Buy now or wait?

[mazsta]

I just sold my gtx 570 and am looking to upgrade. I can stay air cooled or go water. I would like to stay at about $1k or under. I am considering a EVGA GTX580 Hydro or a ASUS GTX580 Matrix.
Or do I wait until a new card is released, and if so when is best guess for that to happen?

Thank You for any input.

 

[purple stain]

I suggest waiting until Nvidia starts releasing it's cards so that price wars will start.Right now I don't think the GTX580 is a good buy.The 7950 matches it in performance and can surpass it when O.C.'d but it costs less than a GTX580 and runs cooler.

 

[xtremegamer2da-max]

wait for the 7990

 

[mazsta]

thanx

 

[esrever]

definitely wait. See what the 600 cards are like. the 580 is not a good buy right now either way,

 

[MagicPants]

Buy if you want an AMD 7970 or 7950. If you want nVidia wait. Looking at prices, I've never seen much of a war. When cards get old they don't lower the price, they just stop making them.

I bought two GTX 580s at $520 when they came out, now they are $480 so there's not that much savings. And cards are often cheaper the instant they come out, and the price raises on the first restock.

I bet when the 680s will come out, they will be $550 or so, the 7970's will drop to $500, and the 580s won't change price at all (You see any 480s for sale?)

A few years back nVidia and ATI were quietly hit with an antitrust suit for price fixing. While they probably no longer communicate, I suspect they've just kept on following the same practices.

If you buy used cards off ebay that's something else entirely.

 

[nottheking]

Selling a GTX 570 to upgrade to a GTX 580 doesn't make a whole lot of sense, in my opinion; the bump in performance might not be all that great. Simply on that alone, I'd recommend waiting. In other situations with someone upgrading from something vastly older & weaker, (say, a GTX 260) I might have been inclined to suggest against waiting, but in this case it's probably the only way you're going to see a really appreciable difference.

While there's no clear word on when Kepler's going to finally hit shelves, and make whatever market splash it will, when it does, given the unprecedented high MSRPs of AMD's 7000 series, we'll likely see some forces driving prices downward. $550US is hard to justify for a card that isn't the #1 single-GPU part, and that crown is likely to be yanked from the 7970 whenever the GTX 680 finally arrives. The $450US MSRP for the 7950 already suggests AMD's prepared for some moves, and this in turn will likely spill down to affect the pricing of whatever 500-series cards remain.

If $1,000US is your limit, by that time, it may just make the most sense to wait for and get a Kepler video card.

A few years back nVidia and ATI were quietly hit with an antitrust suit for price fixing.

As I recall the quiet part was how the suit was dropped for having little/no merit. (also, that wouldn't be an antitrust suit, it'd be an anti-cartel suit) The plaintiffs were pretty vocal about it at the time being, including trying to sign on a lot of co-plaintiffs, promising new GPUs and/or $50US+ vouchers that never materialized.

 

[mazsta]

I sold the EVGA gtx 570 oc that was a year old for $300. So I was happy with that.

 

[purple stain]

You should be.Your really lucky to sell it at almost retail for it being over a year old.I'm having the hardest time trying to sell my 1 month old 990FXA board.

 

[PaperBoy]

yUp the 7950 is the better and cheaper alternate option to the GTX 580 or go all out and get the 7970 but really the new Nvidia cards will be peaky as in great performance at Nvidia TWIMTBP games but not so great as the Radeons are at everything else. Being a fanboy is stupid and in this case more expensive.

 

[PaperBoy]

Selling a GTX 570 to upgrade to a GTX 580 doesn't make a whole lot of sense, in my opinion; the bump in performance might not be all that great. Simply on that alone, I'd recommend waiting. In other situations with someone upgrading from something vastly older & weaker, (say, a GTX 260) I might have been inclined to suggest against waiting, but in this case it's probably the only way you're going to see a really appreciable difference.

While there's no clear word on when Kepler's going to finally hit shelves, and make whatever market splash it will, when it does, given the unprecedented high MSRPs of AMD's 7000 series, we'll likely see some forces driving prices downward. $550US is hard to justify for a card that isn't the #1 single-GPU part, and that crown is likely to be yanked from the 7970 whenever the GTX 680 finally arrives. The $450US MSRP for the 7950 already suggests AMD's prepared for some moves, and this in turn will likely spill down to affect the pricing of whatever 500-series cards remain.

If $1,000US is your limit, by that time, it may just make the most sense to wait for and get a Kepler video card.


As I recall the quiet part was how the suit was dropped for having little/no merit. (also, that wouldn't be an antitrust suit, it'd be an anti-cartel suit) The plaintiffs were pretty vocal about it at the time being, including trying to sign on a lot of co-plaintiffs, promising new GPUs and/or $50US+ vouchers that never materialized.

Um ya Nvidia and Radeon run something called a Monopoly and this mode of operation lends itself to price fixing the market and as a perfect case in point how much has the GTX 580 dropped in price since it came out well over a year ago and the new cards are out ? In Canada the Nvidia GTX 570 has went up in price by $30 since last summer but nobody talks about that now do they.

 

[Warmacblu]

Why would you sell a GTX 570? Was it not performing up to your standards?

 

[PaperBoy]

Buy if you want an AMD 7970 or 7950. If you want nVidia wait. Looking at prices, I've never seen much of a war. When cards get old they don't lower the price, they just stop making them.

I bought two GTX 580s at $520 when they came out, now they are $480 so there's not that much savings. And cards are often cheaper the instant they come out, and the price raises on the first restock.

I bet when the 680s will come out, they will be $550 or so, the 7970's will drop to $500, and the 580s won't change price at all (You see any 480s for sale?)

A few years back nVidia and ATI were quietly hit with an antitrust suit for price fixing. While they probably no longer communicate, I suspect they've just kept on following the same practices.

If you buy used cards off ebay that's something else entirely.

gtx 580 should be at $300 today and it is still mostly $500 plus @ most Retailers and Etailers unless you get em on sale price so if this is not indicative of price fixing I dont know what is.

 

[nottheking]

Um ya Nvidia and Radeon run something called a Monopoly and this mode of operation lends itself to price fixing the market and as a perfect case in point how much has the GTX 580 dropped in price since it came out well over a year ago and the new cards are out ? In Canada the Nvidia GTX 570 has went up in price by $30 since last summer but nobody talks about that now do they.

It's not a monopoly if there's two players; that's a duopoly.

And just because you don't like the prices as they are now doesn't mean there's a conspiracy to hold them higher. As it happens, The GTX 580 happens to be the most-powerful single-GPU card from nVidia; remember that, in terms of total GPUs sold, they seem to make up the majority of the higher-end market, and have a lot of brand-value. (there's PLENTY of fanboys for nVidia, just like there are for AMD) So on that alone, they can justify and still get sales at such a high price point.

GPUs aren't supposed to continuously drop in price every day; that's just plain silly. Rather, the prices go up and down due to supply and demand. It's just how the market ACTUALLY works.

 

[PaperBoy]

It's not a monopoly if there's two players; that's a duopoly.

And just because you don't like the prices as they are now doesn't mean there's a conspiracy to hold them higher. As it happens, The GTX 580 happens to be the most-powerful single-GPU card from nVidia; remember that, in terms of total GPUs sold, they seem to make up the majority of the higher-end market, and have a lot of brand-value. (there's PLENTY of fanboys for nVidia, just like there are for AMD) So on that alone, they can justify and still get sales at such a high price point.

GPUs aren't supposed to continuously drop in price every day; that's just plain silly. Rather, the prices go up and down due to supply and demand. It's just how the market ACTUALLY works.

Ya got Red and Green Price fixing and the consumer in the middle that's a Monopoly friend.

 

[nottheking]

Ya got Red and Green Price fixing and the consumer in the middle that's a Monopoly friend.

No, learn the definitions, please. "Mono" means "one." A monopoly is where ONE company controls it all; this would be like Microsoft's control of the PC operating system market. When a group of companies work to fix prices, that's a cartel. This HAS happened before, with DRAM, and a court case found evidence of this. This is not happening with the GPU market.

The irony here is that the attempted lawsuit claiming price-fixing in the GPU market could not have come at a more unfortunate time, when nVidia's GeForce 260 and 280 came out to face AMD's Radeon 4850 and 4870... And nVidia had to respond by rapidly slashing prices well below their MSRPs.

 

[PaperBoy]

No, learn the definitions, please. "Mono" means "one." A monopoly is where ONE company controls it all; this would be like Microsoft's control of the PC operating system market. When a group of companies work to fix prices, that's a cartel. This HAS happened before, with DRAM, and a court case found evidence of this. This is not happening with the GPU market.

The irony here is that the attempted lawsuit claiming price-fixing in the GPU market could not have come at a more unfortunate time, when nVidia's GeForce 260 and 280 came out to face AMD's Radeon 4850 and 4870... And nVidia had to respond by rapidly slashing prices well below their MSRPs.

Two HUGE companies running there own respective empire in the same industry = the end user consumer getting the short end of the stick. Nvidia and AMD understand the game they are playing and successful corporations leave nothing to chance that's why they get so huge like Nvdia and AMD cause they dont take risk they calculate, monopolize and capitalize and feed off each other. To Nvidia and AMD it is not about competition it is 100% about how much profit in each business 1/4 they can rake in whereas the average uneducated gamer just wants the best they can afford to play there games. Giving the consumer end user to much for to little at one time will devalue market share by way of decreasing demand and scarcity therefore driving prices lower and lower and make no mistake Nvidia and AMD are getting Silicon and parts and labor etc for pennies on the dollar.

 

[mazsta]

I think I started a war. Maybe I will just water cool something....this should be interesting.

 

[purple stain]

Do you already have watercooling for your CPU?

 

[mazsta]

no..I am just kicking around ideas for my haf 932.

 

[MagicPants]

Interesting that it's not between nVidia fan boys and AMD fan boys.

For any industry, there's a little bit of price fixing going on. It's only illegal if they collude to do it. We're just lucky that graphics cards still get 20% faster every generation. I remember hearing somewhere (I know that's vague) that Nvidia and AMD don't really make a ton off of their consumer graphics cards. Most of their profit comes from professional cards and super computer type stuff.

If they started undercutting each other too much, they wouldn't have any money left to do R&D. And at least it's not like the telecom companies, nVidia and AMD continually ship better and better products.

I'm just saying, when you buy a graphics cards keep these things in mind:

1) nVidia rules the high end most of the time, while AMD goes for the mid range.
2) Every generation is 20% faster than the previous.
3) AMD and nVidia always leapfrog each other.
4) Every new generation is 10% faster than the competitor's top card .
5) Whenever a new AMD flagship card comes out, it's generally 4 months until nVidia tops it.
6) Whenever a new nVidia flagship card comes out, it's generally 8 months until AMD tops it.
7) Cards don't really get more than 10% cheaper then become dated, they just stop making them.

I think I started a war. Maybe I will just water cool something....this should be interesting.

 

[esrever]

they make a lot from consumer cards because they sell so many. It costs like $10 to make a card probably and the rest goes to R&D and also distribution and marketing.

 

[purple stain]

I have a HAF 932 myself.Was thinking of getting a XSPC Rasa 750 RX240 kit and putting the RAD at the top when I have the money.But I never run into a heat problem with my air cooler that would warrant a water cooling setup.Still would be nice to have they are really neat.

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/14182/ex-wat-181/XSPC_Rasa_750_RX240_Universal_CPU_Water_Cooling_Kit_w_RX240_Radiator_and_Free_Kill_Coil.html

 

[pg3141]

Two HUGE companies running there own respective empire in the same industry = the end user consumer getting the short end of the stick. Nvidia and AMD understand the game they are playing and successful corporations leave nothing to chance that's why they get so huge like Nvdia and AMD cause they dont take risk they calculate, monopolize and capitalize and feed off each other. To Nvidia and AMD it is not about competition it is 100% about how much profit in each business 1/4 they can rake in whereas the average uneducated gamer just wants the best they can afford to play there games. Giving the consumer end user to much for to little at one time will devalue market share by way of decreasing demand and scarcity therefore driving prices lower and lower and make no mistake Nvidia and AMD are getting Silicon and parts and labor etc for pennies on the dollar.

Nvidia and AMD have every right to charge whatever they please for their product. If you don't like the price then don't buy it. What it costs to manufacture the product and their margin of profit is irrelevent. Who are you to dictate how much profit they should make? Would you have them take a loss on their product and then not be able to produce it anymore? Do you want to see the products get better? Can you make them yourself? How are they screwing you? You are not forced to buy them. Even if it was a monopoly, if they charged more than the market would bear they would take a loss. Why sell 100 units and a 1000 dollars a pop when you can sell a 1000 units at 500? Learn something about economics before you open your stupid trap.

 

[masterofevil22]

I'd buy the 7970. The thing is nearly as fast as dual gpu cards at Stock speeds and from what I've seen; even on a reference cooler, it's HIGHLY OVERCLOCKABLE.

If I had $550 bucks to spend right now.. I'd own it. If you add more cards in Xfire you get highly scalable and unbelievable performance with almost no impact to idle power usage or temperature.

Also, the AMD cards have always saved you money on your power bill compared to Nvidia and they're always packing features that Nvidia just can't match. Personal opinion, but that's my 2 cents.