Who says the next gen is going to be all about Playstation 4 versus Xbox One? Not AMD, the board supplier for both consoles, as they are set to release the latest iteration of their premiere PC GPUs, Hawaii on September 25 (to be launched in Hawaii, fittingly enough).
The latest rumors going around are that these Hawaii GPUs will be retailing for $ 600 or below. Similarly, their HD 7990 cards will also lower in price to $ 699, all in a concerted effort to undercut Nvidia. In particular, AMD is going after the GTX 780, which is currently retailing at $ 650 and is definitely less powerful.
Price wars are traditionally a dangerous thing to get into, but AMD must feel it is in an advantageous position to set this up. While the company did swipe lucrative contracts for graphics chips for the Wii U, Playstation 4 and Xbox One away from Nvidia, they on't have Nvidia's advantage in the mobile sector, and in fact reported a severe loss in the last quarter, blamed squarely on declining PC sales.
So what's AMD's line of thought with this move? I don't think they would abandon making PC consumer boards, as it remains their core business. Furthermore, development of the most powerful consumer-level boards fuels their entry into other markets, like SoCs for mobile and even newer boards for the cloud.
Like other players in the PC business, they may think the market will pick back up eventually, and are invested in it for the long haul. In the meantime, they're looking to get more consumers to adopt Hawaii more quickly so they can dominate over Nvidia. The big money may not necessarily be in it for this now, but they may be positioning themselves for a war of attrition instead.
No official images for Hawaii yet, but we do have pictures of an alleged Hawaii board and press kit via Chiphell. You can check them out below.
Source: MCVUK
