Speaking to partners it’s become clear that ATI are preparing for a price drop on its high end models including the HD 5850, HD 5870 and HD 5970. In turn we would probably also see some smaller price drops on the HD 5830 and below to simply keep the value of these products in line with everything else.
What’s interesting though is I’m hearing that the price drop will only happen if they feel threatened by NVIDIA and its new GTX 470 and GTX 480 products. There’s a few thing that need to happen with the new GTX 400 series for this price drop to happen.
First the products have to be competitive against the HD 5850, HD 5870 and HD 5970.
Secondly the stock has to be available or at least the impression that mass stock is coming.
While everyone loves a good price drop it’s clear that ATI are only going to do it if they need too. At the end of the day they’re a business and there’s no need to drop the price if the GTX 400 series doesn’t compete against the HD 5000 series.