Just when I was thinking it might be time for me to put together a beasting desktop, AMD announces it has reduced the pricing on its Radeon HD cards in Australia. Screw you savings, I didn’t need your stupid money anyway.
The RRP of the HD 7990 has been reduced to AUD$949, the HD 7970 GHz Edition is now $479, the HD7970 is $419 and, finally, the HD 7950 now retails for $319. As Tim Colwill noted over at games.on.net, many stockists already sell these cards at equal or lower prices but hopefully these price drops will be reflected at the stores you purchase from. In other words prices will hopefully be reduced across the board.
In addition, Radeon’s ‘Never Settle Forever’ bundles, which packages free games alongside its cards has a new game to choose from: Saints Row IV. It joins other games such as Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution and Far Cry 3 among others.
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38 responses to “AMD Drops Its Radeon HD Card Prices In Australia”
Only just got a 7850 earlier in the year.. don’t think I will be getting a new one for a while.. 7850 is budget by comparison.. but still.. anything I buy for my computer needs to pass the “Wife Test” before it is purchased.. and I actually like that I have to justify that because most of the time it means I end up waiting and the price, like this, falls 🙂
Does anything she buy have to pass the “hubby” test?
EDIT: *buys
Lol.
Sometimes.. though not as often.. 🙂
Even so, if I really really really want something.. it only takes a maximum of a few weeks to whittle down her resistance to it.. especially if it’s an “on sale” item 😛 However that is what I mean… if it is really that important to me.. having to break down the walls of resistance makes me reassess my priorities etc and to have to go that far to getting it, I’ve already reassessed multiple times and still come to same conclusion that I “need” it. 🙂
Like my new home theatre system I am buying next month.. we have a Sony.. but it’s 8 years old now and has been starting to fail for about 2 years now, getting progressively worse and worse and worse.. now only the center and subwoofer speakers work consistently.. but it’s not something my wife sees much value in.. so it took a while to get this “approved”.. but then for other things, I will get a “if you think it’s good, get it” response straight away 🙂
I have had so many bad experiences with Radeon video cards .. ill never use them anytime soon …
genuine question: what sorta bad experiences?
This is over the course of about 10 years, when I had upgraded my PC 3 separate times (MB/CPU that kind of thing).
1. First one I bought ended up lasting about 2-3 months before it actually died in my machine before I had to buy a different brand. Not sure what killed it.
2. Another I bought that was a higher end model failed to work out of the box, it would boot up but anything graphic-wise just caused fragmentation over my display. I took it to a few different people to test all came back with same result so good a full refund on that one.
3. Recently bought another one cause my current one was overheating and dying cause it was special. Got it home and discovered the fan was broken.
I know these are a few small experiences but its enough to sour me off Radeon cards, as all my other cards I bought (Gigaybte/Nvidia/VTX) all lasted a couple of years with 0 problems before I had to upgrade them.
thats a pretty epic run of bad luck.
I’ve been using AMD cards for years & not had any problems, but yeah… just luck I guess.
totally understand why you’ve been put off.
I’ve always had Radeons.. I often wonder why I do buy them when I miss out on such things as PhysX and all that mumbo jumbo that nVidia are so great at….
I think when it comes down to it.. I spend a week or two looking at benchmark comparisons, lots of reviews and all that.. and then look at the price difference and the value of spending considerably more for only a few extra frames per second.. then I go and buy a Radeon card… if the nVidia cards that I compared at the times I bought new cards were miles ahead within the same price range.. I would go with them.. but generally they’re not…. and when they are.. they are not at a time I need a new card.. such is life 🙂
I’ve had identical issues and experiences.
Well, except the bit where the guys would test my card and get the same result – I had to tell them, “No, you can’t just fire up Devil May Cry 4 and say it runs fine, you need to run WoW on ultra.”
It was some issue with a very specific sector of video memory that most games couldn’t fill, but WoW would cheerfully fill up your video memory with as many textures as it could, and that was what was tripping the bad sector.
Even then, it took them several weeks to get the card sent away and ‘replaced’ (repaired), and when it came back, it still failed and I had to demand that they give me a new replacement card, not a refurbished one with hidden errors waiting for error-prone/high-intensity user me to find them.
Edit: The price-drops look tempting for an upgrade, but I promised myself my next video card is an nvidia.
Well.. it depends on what you’re going to be playing.. If you are still playing WoW.. then stick with nVidia as they get more bang for your buck on WoW.. it really comes down to doing your research regardless of price drops.. a Radeon that rates higher on every other game may not rate as high on the game you intend to play the most..
it’s all a matter of personal experience, ive never had any issues with radeon, but every nvidia card i’ve owned has died or had driver issues, or didnt perform as well as its cheaper radeon counterpart (for my needs that is).
I’ve had the same thing. Every NVidia I’ve ever owned has been stupid or broken in some way. Every Radeon I’ve owned has… owned.
Gonna buy a second 7950 and crossfire them.
Same thing can be said for Nvidia, depending on who you ask. I have 2 GTX670’s, and before that it was 2 x GTX560ti’s. For months now there has been issues with Nvidia’s drivers … you only need to go to their website, go to the forums, and look at the response in the drivers section. There was especially huge issues with the 6 series when it first came out, of people having major frame rate fluctuations (was eventually fixed in drivers after months of people having problems).
I mean, yeah, I tend to favour Nvidia, but it doesn’t mean AMD is crap … not by a long shot (I’ve owned several of their cards in the past and never had any issues). I would happily give the HD 7xxx series a go if given the opportunity again. The sole reason I’ve had Nvidia cards the last two times around is because I think SLI is a little more solid than crossfire. For single card configurations? Not much in it at all, really.
You also want to be very thankful that Nvidia has direct competition … otherwise you would be paying a LOT more money on top of the already ridiculous prices that are being charged in the market today. Healthy competition is always a good thing for the consumer.
I bailed on AMD many years ago (I think 2005/6?), after I had 2 cards from them fail in a short period. (the second one that failed replaced the first that overheated and failed).
My latest build I went back and got a 7950HD. It’s worked well since, with the occassional random crash to blue screen while playing some games.
The only issues I’ve had with Radeon’s is when I’ve bought a cheaper manufacturer/brand.. whenever I’ve spent a little more for a good quality brand, such as my current Sapphire branded 7850, I’ve never had a problem.
Indeed. i’ve got a Sapphire branded atm, and other than the crashes i’ve mentioned its been good. I should clarify the crashes are largely poorly optimised games, such as Darksiders 2.
Got a HD6990 a few years back… still handling modern games pretty well, so I dont think I can justify getting a new card at the moment.
but hopefully, in 18 months or so when I’m looking at building a new gaming rig, the newer card will follow this pricing model…
Yeah, I current pattern is to upgrade every 2 generations at the very least.
Team Green: Geforce 2 -> Geforce4 -> Geforce6
Team Red: 2900 -> 4870 -> 6970
It doesn’t make any sense to upgrade a single generation [unless your card dies or something]. The boost in performance doesn’t justify the price, nor do games ever require that much of a leap in such a short time. You could even get by with 3 generations if you really want to. But every two will keep you running at max settings. There is also the rest of the PC which get’s upgraded in there somewhere too, lol.
my philosophy when building a PC is:
– come up with a reasonable budget (A)
– estimate how much i’d spend on upgrades over the next 3 years (B)
– add A to B to get C
– spend C on a total overkill rig & not upgrade it & just build a new rig when the current one cant keep up.
I like your equation! 😉
I’d also like to add variable D. Work out how much time [ergo, Money] you save not having to shop for and install said upgrades over 3 year period, D.
Spend D on beer to celebrate with your sweet, sweet pixels
I like the way you think!
I hadn’t considered that before…
TO THE FREFRESHINGLY COLD ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE EMPORIUM, POST-HASTE!!!
Meet you there!
http://i.imgur.com/xfTiAQ4.gif
Huh. I didn’t realise I was being filmed…
I think the HD4870 (and my memory is admittedly a little fuzzy) is still a very awesome card and not superseded by the 6xxx series.. it was a special card that one.. mine eventually died but only as a result of the motherboard failing and it killed the card at the same time.
The 4870 is surpassed [quite significantly] by 69XX cards. Both the 6950 and 6970 blow it out of the water [as expected].
AMD changed it’s naming conventions a little in the 6XXX series, though. 48XX was the performance range, compared to the 69XX range 2 generations later.
There was, however, the 4870×2. This was an absolute beast though, and was about on par with a 6950. Though direct comparisons are hard as it was ultimately limited by being only a DX10 card.
Yeh.. something like that.. I just remember at the time when I was considering upgrading as it had been a while.. I checked out all the benchmarks and my card was still up there with the curent gens ones.. maybe it was the x2.. I can’t remember exactly..
I went from a 1gig HIS 4870 IceQ to a 2gig MSI 6950 TwinFrozr3, pretty massive performance upgrade. The IceQ will always hold a special place in my heart though, booting up a game and my rig sounded like a jet taking off!
Oh man! I had a HIS 4870 IceQ also! That thing was insane!
I thought it was *HUGE* when I first got it….. I was shocked when I upgraded to a 6970!
Yes, that fan was like a jet engine, but for good reason. The IceQ’s were factory overclocked, and they remapped the temp/fan response curve so it would kick in at a lower temperature.
I run my 6970 overclocked too, and I *HAVE* to remap the fan response for it to run stable. But it, too, sounds like a jet engine when it really spins up. Price to pay for performance [without resorting to water] 😉
Yeh.. my 7850 is the first card that I’ve actually bothered with customising the automatic fan speed software.. It comes OC’ed out of the box but you can really push it a lot further. I haven’t bothered to push it further because I’d rather get more years out of it than speed.. it’s a trade-off. Even though spinning the fan faster does keep it cool.. I still feel anxious about OC’ing it beyond what the factory already OC’ed..
My old 295 GTX (the $1000 king from about .. 5 years ago now) is still cruising along. I thought Skyrim was going to be the end of it, and then Far Cry 3, but it’s handled both of those well enough with the eye candy pumped up so I’ve never had a good reason to upgrade. The rest of my system has been kept current however.
one good thing about the consoles’ life-cycle is that GPU requirements for PC gaming tend to plateau about 2 years after the launch of a new console generation.
of course, there will always bee games designed to push your PC (Witcher 2, Battlefield 3 etc.) but because they’ve also been designed to run on consoles, they tend to scale pretty well with whatever hardware you happen to have.
I upgraded from a 9600gt to a 7750 last year but need to step it up again, especially as I’ll be looking to hook my PC up to an HDTV with my monitor as a second screen rather than just my 22″ monitor. The 7970 looks mighty tempting now if Umart will drop its prices a bit more.
Does AMD still offer those free games btw when you buy a new graphics card?
I received a newsletter from them last week stating that they do. I believe they call it their “Never Settle” campaign.
Here’s a link which details which cards will give you which free games….
http://sites.amd.com/us/promo/never-settle/Pages/nsreloadedlu.aspx
i got my 7970 GHz ed this january 2013 for $420, because it was the cheapest in my area (western sydney), but other close stores were doing around $440-$450.
i wonder how much lower those would get with this official price drop.
Hooray! I might consider a second 7850 for some Crossfire goodness now.
Looks like some good value to get some more life out of those cards.
AMD is set to announce their 9000 series cards very soon.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/amd-to-reveal-radeon-hd-9000-flagship-gpu-next-month-slashes-7990-prices/0119858
hmm. another 7970 for my gaming machine may be in the cards for some gaming xfire goodness