View Full Version : ATI Will Slash Prices On X1000-Series GPU
ATI Technologies, a leading supplier of graphics processing units (GPUs), is expected to drop the prices on graphics cards featuring the Radeon X1000-series GPUs shortly following the release of the GeForce 7900-series products of arch-rival Nvidia Corp., X-bit labs has learnt.
The Markham, Ontario-based GPU supplier is projected to announce price slash on the Radeon X1900-, X1800-, X1600 and X1300-series products shortly, according to sources familiar with the plans of the graphics giant. The decrease of the prices will help ATI to more efficiently compete against Nvidia Corp.’s new products which release will spur lowering the prices across-the-board.
After the price-drop, the Radeon X1900 XTX – the current flagship of ATI – will cost $549, the Radeon X1900 XT will drop to $479, while the Radeon X1800 XT products with 512MB or 256MB should cost around $299 (512MB version will cost higher than that). Additionally, ATI is expected to introduce Radeon X1800 XL 512MB for $299 and drop the price of the Radeon X1800 XL 256MB.
Earlier it was reported that Nvidia’s yet to be released GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB graphics board – the future top-of-the-range part from Nvidia – has planned retail price tag of $499, whereas the GeForce 7900 GT is projected to be available for $299. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price of the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 will be down to $399, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.
Sources also confirmed the release of the Radeon X1800 GTO for the price-range of $199 - $249 and said that the Radeon X1600 XT as well as the X1600 Pro will have recommended pricing of $149 and $109 respectively this spring.
ATI Technologies officials did not comment on the news-story.
This is great news since I'm in the market for a new video card (Sold 7800GT).
Hopefully this will keep the 7900GTX prices low. :p
Source: [ X-Bit Labs (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20060303052240.html) ]
Maverickman
03-03-06, 06:31 PM
I saw the same article earlier today on Xbitlabs.com. I think this ATI vs. Nvidia competition is wonderful for the consumer. Whether you're in the Green camp or the Red camp, we're all going to be able to buy fantastic graphics cards for very reasonable prices. I love competition!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!:D :D :D :D
CaptNKILL
03-03-06, 07:05 PM
Dammit, they are trying to kill me arent they? Nvidia and ATI are deliberately TRYING to kill me...
How the hell am I going to choose? :p
tweaked
03-03-06, 07:44 PM
(nana2)
Tygerwoody
03-03-06, 07:50 PM
unless ATI is at least 25% ahead of the competition in just about every benchmark.... I will always choose Nvidia
monkeydust
03-03-06, 07:54 PM
I wonder if this is the reason why ATYT stock dropped off so much today. NVDA stock has been going up recently as there is expected to be some positive surprises for them next week.
killahsin
03-03-06, 11:26 PM
i still think it is not enough especially if the 7900 gt comes in at 299 an x1800 in same price range as 7900 gt is going to get slaughtered.
AthlonXP1800
03-04-06, 01:39 AM
I wonder if this is the reason why ATYT stock dropped off so much today. NVDA stock has been going up recently as there is expected to be some positive surprises for them next week.
Yes I noticed ATYT stock started to fell since 28 February 2006 when ATI Q2 2006 financial ended and also the day when ATI management had early look at Q2 2006 financial result report. I think ATI may have a big financial problem, could had very poor christmas as Nvidia reported the best christmas result, made record net profit of almost $100m. ATI is now worth $3.9bn and Nvidia now worth $8.4bn, Nvidia is over 2 times bigger than ATI and they now official has the capabilities to acquire ATI if Nvidia wish. :)
If ATI dont make a profit from Q1 2006 then they are in worst shape to decided to have massive price cuts on top to bottom products trying to compete with Nvidia's new Geforce 7900 after made almost no profit for a year, Nvidia can afford a price war after made a massive profit in a year. Also I think ATI management team must made the worst ever decision making after KY Ho left the company if the rumour is true that ATI is lookking to acquire XGI Technologies (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20060302053643.html) then ATI likely will lose alots of money out of it because it really dont benefit ATI anything to do with XGI Technologies. Nvidia have great benefit out of ULi because they can make money out of it with SLI running on ULi chipsets with a software patch.
CaptNKILL
03-04-06, 02:42 AM
i still think it is not enough especially if the 7900 gt comes in at 299 an x1800 in same price range as 7900 gt is going to get slaughtered.
I agree, but remember that the x1800Xt is getting canned (so Ive heard?). So they will bump it down and itl sell out and it will be gone from the market. A great deal, yeah, but it might not even last more than a couple weeks if they arent producing any more.
I really dont know what Im going to do for Oblivion. Im not afraid to go ATI, I prefer nVidia, but I want the best performance for the best price. Itd be nice if it wasnt as loud as a leaf blower (which is what Ive heard about the X1x00 series).
Yes I noticed ATYT stock started to fell since 28 February 2006 when ATI Q2 2006 financial ended and also the day when ATI management had early look at Q2 2006 financial result report. I think ATI may have a big financial problem, could had very poor christmas as Nvidia reported the best christmas result, made record net profit of almost $100m. ATI is now worth $3.9bn and Nvidia now worth $8.4bn, Nvidia is over 2 times bigger than ATI and they now official has the capabilities to acquire ATI if Nvidia wish. :)
If ATI dont make a profit from Q1 2006 then they are in worst shape to decided to have massive price cuts on top to bottom products trying to compete with Nvidia's new Geforce 7900 after made almost no profit for a year, Nvidia can afford a price war after made a massive profit in a year. Also I think ATI management team must made the worst ever decision making after KY Ho left the company if the rumour is true that ATI is lookking to acquire XGI Technologies (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20060302053643.html) then ATI likely will lose alots of money out of it because it really dont benefit ATI anything to do with XGI Technologies. Nvidia have great benefit out of ULi because they can make money out of it with SLI running on ULi chipsets with a software patch.
No way will nvidia acquire ati. If they did, nvidia could charge want they wanted which would be bad for the market. How you cant see this is beyond me.
nutball
03-04-06, 04:31 AM
lol, yet more fantasy financial insights from AthlonXP :rolleyes:
monkeydust
03-04-06, 07:14 AM
No, he was just saying that NVIDIA has the funds to acquire ATI, not that they actually would/could.
ATI has marketshare that they get by lowballing the competition. They're never going to get ahead with that (unless NV screws up again ala FX days). Plus, ATI's management and marketing departments leave much to be disired.
NVIDIA is cutthroat and it has paid off for them.
lol, yet more fantasy financial insights from AthlonXP :rolleyes:
Heh no surprise there eh.
I agree, but remember that the x1800Xt is getting canned (so Ive heard?). So they will bump it down and itl sell out and it will be gone from the market. A great deal, yeah, but it might not even last more than a couple weeks if they arent producing any more.
I really dont know what Im going to do for Oblivion. Im not afraid to go ATI, I prefer nVidia, but I want the best performance for the best price. Itd be nice if it wasnt as loud as a leaf blower (which is what Ive heard about the X1x00 series).
In 2D, my 1900XTX is more quiet than your GT. In 3D though it's louder. (no problem for me because i always use a headset while gaming)
I don't consider an aftermarket cooler which is quiet in 3D too, because i love the concept of the stock cooler. It takes all the air outside the case, it works like a casefan.
OldGamer
03-04-06, 02:40 PM
Yes I noticed ATYT stock started to fell since 28 February 2006 when ATI Q2 2006 financial ended and also the day when ATI management had early look at Q2 2006 financial result report. I think ATI may have a big financial problem, could had very poor christmas as Nvidia reported the best christmas result, made record net profit of almost $100m. ATI is now worth $3.9bn and Nvidia now worth $8.4bn, Nvidia is over 2 times bigger than ATI and they now official has the capabilities to acquire ATI if Nvidia wish. :)
Market cap does not mean NV has that much money. NV Stocks are owned by stockholders not by NV. Look at NV's cash position and you will see that there is no way NV can buy ATI outright. Also if you look at revenue you will see the two companies are actually quite close financially (within a couple hundred million). Two years ago ATI had twice the market cap that NV did so all this wall street stuff in cyclical at best asuming ATI does not have the same RD problems/costs they did last year going forward.
CaptNKILL
03-04-06, 02:40 PM
In 2D, my 1900XTX is more quiet than your GT. In 3D though it's louder. (no problem for me because i always use a headset while gaming)
I don't consider an aftermarket cooler which is quiet in 3D too, because i love the concept of the stock cooler. It takes all the air outside the case, it works like a casefan.
Hmm... good points.
I'll deffinitely keep this in mind. Thanks :)
Yes I noticed ATYT stock started to fell since 28 February 2006 when ATI Q2 2006 financial ended and also the day when ATI management had early look at Q2 2006 financial result report. I think ATI may have a big financial problem, could had very poor christmas as Nvidia reported the best christmas result, made record net profit of almost $100m. ATI is now worth $3.9bn and Nvidia now worth $8.4bn, Nvidia is over 2 times bigger than ATI and they now official has the capabilities to acquire ATI if Nvidia wish. :)
This is not the way the market works athlon. It would be nice if it did but there is a distinct difference between the overall worth of a company and the determined worth based on public stocks.
If ATI dont make a profit from Q1 2006 then they are in worst shape to decided to have massive price cuts on top to bottom products trying to compete with Nvidia's new Geforce 7900 after made almost no profit for a year, Nvidia can afford a price war after made a massive profit in a year. Also I think ATI management team must made the worst ever decision making after KY Ho left the company if the rumour is true that ATI is lookking to acquire XGI Technologies (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20060302053643.html) then ATI likely will lose alots of money out of it because it really dont benefit ATI anything to do with XGI Technologies. Nvidia have great benefit out of ULi because they can make money out of it with SLI running on ULi chipsets with a software patch.
Again, it doesn't work like this.
Nvidia can't just lower prices for the heck of it to compete. They still have investors to appease and margins and profit numbers to hit.
CaptNKILL
03-04-06, 03:50 PM
Does anyone know how well the x1900xt usually overclocks with stock cooling? If I get one, Im deffinitely OCing.
Rakeesh
03-04-06, 04:31 PM
I am only interested in optimal price/performance, so this sounds like it may potentially switch me to ATI since I don't nor ever have cared about SLI. One lingering question though - has ATI yet fixed their problems with opengl games? And those quake4 optimizations don't count, as I want good opengl performance in general. If not then I am going to stay away from those cards until it is fixed.
OGL games are still slower from the benches, perhaps owa or someone else can shed more light on whether it is a massive/noticeable difference.
I am waiting for them to speed up the CCC load time :)
Son Goku
03-04-06, 05:46 PM
It is way to early to talk about one of these companies acquiring the other... They've got 2 products, which seem they could be rather close, and no final benchmarks to suggest which one will come out on top. And besides the issue of how much capital there might be, to invest in such an acquisition, there could also be investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, along with questions of anti-competitive behaviour if one were to go AthlonXP's route... I doubt it will happen.
As to price cuts, they can happen, but the first priority for any company is trying to recover the costs that went into a product, AKA R&D costs. This is a little different, then say if Microsoft were to engage in price cuts after the PS3 gets released (while Sony was waiting to get a BR drive into the thing), because in the US market itself (for instance), Microsoft will have already had about a 1 year lead time where their product was on the market, from which they were already making sales, already had games released for the consil, with some costs recovered already. Sony would be the new commer... I can assure if these came out the same time, Microsoft's thinking wouldn't be "try to out pace Sony", albeit without the increased cost of Blu Ray, it wouldn't be as tough... It's not unheard of for products to see a price cut about 1 year after release anyhow...
In any case, in setting prices, they're going to be looking to maximize profits, not necessarily to just lower prices. It really comes down to a matter of supply and demand, where there's a certain understanding that as the price goes up, the consumer's demand for the product will decrease. Yes one makes more money per sale, but sales drop, and if inventory collects in warehouses (also costs money) that they can't get rid of, they're not necessarily turnign a profit. Lower it too much, one can make more sales yes, but take a huger loss per sale. It's a balancing act...
Back to the issue of buyout, this is no where close to when nVidia bought 3dfx prior to 3dfx filing chapter 11. 3dfx's stock did drop, and by no small amount as it hit about 2, or 8 cents per share before Nasdeq de-listed them. But it was also indicative of much deeper troubles in the company itself. Also, 3dfx and nVidia had various lawsuites for patent infringement going through the courts around then. If another company had acquired 3dfx, they could have carried those suites forward, with the prospect being increasing court costs, an awarded settlement (for damages to intellectual property), and perhaps talk of royalty payments. By having acquired 3dfx's assets, any such legal battle would be rendered mote (as nVidia would now own those patents), and the cases would die there. There was monetary incentive besides an aggressive buyout, and 3dfx also benefited with cash to help pay off some of their creditors they were heavily in debt to...
nVidia and ATI are not here, and it's good for us consumers that they are not...
has ATI yet fixed their problems with opengl games? And those quake4 optimizations don't count, as I want good opengl performance in general. If not then I am going to stay away from those cards until it is fixed.
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=65727 there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with ATi's OpenGL performance. There is some quality issues with nv and OpenGL however.
Rakeesh
03-04-06, 07:32 PM
Well, thats what they said about the last ATI card I owned, and it performed miserably in natural-selection with opengl mode. My current nvidia card doesn't seem to have any graphical issues at all on the other hand.
Well, thats what they said about the last ATI card I owned, and it performed miserably in natural-selection with opengl mode. My current nvidia card doesn't seem to have any graphical issues at all on the other hand.
That's very odd. What card was it? I used to play NS on an 8500 back in the day. It was smooth as silk.
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