The incredible success of the new ATi 4770 video card has been great for the business of video cards. The 40 nm process gives power with much less heat, and nearly everyone wants one, or two.

Unfortunately, the fabs at TSMC can’t keep up with demand, so…to keep up the volume in the retail channel AMD has decided to lower the price of the 4850 parts, which aren’t a 40 nm part, but do have great power, for the same price.

So if you want to get one, or two, of these cards, formerly around $150 - $165, now around $100 each, look around, I’m certain it won’t be that way for long.

Although we’re sure AMD would like to deliver as many Radeon HD 4770 cards as it can sell, due to TSMC’s issues with 40nm manufacturing, it can’t, at least not yet, so to make sure graphics card market share stays up, the Sunnyvale company has decided to drop the price of its popular Radeon HD 4850, which is powered by the 55nm RV770 CPU.

The Radeon HD 4850 with its 800 Stream Processors and 512MB of GDDR3 memory has now started to go down to around $99.99 (the recommended retail price of the HD 4770) in the US, while in Europe it was slipped to around 90 Euro. With the cut AMD is certainly providing a nice choice for the sub-$100 segment and putting more pressure on Nvidia.

above from Tech Connect

I checked NewEgg, and apparently the majority of manufacturers have not yet dropped the pricing, but PowerColor has, with a 4850 featuring 512 MB of memory for $109, so the Tech Connect blurb is ahead of the curve – great because you now have some notice.

Update – there is now a Sapphire card available at $109 also, but the 4850s featured don’t have the reference dual slot cooling solutions, they have the cheaper coolers that have been included on the 4770 parts. Still, a great price for the parts.

§

‘

•