What is a good price on 5850's to YOU?

[tehdrizzle]

I've been looking around at the pricing of 5850's and noticed that Newegg has a few that are finally in the sub $300 range. Do you think they will go down anymore this fall, or is this about it for the 5850 price drops?

 

[mactronix]

They have no reason at the minute to drop the price as there is no competition. When Nvidia finally come up with something competitive in terms of Price and Performance then they may drop the price.
These cards in fact this whole generation is anything up to 25% in the case of the midrange 5770's overpriced in my opinion.

Mactronix

 

[Petey1013]

Anything under 300 for one of the good branded cards is pretty good.

 

[JofaMang]

Yup, a sub 300 5850 is acceptable ATM. Should the 470 suddenly drop to 300 or less, then we might get more price-cut loving, but thats doubtful the say the least.

The current card heirarchy is well represented in the price scales. No small shift in pricing will change much.
GTX465 - 280
5850 - 300
GTX470 - 350
5870 - 400
GTX480 - 500
5970 - 700

Unless Nvidia makes a price move first and encroaches their price/perf ratio into ATI territory, ATI will be just happy to stay where it is. If the Fermi Dual GPU card outperforms the 5970 AND is priced close, we might see a price drop from ATI on the 5970 alone (down to $550-600), but I can't imagine that would effect the single GPU pricing.

 

[JofaMang]

"What is a good price on 5850's to YOU? "

I'd pull the trigger at 250, if it happens at least 6 months before 6xxx release. Rumours are that window is closing fast.

 

[tehdrizzle]

That's what I'm thinking too. I'm waiting to see if there is a price drop right before the 6xxx series is realeased because at $250 I'd pull the trigger as well and am hoping to see that later this fall.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

There may be a fall refresh, that's likely to be the only time there's a major drop in price. There might be slight positioning back and forth near term, but I suspect you won't see $250 range until either yields improve or another product is either imminent or launched.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

6x00 will still be dx11 right? I hope they don't pull a wild one outta their rear and Microsoft makes it dx12...

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yes. DX11, there was talk of DX11.1, which is definitely part of NI, but SI is likely to be like Evegreen in supporting what was believed to be DX11.1 last year, but may have since then evolved into something more along a DX11.0a / 11.0b split (similar to R300 refresh and nV35) prior to the final ratification of DX11.1.

Remember Southern Islands is supposed to be a minor refresh bridging the gap between Evergreen and NI, and DX12 isn't likely to come until after the Northern Islands architecture.

 

[mactronix]

I was reading a week or so back that the differances will be in the "Uncore". Seems pretty self explanitory but can you just confirm that means what i think it does. which is things outside of the main SIMD cores, AA resolve and things like that ?
Or am i way off ?

Mactronix

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I don't think it will be AA resolve, that's an RBE function, and the Uncore will be more like an expanded setup-engine more, similar to the way that Fermi does their Polymorph engine.

NI will expand on this further with shared pools and other improvements (could involve RBE at that point), but it doesn't look like the design of SI will involve changing the back-end so much as improving the front end.

Still alot up in the air as to exactly what parts of each will be added/kept.

 

[jaguarskx]

I'm just happy I bought mine last year for $280.

But anything under $300 is good now.

 

[plznote]

$1 would be fine