So I was looking at the prices for the 1080 and my god that thing is expensive were I live(Belgium). The cheapest I could find them for was 729€ (828$). That's a whopping 200€ (226$) more then what I payed for my 980 a couple of years ago. Now I know there's a massive performance increase here but still.

I wished AMD had a better position in the higher end market. They offer great value for anyone interested in 1080p gaming but are totally absent in the high and top end market. The premium Nvidia can ask in this segment is kinda ridiculous.

So is AMD planning to enter this segment again any time soon or will team green continue to fleece us?

buy amd cards even if it needs a driver update or two to make games to run at close level to nvidia, hope vega cards deliver on the high end, polaris did deliver on the mid range

sorry for my bad english

It's my understanding that, currently, the pricing is the result of supply-and-demand, given that the in-store price is anywhere from one- to several-hundred dollars more than MSRP. It is often said that prices will decrease as time wears on and demand evens out. I couldn't find a third-party 1070 for sale, anywhere online or in-store, for nearly a month after they were released.

AMD has a joint venture in China for a new factory that will feed the Chinese server market with SoC (system of a chip) manufacturing. In addition, AMD chips makeup the primary components of PS4 and Xbox One. Lastly, AMD has the lower tier of video cards and the consumer APU market value-side wrapped up pretty well. If you want to build/buy a $400 to $600 gaming PC the AMD line is where you end up. My guess is there are a whole hell of a lot more $500 gaming PC bought/built each year than at the high end. So, they are probably doing quite well.

But, I just don't think they want to compete with Nvida with $500 to $1200 cards. I think their focus is APUs (CPU/GPU) and value to mid-level video cards for the moment.

The RX 480 is a high-end card. At least it was not long ago. It's a PS4 Neo for $200 (roughly, in terms of raw perf level, when plugged into a PC with a CPU that's less than 5 years old and wasn't budget when new). It's a card capable of feeding the hefty requirements of VR. And the good version of it is pretty cheap if a bit more than that flat $200 for the cut-down edition (afaik, including anywhere in Europe).

Yes, it would be nice if the absolute bleeding edge had some competition and AMD didn't genuinely think someone would buy a last-gen Fury card rather than waiting or going Team Green but even if they did release a new card to go directly against the 1080, what would change? AMD would also look to get a return by releasing their profitable high-end card at a similar price. That's how it's happened every other generation, when AMD have direct competitors or not.

The 1080 is rather expensive and doesn't even come with HBM2, it'll be replaced before the end of the year with a Ti or Titan that use the larger die big chip nVidia have already announced is coming. But the 1070s are not terrible priced and if you want to spend less than that then AND have a new card for you too (and it's 1060 or 480 - either choice is pretty great). At some point they will release their next gen of cards that push back against nVidia's top cards but they've always said that was around Christmas time.

Yeah i couldnt agree more, even in the mid to low range amd cant compete this cycle. We need new blood, but i think the high end market is so low nobody but nvidia would be willing to make them.

AMD is trying thier best to put themselves in squarely in the low-end/budget market while Nvidia occupies the mid/high-end market. While I agree we need competition on the GPU and CPU side, it seems like AMD is totally okay with letting Nvidia go ceazy while they carve out a sub-$300 budge market.

Until AMD catches up on their architecture and improves their efficiency, I don't think are going to change anytime soon. They've allowed Intel and Nvidia to take such a huge lead these last few years that it would take something like another Athlon 64-level development to shake things up. I wish them the best.

If you compare the market with the situation only 5 years ago cards at the top end almost doubled in price. A Readon 6990 came in at 700$ as did the 590GTX. These were the absolute bleeding edge card back then. Now, with no competition, a TitanX has an msrp of 1200$! I realize that enthusiasts are a very marginal sliver of the market but when top end cards are more reasonably priced,the lower tiers tend to profit as well.

The availability of "next gen" tech to a broader audience may have an influence on developers as well. Why would they bother pushing image quality to a higher standard when only a very marginal group can enjoy it? This is also one of many things holding back VR IMO. If you have to make a game that is playable on today's mid tier cards things are not going to look that great.