Originally Posted by Drunkenmaster
To a certain degree, maybe, but when you know roughly speaking what something costs, and how much profit people are making. You can draw a conclusion as to what is "fair" spending.
But then thats life, nothing is fair. However, AMD really shouldn't ignore that there has been a very strong feeling amongst enthusiasts that Nvidia is screwing them and AMD is not, and they are making a BIG move against that. Yes, that is one group of people, and yes, a lot of them will still buy AMD. But given the same priced cards, people like buying from the underdog or the guys who they feel are doing the right thing.
AMD would almost certainly still be making a very decent profit at cheaper prices, not massively but a bit.
Coming in closer to 580gtx pricing would, force Nvidia to make less profits, or force Nvidia to look worse, either is a win. Secondly, even with lower supply, lets say for example that 10k people buy a high end GPU in the uk this week, there are only 1k AMD 7970's available, the other 9k see 580gtx pricing and think, meh, its roughly the same performance/pound, I might just go Nvidia.
Even if they take a little less in profits, you'll get a lot of people waiting for stock of 7970's rather than just going Nvidia if the prices were better.
Also, AMD should find a way to both, have a proper god damned supply line to the UK rather than having us at the mercy of the god damned exchange rate, and many of the retailers here buy iin smaller shipments from US based distro's, rather than AMD shipping in massive quantities to UK distributors, it all add's to pretty awful UK pricing on products the retailers choose to price gouge on.
If I was AMD I would both keep customers happy and their image intact by taking more direct control over supply in the more important markets and keeping back supply to stores who get heavily into price gouging. AMD don't lose any money, their customers get a better deal, retailers don't get to own their customers through stupid pricing, when AMD and the customer win....... AMD win.
ultimately the biggest fail of 7970 is the clock speeds. Every forum I go on people are saying its barely faster than the 580gtx, and had they simply ignored the 300W, which they've done before, Nvidia WILL do with the big kepler(and maybe GK104 as well). A stock 7970 vs a stock Gk112/gk110/gk100(whatever it ends up being called) will look AWFUL, while overclocked the gap will close considerably because GK100 is likely to be a 350-400W card and not have much overclocking headroom while the 7970 is a 300-350W card that has been unclocked to the tune of 50-100W for no apparent reason.
There was no need for it, it does make the card look slower than it is, trying to get an Joe Average to understand that the card is just heavily underclocked rather than not very good is almost impossible, getting an Nvidia guy on a forum to admit it is beyond impossible.
AMD already smashed the 300W barrier, officially, with the 6990, Nvidia did it unofficially with the 480/580gtx and more officially with the 590gtx.
Even do a 6990 launch, AMD couldn't have made it more clear, here's a safe lower TDP option and here's the really cool overclocked bios option, and look all our slides show things related to massive overclocking potential and a cooler than can cope with 400W easily........
The whole launch was a show saying, we've got this safe TDP stock setting but for the love of god use the overclocked higher TDP setting if you buy this card, we want you to do it.
At least do the same thing with the 7970.
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01-12-2012, 09:22 PM
- costs $50 more than "competition"
The funny thing is, that if it was the green team with the high prices, it would be considered normal and okay. 
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