AMD Plans To Stick With The HD 7000 Series For The Bulk of 2013

The Radeon 7000 series will be sticking around a bit longer than we expected. The GPU nuclear arm’s race between AMD and Nvidia over the last several years has been amazing for consumers, however the R&D costs associated with this competition must have been astronomical. Both companies have been trading blows at different price points for the last few generations, and AMD is finally throwing up the white flag. According to AMD Product Manager Devon Nekechuk, the company will be sticking with its HD 7000 series for the bulk of 2013, and will use promos and software bundles to remain competitive against the green team. This news shoots down earlier rumors that suggested the HD 8000 series would hit the street sometime in Q2, and helps to explain the newly rejiggered “Never Settle Bundle”. Initially we speculated that it might have been used to help clear out excess inventory, but this news makes much more sense when you look at the lineup. All of the titles are upcoming AAA releases, and this promotion suggests that AMD has confidence that this generation of cards has enough horsepower to get the job done at reasonable frame rates.  Now that AMD has tipped its hand, the more interesting question is what Nvidia will do with the news. If the company has been hard at work on the GTX 700 series they may well blow AMD out of the water this year, or conversely, they could take the opportunity to milk a bit of extra cash out of the current generation. We know the GeFor