Nvidia slashes GTX card prices
Dancing to ATI's tune
NVIDIA HAS slashed the price its newest GTX 260 and 280 GPUs in response to ATI's offerings which are looking pretty good.
Last night, Nvidia said the GeForce GTX 280 will be in the shops for $499 and the GTX 260 for $299. Both cards were only released four weeks ago. The GTX 280 was selling for $649, while the 260 was priced previously at $399.
But this brings Nvidia's prices closer to ATI's newest offerings. The GTX 260 price now competes against ATI's fairly decent HD 4870.
Nvidia will be hoping that the cut will steal a bit of the thunder of the launch of ATI's 4870 X2. The $499 price for Nvidia's GTX 280 should bring it close to 4870 X2's projected pricing.
It is starting to look that ATI is making Nvidia play its game. Its chips are more competitive as it is not building one large, expensive graphics processor, but using less power-hungry chips for the mid-range market, then strapping them together. µ
Comments
Nooo!
I'm glad ATI has put pressure on the green machine. Won't do us any good if they cut their prices and less people buy ATI cards.That's why this sucks. Sure Nvidia will make less money but they'll still beat the 4870 over the head then because they still win single cards.
Better prices
I have seen listed the GTX280 for a low as $399 CAD for the EVGA GEFORCE GTX280 GDDR3. Now thats worth the price. I still went with the CrossFire 4850's for $360 after MIR.http://www.pccyber.com/?v=product&i=VC-EVGA-01G-P3-1280-AR
ow i laugh
moronic business models will always be downsized at some point, im just amazed its taken this long, lets hope the 4870x2 will marginally loose to the 280sdfgdfsg version and make its prices even cheaper :)It simply goes to show all those nvidia users that they have been paying through the nose for technology almost a year old.
Single cards be damned
"Nooo!I'm glad ATI has put pressure on the green machine. Won't do us any good if they cut their prices and less people buy ATI cards.
That's why this sucks. Sure Nvidia will make less money but they'll still beat the 4870 over the head then because they still win single cards."
The fact that Nvidia wins single card performance doesn't mean anything these days. A few years ago, when the vast majority of computers had single expansion slots for graphics, it did.
With the number of enthusiast chipsets out there, hooking up a dual video card setup is easier, and more common than ever before. X38, X48, RD580, 790X, 790 FX will all do this no problems.
As for beating ATI over the head, I'm skeptical. Looking at a few forums, every time someone asks for help on what video card to get, it's an ATI card, or Crossfire setup. Even people who already own Nvidia chipsets are getting the 4870 without the chance to double it up.
Mark Up
This gives us some idea of how much the markup is on their products.nVidia believes they will pull themselves out of there current financial death spiral by lowering prices. That only works if they believe they can still cover expenses and make a profit from the new prices if they sell every card they can possibly make. Or they may be taking a short term loss just to grab a part of the market back. Either could be the case.
From reading the financial data, they have a long road back and it ain't gonna be easy.
lol
I hope ati cuts the prices even more. Nvidia is definitely bleeding green atm and ati could easily put the squeeze on them even more so.No choice for small cases
Don't care who makes the card as long as it does the job, isn't too pricey and it fits in the box.The latest round of GTX cards are just too long to fit comfortably in my SFF case.
mmm...Humble pie!
As someone who has owned both makers cards off and on over the years I've always found ATI to be more aggresive with pricing. I'm sure there will be a response from them. The best part about this Battle Royale is that it's highly unlikely we'll be seeing any $850.00 graphics cards out of Nvidia for a while and if they did release one, just imagine what it would be able to do.back in red
Well I bit the bullet and swapped back to ATI, not since I owned my beloved radeon 9800 pro, but now I own a brand new hd4870 and loving it. I plan to upgrade my cpu and buy a second card for crossfire around xmas. Beautifully built card. Solid and quality stuff.nice!
All i can say is sweet!, lower prices is always great for us, costumers. i hope nVidia is learning from this for their next gen...altho i think the next gen should be the start of multi gpu cores in one die or something like that...Biparty-san
There will always be die hard fanbois on both sides of the fence, but one fact remains.The customer wins.
Cast your mind back to when Voodoo was supreme and nVidia was an upstart. The Voodoo's were ever increasing in price and started believing they were bigger than Jesus (so to speak), but the TnT2 cut them down to size (and eventually they got cut right out of the market).
ATi has been the yin to nVidia's yang for some time now. They were weak against the 8800 (which let nVidia get away with higher prices for quite some time) but this round they are forcing better price points with a single card that doesn't actually beat the top end of the 280.
They are good to have around if only to (in Australia parlance) "keep the bastards honest". So even nVid fanbois are seeing benefits from Red... =)
Win/win is a pretty good solution for the customer.
Bad news fanbois
Bad news fanboys - the 4870 X2 kicks GTX 280 ass ...http://techreport.com/articles.x/15105
Tt's certainly the fastest thing on a single PCB, they go as far to say it's the fastest card they've ever tested...
I know suckers who went ahead ordered a 280... tsk tsk.. 1.4 billion transistors, and only beats a solo 4870 by 10% ...