They've been in retail stores here for over a month - always in stock, always MSRP or less.

A distributor or reseller is free to price their products as they please. The fact that they do doesn't say anything about the manufacturer. Concluding that ATI made "fake price cuts" is wrong and even casual review of price and availability (beyond the 2 mystery sources) shows that. It is very surprising and disappointing to see work of this quality on a site like TR.

I have read Techreports articles and reviews a long time, but this "news" made me register as a forum user just so I could comment it.... First of all, this belongs on The Inquirer or NV News. The "facts" aren't very well founded (two unnamed resellers?), and claiming that you cant get an X800XL at MSRP is obviously a lie (or a not very well founded truth). I am not a resident of the US so I dont follow pricing /availability closely "over-there", but I do know that 6800GT /ultra for PCIe has been extremely expensive and very low availability for months, so why dont you bitch about that? Here in Denmark the X800XL costs at least 25% less than 6800GT (and the "wannabe 6800GT" from Asus doens't compare to X800XL at all, maybe you should check up on numbers before comparing them), and the perfomance is just as high. In most new demanding games (NFSU2, MOH: PA, SW: BF, POP: WW, CMR 2005 and many more), its even higher than the 6800GT. So in a small country like mine we can go out and buy a X800XL at MSRP, doens't it sound wierd that ATI is pushing prices higher on the most important market? To me it seems that US retailers want to sell the cards as expensive as possible, and who can blame them?
Oh, btw. the "newer technology" on the NV4x doens't seem to be very good (SM2.0 on the FX series anyone?). For example the dynamic branching is done at a quad batch level, and that doens't makes it very effecient (has to be an area of above 1000 pixels, otherwise it could actually loose speed). nVidia has also said that 2005 refreshes will mainly be about SM3.0, that also points to bad perfomance from current parts. And as already mentioned "the excellent perfomance" seems to have problems in quite a few new games. Personally I regret buying a 6600GT, even though it still a good buy the X800XL is so much better.
Bottom line: If we can go in to a store and buy a X800XL at MSRP in a small country like Denmark (Europe), doesn't that point to a problem with your resellers in the US rather than problems with ATI?

"The moral of the story, it seems to me, is clear: ATI's second set of lower pricing numbers for the X800 and X800 XL was essentially incorrect. In reality, in the market, the 16-pipe Radeon X800 XL competes with the 16-pipe GeForce 6800 GT. The 12-pipe Radeon X800 competes with the 12-pipe GeForce 6800, and the Radeon X700 Pro competes with the GeForce 6600 GT. Armed with this knowledge, you can compare performance for yourself."

LOL, you gotta love the page that is being linked at the end of this particular paragraph. Specifically directed to the only game benchmarks where ATI's cards are known to have a definite performance disadvantage versus the competing NVDA boards. The more I read the more this article seems to smack of an agenda - definitely a blemish on TR's enviable record of unbiased reporting.

So what's the solution for review sites that want to make comparisons? It IS a good idea to match up cards of close pricepoints because that's usually what buyers do first.. set a budget then get the best card with those budget limits.

Since reviews of new cards are often printed when the NDAs expire, but before street availability (and street pricing determination), review sites can carefully refrain from comparisons before that street release. That is, the NDA article talks raw benchmarks/notes, and deliberately says "since we don't know street price or dates, we can't compare to the competitors". Then when the card does become available, a short followup can be posted saying "looks like the new ATI card matches up against XXXX, so here's the comparison."

Right now ATI is taking advantage of review sites (like TR) by biasing the choice of challenger card by presenting deceptive pricing.

quote=Anomymous Gerbil
you could rephrase Scott's disappointment at ATi as "how can ATi publish those MSRPs when they can't sell chips cheap enough such that board makers can sell to resellers at less than MSRP?"
/quote

Indeed.

Ati deserves to have an azz smacking about the availability lies also. The whole spirit of Scott's post is that Ati is not and has not been truthful and it is a pattern that has been establish since the intro of the x8xx series. Ati won a lot of hearts with the 9xxx series, and now many of those hearts are being broken.

Off Topic:
Had some really good Cabernet tonignt: Wrongo Dongo out of Spain. Smooth tasting new oak aged. Recommended.

I guess this is the FNT?

Any other loyal ATI guys besides end up buying a Nv6800 card yet?
I ask because I have had my used 6800GT (paid less then $300) for 2 months now and love it.

I am still a huge ATI fan, but my money goes towards buying me the most performance when I am ready to purchase hardware. One cant always wait with no end in sight for their favorite company to come thru.

Situtation is slightly different in Aus, X800XL are just starting to come in, a friends shop should be getting 40 or so in next week, will retail ~$500. X700Pro 256mb are going for ~$325, X700Pro 128mb are going for ~$250.

Problem is that he is getting pushed to stock and sell the high end.

ATI Radeon X850XT PE 256mb PCI-x16 video card, 2x DVI w/video in/out, OEM - $984.50 - 13 in stock
Sapphire X850XT PCI-x16 256Mb Video card, VGA & DVI, s-video outputs - $858.00 - 18 in stock
HIS ATI Radeon X850XT 256mb iTurbo IceQII PCI-x16 video card, DVI, VGA w/video out -$929.50 - 20 in stock
Asus Radeon X850XT PE 256mb PCI-x16 video card, 2x DVI w/video in/out - $1177.00 - 5 in stock

Don't forget to mention the PowerColor card, which also sells for $344. It strays from the ATi reference design by providing dual-DVI, the (un-necessary, save for the overclocking usage) floppy power connector, & the Rage Theater chip.

If there were an X800XL worth buying, the PowerColor would be it.

I don't think ATI is selectively pricing the cards differently for different vendors. I'm sure price discrimination is a offense that could land them in court in the US.

ATI obviously has a deal with CompUsa and Fry's wherein ATI-branded OEM boards (built by Sapphire) are selling at retail for $299. This is the same price that was listed on ATI's online store before they decided to transfer their own orders to add-in board partners. Powercolor, Asus, MSI and other partners are free to ask for whatever price they want for their own retail boards. ATI provided a MSRP, but never commented on the actual pricing of 3rd party boards. Nor are they expected to.

As far as the X800XL is concerned, the bottom line is (and should be): can you currently order one online or walk into a retail store and buy one for $299? The answer has been YES for several weeks now, so the discussion is moot.

Here in Orlando, two CompUSAs have them for $299 on the shelf, that is the X800XL. Seems like the major retailers are getting them for less then $299 unless they just want to lose money. Maybe this is ATI's way in supporting the retailers more vice having the online stores undercut them with less direct support which ATI later has to address with returned cards. Just a thought.

"The product positioning, we noted at the time, was clever because it placed the Radeon X800 XL at $50 less than its presumptive competition, the GeForce 6800 GT. Ditto for the Radeon X800 versus the GeForce 6600 GT."

Dont you mean -- "Ditto for the Radeon X800 versus the GeForce 6800"?

in the absense of any boards at or below the retail price that may be the case, but boards are at or below - are they just loosing money on them?

Some of you still don't understand.

To this day there are still problems regarding their price. This is months overdue. You act like a couple deals make everything ok. There is STILL a problem even if it doesn’t affect you. Only now is it working itself out slowly, now you finally have a few at their real msrp and a few severely overpriced. A little earlier and all were severely overpriced. There is still a problem! When people wrote reviews ATI told them it would come out at 300$, it didn’t and still hasn’t for all cards, there is still a problem!

This gets even worse when you talk about the x800. There is a problem here with how ATI is handling its pricing.