For those of you in the market for a new video card, in case April’s round of AMD Radeon price cuts didn’t quite meet your desires, AMD has ordered up another round of price cuts that will be taking effect on Monday.

The Radeon HD 7970, Radeon HD 7950, and Radeon HD 7870 are all getting official price cuts. The 7970 will be dropping from $479 to $429, the 7950 from $399 to $349, and the 7870 from $349 to $299.

Summer 2012 Radeon HD 7000 Series Price Cuts
Card Launch Price Spring MSRP Summer MSRP
Radeon HD 7970 $549 $479 $429
Radeon HD 7950 $449 $399 $349
Radeon HD 7870 $349 $349 $299
Radeon HD 7850 $249 $249 ~$239
Radeon HD 7770 $159 $139 ~$119
Radeon HD 7750 $109 $109 ~$99

With all of that said however, as we’re in the middle of a product cycle with partners shipping custom cards, in practice AMD doesn’t have a great deal of control over final card pricing beyond what they charge partners for parts. So unofficially these prices have been in effect for some time since partners and stores have not been holding to AMD’s MSRPs. Indeed as of Friday evening the cheapest cards on Newegg are already below AMD’s official MSRPs, so today’s announcement mainly serves to bring attention to price movements that have already happened.

Summer 2012 GPU Pricing Comparison
AMD Price NVIDIA
Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition $499 GeForce GTX 680
Radeon HD 7970 $429  
  $399 GeForce GTX 670
Radeon HD 7950 $349  
Radeon HD 7870 $299  
Radeon HD 7850 $239/$249 GeForce GTX 570
  $199 GeForce GTX 560 Ti
  $159 GeForce GTX 560
Radeon HD 7770 $119  
Radeon HD 7750 $99 GeForce GT 640 DDR3

On that note, AMD sends word that their free game promotions will continue to be active for some time, including both the HD 7900 Series Three For Free promotion and their HD 7800/7700 series DiRT Showdown promotion (though Newegg seems to have deactivated it as of this writing).

Finally, we’ve been asking AMD about the status of the new 7970 GHz Edition, which has so far been missing in action. After originally being scheduled to have limited availability in late June with wider availability in early July, the 7970GE has slipped by at least a couple of weeks – an unusual thing to happen to what has otherwise been a punctual AMD. At this time AMD is telling us that most of their partners have decided to launch the 7970GE on their customized premium cards, which has resulted in availability being pushed back. If all goes according to plan, AMD is expecting XFX and Sapphire to have cards available early next week. However prices will bear keeping an eye on since it’s unlikely that partners will stick to the $499 MSRP if they’re using the 7970GE for their premium cards.

Comments Locked

51 Comments

View All Comments

  • videocardgame - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link

    I wanted to get a gtx670 but I read a lot of people with faulty cards and returns. Read about an inherent problem with the nVidia gk104 design - not the manufacturing foundry or 28nm process. It got me leaning toward the 7950 based cards, they are 28nm, same foundry and no problems. Some gtx670's are recycled 680's, some 7950's might be recyled 7970's but no issues like gtx670. The foundry shut down for 2 weeks to make sure they weren't doing something wrong - all clear, still problem nVidia gk104's. Anyone know if it's cleared up? It will be hard to know if you have a new or old version of the gx104 if it is fixed.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now