AMD HAS DECIDED it’s time to have its partners launch more affordable Radeon HD 6900 series cards and oddly enough the top of the range HD 6970 is the first card to be given the 1GB treatment including a nice price cut to go along with it. The new cards are expected to hit retail for around $279, making them more affordable than most Radeon HD 6950 cards with 2GB of memory.
Update: January 18, 2011 changes to story at bottom.
The price difference between a 2GB card and a 1GB card is pretty significant at around $90, not counting any special rebate offers. Considering that most 2GB Radeon HD 6950 cards retail for $299.99 again not taking any rebates into consideration, this looks like a pretty odd move by AMD. If nothing else, it’s suggesting a price shift in AMD’s line-up of cards, or at least for the parts below the 1GB Radeon HD 6970.
Xbit labs are also reporting that AMD’s partners are working on faster Radeon HD 6870 cards with core clock speeds up to as high as 975MHz up from the stock 900MHz and memory speeds of up to 4.6GHz, up from 4.2GHz. However, these models are expected to retail for between $229-259 which isn’t really a price increase at all compared to what stock cards are currently being sold at.
In effect, we might not see a 1GB Radeon HD 6950, at least not for the time being as such a card doesn’t have anywhere to slot in when it comes to the current pricing structure. Some Radeon HD 6870 cards are already available for under $200 with rebate and the cheapest 2GB Radeon HD 6850 cards can be had for around $270 already, once again with rebate. It’s hard to see where there’s room for a 1GB version, but as we said, maybe AMD is set to make some changes across the board in its product line-up which will allow for said card to be slotted in somewhere.S|A
Update: January 18, 2011 We have been informed that the information provided contained a typo. It should have read: Radeon 6950 priced between 269 and 279 USD.
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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