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ATI drops price on 4870's / 4870X2 now $399 - jan 10th update
AmazingAvery
Age of Conan AdvocateMember UncommonPosts: 7,188
"ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, on Friday said it had slashed price of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card and said that at least one online store will have them available for end-users at $199 price-point for 512MB graphics card.
“The price of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 is dropping and we expect that the 512MB and 1GB boards should be available on Newegg today for around $199 and $239 respectively, offering and even more compelling value,” a spokesperson for ATI/AMD said.
At $199 price-point the ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB graphics card becomes the top-performing performance-mainstream option on the market. Earlier AMD sold ATI Radeon HD 4850 at this price-point."
There they go down on neweggUS and neweggCA
looks like next year is going to see more price wars!
Comments
nVidia actually fueled this price decrease earlier by decreasing the price of the 9800 to $99, and the GTX260 to $225. There are more nVidia fanboys then ATI fanboys so ATI always has to sell thier similiarly or better performing products cheaper in order to compete.
wow!!!!!!!
yeah i picked up a BFG GTX260 OC for 219 after looking through slickdeals. 239 for a 4870 1GB is not bad... with a rebate on top it would be a sweet deal. Wouldn't waste my time with the 512MB version though.
any news on the X2 cards or the release of the X4 cards?
Right now I wouldn't expect 4870 x2's going any lower. There is a clear seperation in pricing to keep ATI competitive in the high end market.
Wait until next year towards 3Q or 2010 when NVIDIA comes out with a similar 4800 launch like ATI did. And by the looks of it you wont be needing a x2 or better. Nvidia looks like they are going to have a big release with GDDR5 512bit memory and increased performance from adding more processing cores. Unlike ATI nvidia gains little performance from adding additional processing cores, this is why the 4800 series showed a huge increase to 800 stream process units because they can scale performance much more by adding them over nvidia.
But I would wait till that launch if your going to upgrade. It should be a real 4800 series killer.
Who let you in the VIP section?
They shouldn't be looking at being a 4800 killer, they should be looking at being a 5800 killer. I don't think nVidia will gain the crown again until 2010 as you said. It usually always takes a few generations to beat a new architecture model.
The next nVidia launch is going to be mid-range parts, and a die shrink on the GTX cards. Continuing to use a larger and larger die will not help nVidia compete any further as ATI can release a similiarly performing part with better power envelopes for cheaper. Also what do you think will happen in the HD5800 cards? They will increase the bus to 512, increase the clocks, and create support from 4GPUs to 8GPUs in order to compete with larrabee next year. The technology for scalability is already there, its just the motherboard hardware support isn't there and won't be there until Windows 7.
What will be interesting is if AMD's Deneb core has similiar performance to Nahelhiem. Then AMD will be set for thier introduction of a FUSION system. You can see the parts already there on AMD machines with a powerful performing IGP(780GX), sideport, Phenom's architecture, CrossfireX, and a SouthBridge supporting overclocking.
nVidia has alot of stuff to accomplish if they want thier next card to compete with ATI and Intel. They are already starting to layout the foundations by branching support for Ageia that will be a key component to thier video cards sellability. They have to do a die shrink, Improve thier rendering architectures effeciency, offer better performing low and mid range parts in a timely manner unlike the last 2 generations, create better scalability, improve thier IGP, improve SLI to support more if not all applications, and meet all the requirements of DX11.
BTW, ATIs stream processor is more effecient then nVidias which is why it offers such a huge boost from adding them. This comes down to how much information they can digest at a time. The ATI stream processor can do 4 calculations at once if the 4 calculations are similiar in nature. The nVidia stream processor can do 1 calculation. The key is 4 calculations, 5 would be too many, and 3 would be too few 4 is the perfect amount. With this they can send 4 pieces of information at a time. Such as "Object5.Rotation","XAmount","YAmount","ZAmount". The reason why 4 is perfect for 3D apps is because calculations are usually always based on 4 parts [description][X][Y][Z].
THANK YOU for posting this. Man am I glad i didn't buy that fuckin card today before the price drop!!!. I think this card rocks and i wasn't warry of buying it because of the price... now it can fit in my budget!
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Real as Reality Television!!!
It's good to know this now, I've been looking at different gpus to make part of my next system build. Excellent information about internal hardware about the gpus by ATI and Nvidia, do you have any site references to support it and explain more about the hardware?
Anandtech HD4870 Review
I have a friend who was waiting on the 4870x2(I think) to come out for months and finally caved in and just got a 4850. I have a 4670 myself and I have no problems running most games on highest graphics, I bottleneck because of my amd 64 2.2 dc.
Possible Nvidia Geforce GTX 295 pixellized
I think i'll stick with my 4870x2. Only ended up costing $549 CAD at local store on holiday sale a few weeks back, now goes for like $630 CAD. I was looking at the 4870 to add on for a tri crossfireX in the future, but nothing I play really scales too well at the moment.
On the wife PC she has 2x8800GT which might upgrade to that GTX 295 if it shows up before end of Feb before loose the ability in trade up deal from local store.
<---- 4870X2 and it ROCKS with 12 gigs of ram and the new Intel core I7 and solid state hard drives
hehehe i scored on 3dmarck06 NO OVERCLOCK at 20,100 
Further update / cuts :
4870X2 costs €365, 4850 X2 just €214
ATI has slashed HD4870/4850 X2 prices, following the launch of Nvidia's dual GPU GTX 295 graphics card. The price drops are substantial, and new prices have been listed in most markets on January 10th.
The cheapest HD4870 X2 comes from Sapphire, and in Europe it currently sells for €365, down 15 percent from the previous list price of €419, and you can find the listing here. In the States, the same card costs $449, but after a $50 mail in rebate, the price settles down at a comfortable $399, and you can get it here.
For comparison, Nvidia's GTX 295 sells for around €450 in EU markets and $500 in the U.S. At the moment, the price drop doesn't seem to be affecting the single GPU HD4870 or HD4850.
The dual-GPU HD4850 X2 also had its price trimmed, dropping from €270 to €214, or 24 percent if you like math. This is cheap, extremely cheap. It ends up costing just slightly more than a single GPU HD4870, and the same amount of cash will only get you a GTX 260 if you go Nvidia. For the record, a single GPU HD4850 costs €115, but most still sell for €125+.
Basically, the uncospicous HD4850 X2 offers unbeatable value for money, at least for the time being.
Nvidia did a good job with its 55nm GT200b cards, and although it's back in the high end, but ATI isn't about to sit idly by and let it enjoy the lead for one second. It obviously has enough breathing room to take Nvidia on, dropping prices and keeping its dual GPU lineup competitive by pricing its X2 cards uncomfortably close to Nvidia's GTX 260 and GTX 285 cards.