The EVGA 780 ACX costs $525 in Newegg, cheapest 290x costs $550. We know that a 1Ghz 780 is a few percentage faster than Titan, and conveniently 290x performs similarly. So out of the box, both the 780 ACX and the 290x are price competitive against each other, and since both are not good clockers (one held back by possible chip limitation, another by stupid cooler design), we don't really need to compare overclocked speeds.
If you ignore Titan, everything makes perfect sense. Titan is made as a luxury product, I don't ever recall any luxury product being value for money even against its siblings.
I haven't seen or heard any decrease in ASIC, but will be on the lookout.
As a competitor you have to react according to the market conditions. I believe, by cutting their prices, Nvidia did exactly what is needed to stay competitive.
The current market condition doesn't reflect this fantasy scenario, we have overclocked 780 selling cheaper than the cheapest 290x, and there are no non reference 290x to be found. Come this December/January when the non ref 290x appears, we can have another talk about value for money and performance. The market changes too fast for future predictions: I bought my 660Ti despite having my eye set on a 7970 because at the time of purchase the 7970 was 50% more expensive than the 660Ti, and at 1080p, comparatively overpriced for the performance it gives (just 10% faster, I am not talking about GHz edition).
AMD does rebranding shenanigans too, yet I don't see you criticising them.
As with all early adopters. As long as you are an early adopter in anything, you will be paying a very hefty price to cover exclusivity and cost of research.
You took much if not most of what I said out of context. I am NOT bashing anyone for rebranding, I just said I prefer not to buy rebranded product because I don't see value in it, and I didn't target one or the other in saying that. It's common knowledge that both re-brand, as evidenced by everything below the 290 in the R line. Why would I want a 280X when I already have a 7970 OC I bought for $330, which is still holding it's value dollar for performance? In fact if you check prior posts of mine after the 280X spec was revealed, I said exactly that.
Aside from that you completely ignored that the EVGA GTX 780 SC ACX in fact debuted at $659, and it even says so in that TPU article he referenced the bench from!
Like I said, I'm an apples to apples guy. Anyone can take a given moment in time and compare two cards and make one chip vendor look better than another. The only way to put things into perspective is to compare their ref models at launch price.
You guys imply I'm an AMD fanboy, but if anything I'm the only one here trying to level the playing field so as not to skew the results as far as comparing one model to another.
My comparisons of AMD to Nvidia in general as far as business models go are not exaggerated though, and the number of units sold weighed against the profits for each chip vendor speak that in volumes.
The Titan IS also a significant part of the conversation because it was implied, no said, that AMD also price gouge on the top shelf cards. Uh, not to the extreme extent that Nvidia has with the Titan. Everyone, even long time Nvidia customers, know this is a new low for them on this card, and it makes it pretty much a lemon purchase for all but the extremely rich and naive, whom are some of their favorite people to prey on.
Early adoption is also a very pertinent point because many buy as soon as the new cards hit the shelves, before these prices you're both pretending are launch prices for these so called "new" 780s. They do it more and more largely due to the probability of ASIC quality being higher too. Anyone that knows anything about current gen state of the art chip manufacturing knows that yields factor heavily into the equation. Those high launch prices pay for the black sheep of the yield that have more current leakage. Sure some say just use WC, but how realistic is it to expect most to spend what it takes to WC a GPU? Those chips aren't going to be selected for factory OC models and will likely drop in price sooner. Many imply binning is exaggerated or even a non issue, but ask EVGA and the first thing they say in defending the higher priced OC models is better chip quality. The bigger vendors that buy more chips get the pick of the litter.
So it seems you guys are giving a grace period to Nvidia on pricing and ref models, but not AMD. Hell, like I said, the 290X hasn't even officially launched globally yet. That's a big part of what I meant by smoke and mirrors. You can't throw a product under the bus on speculation and not be called out for it by at least someone.
This price dropping is clearly a move on Nvidia's part to try and convince lots of undecided customers that the 780 will be the better card to go with 1-2 years down the road or more, because obviously most keep their GPUs that long. It's a game of deceptive advertising chess Nvidia have become quite good at playing.