So I have been watching this as keenly as brokers watch stocks go up an down...
And I have been rather frustrated at what I am seeing...
The RX480 not only being low on stock at most e-tailers but also having a higher than expected retail price, alongside the fact that 3rd party models still seem very scarce too. Means that the whole 'sweet spot dream GPU for a $200 to $250 price is not this one' I have seen them priced as high as $350 USD.
Now the 1060 is announced and apparently launched and already on amazon and newegg, it basically shows NO STOCK or on BACK ORDER.. except for 1 Zotac that apparently Newegg has in stock, although I was suspicious of that cos everything else was not. Now this card actually does price itself around that $250 sweet spot, and by all means looks like a good purchase since in most benchmarks it has shown good results vs. RX480 (lets not include ASync or Vulkan settings) just raw performance of both similarly priced cards against each other.
While Nvidia appears to have done good by the community with this 1060 pricing and performance combo, availability is still as scarce as every other new card that is out there..
More irritating still is the expectation that prices on slightly older cards (preferably 4GB models) would drop below the $200 bar significantly and perhaps even start showing up under the $150 mark... but no I was extremely wrong to expect that such a thing would happen.
I have seen a few 2GB 960s priced at $180ish on Amazon, the lowest price I saw on Newegg 'with coupon or rebate' was around $160ish... Now the R9 380 was not any better with prices ranging between $180 to $230 USD.. for 2gb to 4gb cards respectively, so in other words NO PRICE DROP on these previous gen models... 'Dear god please tell me why we cannot buy a 4GB gtx 960 or R9 380 for less than $150 brand new '
Now some would ask why on earth anyone would bother buying an older card in the first place... well there is method to this madness and that method is simply that some people have older computers that simply may not be right for latest generation gpu's with this in mind they may not want to overspend and put a new GPU into their older rig... A new rig would justify the cost of a new GPU since you would buy all new stuff but you certainly would not for example want to put a new GPU into lets say a 5+ year old PC.
So bottom line here is, when do retailers actually start correctly adjusting prices on older stock? Right now there are no decent options for the sub $150 buyer (there are a few kinda crap low spec cards but quality is also a factor here) when one would have expected a lot of cards in that price point given the RX480 and 1060s sitting in that 200 to 300 range.
As long as the older GPUs stay relevant the prices won't go down. If you are complaining about US prices you should see how EU is going. Here is an example.
I feel your pain in NZ those 1080s are priced around $1300+, the RX480s around $600 for the cheapest one I have seen. I only view US prices because rather than buying retail in New Zealand I often shop for hardware on Amazon or Newegg and get them to ship stuff to me since that is way cheaper and also there is often more choice to pick from vs. the lower quality products that NZ seems to get a lot of..
Well I can't import stuff from the US due to import taxes that add significantly to the price. Not a long ago though I managed to buy a used msi gtx 960 2 GB for 110 euros from amazon wearhouse deals. The card is in good condition and came with all documentation and box plus it had one year warranty left.
Canada has the same pricing problems with various cards. Anyway unless I suddenly won the lottery I could care less as I am waiting on a single card that can run all games at 60 FPS maxed with PhysX on at 4K and that is nothing that is out now. Good luck @gameg33k in selecting your card. I hope whatever you get ends up working out well for you. : )
Sometimes im glad that i don't play very graphically intensive games on my PC. 760 gtx running fine enough for me . I work on the principle in order for me to upgrade i have to be able to get a baseline ( not peak in just some games ) x4 the performance of the existing card for roughly the same purchase price as i paid for the existing one, even if that takes 3 - 4 years im Ok with that. Right now i already know there are cards this gen ( 1080 ) that are about x4 - x5 the performance of the 760, i just need to wait one more gen an im getting whatever that equivalent is, with the latest drivers and features.
As for the CPU i usually work on the metric of x2 the performance at same price, but CPU pace has slowed, efficiency is the aim of the game now and with higher resolutions and the Vulkan API the CPU isn't the most important thing.
If you click on those listings you'll find they are sold by third parties, not retailers. They are charging a premium for stock that they bought up when the cards were available, and it's a legitimate practice called "Scalping".
I think it was an Asus turbo GTX 970 OC The white one that has the blower style fan but open on the back side as well
If I'm remembering correctly it was 229 with a $30 mail in rebate bringing it to 199 would have been Amazon or Newegg EVGA itself is having a 17th anniversary sale I think still
Actually you basically said let's ignore RX480's existence... In Vulkan and DX12 games the cheaper 480 actually outperforms 1060... Then you have no reason to be frustrated at the pricing... But OK, let's ignore AMD... You can buy Founders card from Nvidia for $300 and with shipping - 350 or something... Enjoy...
I said ignore those two things because I was speaking purely from the perspective of raw performance and up until now Nvidia has not been able to keep up with the adjustments on Async or Vulkan with their own cards so it is not an apples to apples comparison when you factor in that.
AMD has the edge on those two technologies and hence their cards perform better under those conditions but polaris vs pascal in terms of raw GPU performance and also price without any enhanced features, the 1060 is pulling ahead.
I am not at all saying I would not buy an AMD, infact I was seriously considering getting one if only vendors had some stock and it was priced as expectation, but the point I was trying to make here is that I have seen a 1060 priced at that $250 range and I have not seen a 480 in that price segment as yet...
Neither seem to be available in abundance anyway so it may just be a waiting game.
Well, if you're going to get a new gpu next year - yeah... DX12 and Vulkan may not be a thing... Oh wait... Unreal 4 uses Vulkan, the new Serious Sam will use Vulkan, ID tech 6 use Vulkan, Source 2 uses Vulkan... Vulkan will be here before the end of the year. It is already here with doom... There are may be 10 more big AAA games comming this year with DX12 support... This is not future proofing 3 years from now. This is proofing for this Christmas... I see what you mean. 1060 is indeed faster... 7% in DX11, and you already mentioned the pricing... And by the end of the year the performance will be completely different... Look, facts are, Nvidia did this founders crap. If you are not happy about it, there is actually really good option, amd ignoring it, saying "raw performance" is not serious... If you are not happy with the price of a thing, don't buy the thing...
I mean any card that AMD has released in the past 2 years will have Vulkan support natively because they had Mantle support too. I suppose though when viewing it from a performance point of view, anyone with an older card can get a good boost with even an older AMD card like 370, 380, 380x and 390, 390x too.
But then questions have to be asked as to why the boost with Vulkan, yes we get it its a great API and will have a huge impact to gaming in future but from an engineering point of view that is actually no excuse to make a new card that on its own has average performance, and without the new API ends up looking like the competitors previous generation of 970s which is what most people are comparing the RX480 too.
The initial thread however was not about the new cards and pitting them against each other in a red vs green shit fight. The purpose was to investigate why some of the older model cards have not had price adjustments. As mentioned before the older generation cards are still attractive for people who may want to update their slightly older PC's or some who probably even might want to xfire or SLI their older but good quality pc's and do not necessarily plan to upgrade til maybe Vega / Zen / or newer architecture by Nvidia / AMD or Intel.
Ive been known to do a few stupid things but even I am not crazy enough to pair a new generation GPU with lets say a CPU thats nearly 5 years old.. and I dont just have a lot of money spare to go an build a new rig right now so being able to have some affordable options allowing me to add some bang for buck to my older rig and still enjoy games at relatively decent quality is really what I am aiming for.
And to look back at the original thread once again it really does beg the question why some of the older gen cards that are actually appealing as upgrade options are still not competitively priced and this starts to make me think the newer gen cards are the right way to go but.. bottlenecks will be annoying to deal with too.
480s basically don't exist. 1060s sold out in minutes. 1070s and 1080s, for the most part, are priced well above everything else. Which is where they perform. They have already had an impact on nvidia last generation top tier cards.
Retailers still want to make as much as they can on older stock. Until new stock is in regular supply these retailers are trying to sell as much old crap as possible to people who can't wait.
When nobody is talking about releasing new models and stocks level off, then you'll see prices drop.
I was waiting, waiting, waiting for the Pascal rumours to come true for years. In March I could not wait anymore because my favorite game did not support SLI. I bought a GTX 970 knowing I was going to take a hit. But I didn't know it was going to be this bad.
That doesn't really matter to me as I have no interest to use much more than 1080p for a while. The good news is I friggin' love my GTX 970. I don't need a GTX 1070 or GTX 1060 or RX 480. I sure could use an extra $100 though.
This is amazon pricing that can be chosen by the user. The typical European pricing is 280-350 euros for the 480 and 300-400 for the 1060. Still steeper but not what you are showing.
