Pricing and Availability
Writing this review ahead of Jensen Huang's announcement of TITAN's pricing at GTC makes discussing price difficult
For competitive reasons, NVIDIA did not provide the press with pre-release pricing. At time of writing the review we had no idea of pricing, apart from a rumour of $1349. What NVIDIA did tell us is they wanted to change the positioning of TITAN by removing the high speed double precision floating point capability for GPU computing.
In theory this would enable two things. Since TITAN is no longer cannibalising Tesla sales, NVIDIA can afford to drop the price of Titan, bringing it in-line to gaming class graphics card pricing rather than professional. This would allow more users to acquire the performance of Titan X while at the same time NVIDIA can protect its product segments.
This is a GOOD thing, unfortunately for the very small niche who need double precision yet elected to buy a titan because it is cheaper than a high end Tesla.
NVIDIA holding specs and pricing extremely close to their chest tells us that something is going on and this is no ordinary GPU launch. The GPU wars are back on and either green or red blood is to be spilt.
We predicted that Titan X would have a cheaper, competitive price akin to what 295X2 currently sells for (US $699 and above) and of course, higher than what the 980 RRP is.
At time of writing, with a review embargo in place and no visibility to possible pricing we can only speculate on pricing strategy.
There are two scenarios possible.
- GTX 980 remains at 549 RRP and TITAN X launches anywhere between 699 and 999 US RRP
- GTX 970 and 980 gets a pricec ut to bring them in-line with AMD R9 290/290X and TITAN X gets the $549/599 price point. The controversy over GTX 970 would have had a small part to play here.
Unfortunately, neither of these scenarios played out and the TITAN X was announced by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at their GTC 2015 conference keynote for US $999. This is less than the rumours of 1349 and has been a price used for older flagship GPUs. We feel the card is worth more along the lines of 699 to 799 not 999 based on TITAN X's relative performance to GTX 980 but we can accept US $999 as a 'reasonable' price for the product.
Flagship GeForce cards have always been near $999, going back fifteen years to the GeForce 3 and beyond.
Actual pricing is resonable compared to the announced RRP - US 999 at exchange rate, plus 10% tax is AU $1430, cards sell at AUS 1499/1549.
PC Case Gear AU - EVGA TITAN X A$1499
PC Case Gear AU - GIGABYTE TITAN X A$1549
Staticice AU Search - A$1539 and up
