A few weeks ago the 4830s started at around £90, they all seem to be £95+ now.
It's only £5 more but the 4850s start from £114!
A few weeks ago the 4830s started at around £90, they all seem to be £95+ now.
It's only £5 more but the 4850s start from £114!
Well I am waiting for the RV740. It looks like it should have similar or better performance to an HD4830 but with lower power consumption. Hopefully it will be cheaper than the HD4830!!![]()
edp33 (23-02-2009)
Most likely to be the start of new stock bought with a worse exchange rate trickling through. I think a lot of etailers bought big stocks of the 4830 thinking they'd fly off the shelves (given the price / performance metric), they didn't sell as well as was hoped.
In fact, I suspect that the 4670 ate into their market, as 4670 prices went up quite quickly after launch, from < £60 to > £65. That suggests to me that etailers bought insufficient first-stock of 4670s and then had to buy more at a worse exchange rate, pushing prices up. So the 4830 price rise is really just a balancing out of the market...
It's just usual market conditions. You'll see the 4870 512mb drop as well, as the 4870 1gb becomes the more popular single gpu choice.
ThanksI wasn't aware of the RV740 - will wait for it
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It is coming out in April or May.
The suggested specs so far are:
640 stream processors
Higher clockspeed than HD4830
128 bit RAM interface
GDDR5 RAM - this means that overall bandwidth should be similar to the HD4830
40nm production process
Lower power consumption(hopefully)
128 Bit means smaller, cheaper boards with less layers, but half the bandwidth of 256 Bit at the same speed and tech level.
GDDR5 effectively doubles that bandwidth bringing it back to decent levels.
So you get a cheaper board with the same memory bandwidth
EDIT also, die sizes are constrained by the number of pins the chip will have. With loads of pins, you have a minimum die size. Lose a few pins and you can make a smaller die.
Smaller die=cheaper to make as well.
"In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship."
Zak, you are highly likely to be right. Given nvidia's inability to trump the 4830 at that price point, I'd think ATi would be a bit silly offering a lower price on their cooler-running model that is to come.
I'm going to reiterate my little theory from another thread: Since the RV740 and RV790 are both being produced at the same place right now, and the latter necessarily has to have GDDR5, it might be more cost-efficient to just dump the same memory type into the mainstream card as well.
This is backed up by recent rumours of Samsung dropping GDDR5 prices (which I'm too lazy to link to now). Frankly, I would be chirpy as a little birdie if all the 740 did was replicate the 4830 with less heat and power use.
"In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship."
Also if they move to fit out all their cards with GDDR5 they are likely to get a better price buying more of it than if its reserved only for the top flight of cards, which may mean that they can drop the price of the newer top end cards as well, or make a bit more profit.
Also I think Samsung announced big price cuts or maybe increased production (which leads to the same thing) for GDDR5 recently so that may be a factor.
But then there's the power problem. While GDDR5 is nice and efficient at load, it doesn't seem to be able to draw less when idle (in the current graphics cards anyway), which might be quite a consideration at the mid-low end.
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