AMD Cutting GPU Prices Again

[blazorthon]

Here's the thing blaz. I believe you've got backwards what the hotfix does. The article I shared in the link mentions how Windows 7 by default just crams threads into one module at a time instead of the 1st core of each module, not the other way around, and the hotfix attempts to fix this behavior by activating each module before using the 2nd core of one module. This uses more power but provides better performance as we both know.

I'm convinced that either someone lied about what that patch does or MS didn't make it properly given that it didn't really change anything. Maybe I'm wrong about what it does, but the minor performance differences indicate that it does not do what it is said to do given that other tests say otherwise and with good reason.

 

[pliskin1]

I really should upgrade from my 5750.

 

[army_ant7]

I'm convinced that either someone lied about what that patch does or MS didn't make it properly given that it didn't really change anything. Maybe I'm wrong about what it does, but the minor performance differences indicate that it does not do what it is said to do given that other tests say otherwise and with good reason.

I'm thinking MS didn't (or couldn't) make it properly with Windows 7. Even though it may have little to just plain negligible performance benefits, it may still be worth to apply since it doesn't take much to get it (just download and install). Along with the more significant PSCheck fix of course. Don't you agree?

 

[blazorthon]

I'm thinking MS didn't (or couldn't) make it properly with Windows 7. Even though it may have little to just plain negligible performance benefits, it may still be worth to apply since it doesn't take much to get it (just download and install). Along with the more significant PSCheck fix of course. Don't you agree?

I really don't think that it'll help, but I suppose that testing it shouldn't hurt. Maybe I'm wrong about it.

 

[nebun]

AMD is dying a slow death

 

[Belardo]

Not really, Nebun.... PC Gaming will forever be a weak market. How many games really make use of a $500 gaming card? The game choices are pathetic.

AMD will make money selling Console GPUs to Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

 

[Regor245]

Big Gap between 7770 and 7850.

Do you think AMD should release a 7790? 😀

 

[master_chen]

[citation][nom]Regor245[/nom]Big gap between 7770 and 7850.[/citation]
HD 7750/7770 are A LOT weaker than the HD 7850/7870, so it's only natural.

 

[proffet]

Did you ever hear of the CPU/NB frequency and PSCheck? The CPU/NB frequency controls (among other things) the L3 cache frequency and overclocking it significantly has a substantial effect on performance per core per Hz of the CPU frequency. Using PSCheck to cut-down on the second core fo each module lets the fist core mroe or less get the front end all to itself, another significant performance per core per Hz boost at a given CPU clock frequency.

FX can almsot match SB and can easily make up for the now minor loss in performance per Hz per core with significantly higher frequencies. The FX-81xx CPUs can easily hang with even the K edition i5s and i7s in OC versus OC, greatly because of the PSCheck configuration being able to make the second core of each module either be disabled (using roughly zero power) or run at very low clock frequencies/voltage and thus very low power when not running all eight cores at load.

AMD's CPUs can compete quite well, you just havr to know how to use them. AMD obviously doesn't know how to set up their CPUs properly, so it's no surprise that most people (even within the tech communities) don't know of this either.

you sound like a FANBOI.
only certain heavily multi-threaded apps will allow FX to compete with SB and still not that well.
might win one or two benches maybe, and not by a lot of margin.
overall AMD CPU's are still weak, often getting beat by Intel and C2Q 9-series as well as more recent chips.
and I have tried that disable part of module 'trick'.
waste of time as well.

 

[guardianangel42]

Damn. I just bought a GTX 660 Ti and now they tell me I could have gotten a 7950 for the same price. Oh well, I'm sure the 660 Ti will suit me just fine for the next couple of years. I probably won't miss the couple percentage performance difference since my last GPU was a GTX 275.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]proffet[/nom]you sound like a FANBOI.only certain heavily multi-threaded apps will allow FX to compete with SB and still not that well.might win one or two benches maybe, and not by a lot of margin.overall AMD CPU's are still weak, often getting beat by Intel and C2Q 9-series as well as more recent chips.and I have tried that disable part of module 'trick'.waste of time as well.[/citation]

You sound like a fanboy considering that you obviously didn't even understand what I said, let alone refute it. I'll try to simplify it for you.

CPU/NB frequency controls L3 cache frequency and the frequency of the northbridge connection. Increasing it from the stock 2GHz/2.2GHz (depends on the model) can increase performance per core significantly. Considering that it's about the same as it was on even the original Phenoms from five or six years ago, it isn't surprising that raising it helps significantly. For a nice, round number to work with, let's raise it to 3GHz. That'll increase performance by about 10-20%.

Prioritizing for the first core of each module over the second core lets the first core have the entire front-end of the module all to itself, an even greater increase in performance. This increases performance per Hz of the CPU frequency by about 20-30% for the first core of each module.

Altogether, both of these tricks let an FX-81xx CPU nearly meet Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge in performance per Hz per core while hitting higher frequencies than Sandy and Ivy Bridge to make up for the still minor performance per Hz loss. It won't beat Haswell, but it'll keep up with the current Intel CPUs in stock versus stock and OC versus OC comparisons excellently.

Also, if I was a fanboy for AMD, then I would simply say that they're great or something like that instead of explaining how to fix AMD's failure in configuring their CPUs. I'm simply being unbiased and thorough.

 

[ninjarubberduck]

[citation][nom]army_ant7[/nom]The source of the article is indicated as PC Perspective. Also, I and probably tons of people hope you're kidding.[/citation]

Sorry! Poor wording on my part but click on the source and you can see they updated by saying AMD denied any further price cuts.

 

[Belardo]

Why the HD 7770 doesn't impress me...

Its been 4 years since the ATI 4850/4870. Less than a year on the market - you could get the 4850 for about $100~110. It was a huge card compared to the 7750/7770. In 4 years time - the performance for the $100 market hasn't really changed.

Crysis: Warhead - 1680x1050 4XAA
HD 4870 = 31.6FPS
HD 5770 = 32.5FPS (66x0 is a re-branded 57x0 and then re-branded as the 76x0)
HD 7750 = 31.8FPS
HD 7770 = 36.8FPS

In 4 years, the $100~120 cards haven't gotten any better. Maybe I'll go for a 7800 series... or wait for the 8700 series... don't know.. barely care.

 

[Novulux]

[citation][nom]hitman40_4[/nom]FYI, tax in my state is around $30, so that's well over $400. Neweg, at least in my state, doesn't charge tax[/citation]

Well, it does in mine. 😛

 

[liquidsnake718]

Sounds good but does this mean that in about 6 months we will see the new 8xxx series out? I still think my Sapphire HD5850 is still a decent card and is about the same in terms of performance as a 7850 am i right? Or is it perhaps even better than that card?

Regardless, for the average user, graphics cards should be replaced at least two generations of if they are on the higher end spectrum, even 3 generations after. One can always crossfire or SLI instead if their motherboard permits.

 

[army_ant7]

Sounds good but does this mean that in about 6 months we will see the new 8xxx series out? I still think my Sapphire HD5850 is still a decent card and is about the same in terms of performance as a 7850 am i right? Or is it perhaps even better than that card?

Depends... How does an HD 5850 compare to an HD 6950? Because I learned that the HD7850 performs on par with the HD 6950, and I think this was before the latest driver updates that increased performance.
I actually got a 2GB HD 6950 but was still able to return it (I'm glad they accept returns just because you change your mind. ) and got a much cheaper 2GB HD 7850. It has the advantages of GCN (much less power consumption, power saving features, better API support (though that might be practically negligible), etc.) and again, supposedly performed close to the HD 6950 (before the performance driver updates which makes it even better maybe unless it increased the HD 6950's performance that much as well).

 

[BIL_ASC]

In my country I have to pay $295 for 7870 (T_T)
This is a good news, but I want HD8XXX so bad..

 

[Guest]

time to get a HD7950 when it drops below the $300 mark. Still running o a HD6850 which is enough for most modern games.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]KING001[/nom]time to get a HD7950 when it drops below the $300 mark. Still running o a HD6850 which is enough for most modern games.[/citation]

There have been a few 7950s below the $200 mark for more than a week. You just have to watch the sales.

 

[ricardois]

That is a healthy competition (amd and Nvidia) lowering the prices to win customers instead of attacking each other.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]ricardois[/nom]That is a healthy competition (amd and Nvidia) lowering the prices to win customers instead of attacking each other.[/citation]

Nvidia isn't lowering prices. Their price are still the same as when they launched all of their cards. They are launching cards that make their more expensive similar cards almost completely irrelevant, but that's not the same Still, this generation is good competition.

 

[jabliese]

[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]Does anyone have a solid reason to buy 650 @ $110? it seems to be only worth $90-100 now. I guess it is time for me to dump Nvidia for AMD. I have been with Nvidia since TNT2. Not this time anymore.[/citation]

Only one reason, check out the Temperature and Noise page in Tom's review. If power use is your determining factor, the 650 makes sense. Probably want to wait for a 650 without the 6 pin connector in that case. For everything else, the 7750 is comparable, and you get generally better compute capabilities.
OK, make that 2 reasons, you want to support nVidia actually having a card competing in the low power category. nVidia has been absent in this segment for so long, everyone is impressed with a sub $100 7750, when in past iterations it would be $65 - 75 by now.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]jabliese[/nom]Only one reason, check out the Temperature and Noise page in Tom's review. If power use is your determining factor, the 650 makes sense. Probably want to wait for a 650 without the 6 pin connector in that case. For everything else, the 7750 is comparable, and you get generally better compute capabilities.OK, make that 2 reasons, you want to support nVidia actually having a card competing in the low power category. nVidia has been absent in this segment for so long, everyone is impressed with a sub $100 7750, when in past iterations it would be $65 - 75 by now.[/citation]

The 650 hardly used any less power than the 7750 and it was louder than the non-reference 7750 in the test. Temps were also not much better, if at all (hard to tell given that the 650/660 review didn't include temp results for the non-reference 7750 that they tested for the noise results). The 7750 is also not priced any worse than it should be. For example, the cheapest 6750 at Newegg is $87 (including shipping and a $10 rebate), the cheapest 6770 is $88 (including shipping and a large $30 rebate), and the cheapest 7750 is $95 (including $10 rebate, free shipping).

I think that there is a good argument in buying the GTX 650 anyway (depending on what games you play and at what settings), but it is kinda odd in some ways. It has less consistent performance than the 7750 and as you said, it's odd that it has a 6 pin PCIe connector (especially since it seems to use slightly less power than the 7750 and even more oddly, less than the GT 640).

However, at the GTX 650's price point, I'd prefer getting a Radeon 7770 that quite consistently out-performs it by good margins except in a few cases where it still retains a small lead. If a GTX 650 drops to at or slightly below the Radeon 7750's price range and a 7770 doesn't get too close in price, then that GTX 650 will be more considerable. It's definitely something that is worth watching.

If I was really worried about power consumption so much that a few watts matters to me, then I'd simply undervolt the 7770 or get a 7750 and undervolt it. However, it's not like comparing the GTX 480 to the Radeon 7850 where the similarly priced 7850 has maybe a third og the GTX 480's power consumption at load. It's not even like comparing a GTX 560 or a Radeon 6870 to a good Radeon 7770. The difference simply isn't noticeable in the power bill nor in heat generation.

 

[ChromeTusk]

Gotta save up my money for the holiday sales. I would love to upgrade my HD5770!

 

[jabliese]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom] The 7750 is also not priced any worse than it should be. For example, the cheapest 6750 at Newegg is $87 (including shipping and a $10 rebate), the cheapest 6770 is $88 (including shipping and a large $30 rebate), and the cheapest 7750 is $95 (including $10 rebate, free shipping).[/citation]

All of which are "inflated" in price, because there has been no competition in this segment. Undervolted 7770, hmm. Sounds like a review article, match up the 7750, 650 and 7770. See which can go the lowest with no performance hit.