14 DAY TRIAL // Advanced Micro Devices reduced the prices of its high-end video cards earlier this summer, but recent developments have forced it to cut the tags of more boards, the Radeon HD 7800 series.
Back in July, Advanced Micro Devices modified the prices of the Radeon HD 7970 and HD 7950 video controllers, prompting OEMs to do the same to their custom models.
Now, the Sunnyvale, California-based company has done something similar to the range immediately below those two: Radeon HD 7800.
The Radeon HD 7870 is going down from $299 (270-299 Euro on European retailers) to $249 / 220-249 Euro. Quite a bit below the initial launch price of $349 / 320-349 Euro.
Meanwhile, the HD 7850 is dropping from $239 / 220-239 Euro to $209 / 189-209 Euro, give or take.
You will notice that the equivalent European prices do not reflect exchange rates, as always. The HD 7870, for example, would sell for 201 Euro on the old continent if that were the case.
Those keeping track of recent events will immediately understand why Advanced Micro Devices felt compelled to set this price reduction in place: NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 660 Ti.
The mid to high-end card debuted last week, its performance high enough to not bat an eyelash at the BIOS-based frequency upgrade of all HD 7950 models.
Nevertheless, the decision is quite surprising, since the previous changes were made due to the impending arrival of the same rival product.
At this point, the contest between AMD's Radeon series and NVIDIA's GeForce is one of attrition more than anything else. Since GTX 660 Ti won NVIDIA this round, there won't be any more fuel to place on the competitive flames until AMD produces the Radeon HD 8000 and NVIDIA lets loose the boards designed with the GK110 GPU.
But we digress. For now, prospective buyers of graphics cards should take note of the fact that AMD probably won't reduce the card prices again, so now is as good a time as any to go shopping.