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NVIDIA cuts price of GTX 280 and GTX 260 in response to pressure from ATI

ATI has been unusually competitive on both price and performance against NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 cards with its recently introduced Radeon HD 4870. In response to the pressure ATI has put NVIDIA under, NVIDIA slashed prices on its high-end GeForce GTX 260 and GeForce GTX 280 video cards.

When the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 launched it came to market at a price of $649 and its little brother, the GTX 260, retailed for $399. NVIDIA cut the price of the top-of-the-line GeForce GTX 280 to a more affordable $499 and the GeForce GTX 260 has dropped to a price of $299; which brings it close in line with the ATI Radeon HD 4870.

This will bring the price of the ATI and NVIDIA offerings closer together and could make it harder for gamers to decide what product to buy. ATI also has its high-end HD 4870 X2 dual GPU card with GDDR5 coming to battle NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 280.

The new $499 price point for the GeForce GTX 280 should be very close to expected MSRP for the HD 4870 X2. Early numbers are in for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and it compares quite favorably to the GeForce GTX 280.

NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 260 was the subject of considerable amounts of ire from reviewers and enthusiasts when the Radeon HD 4870 was found to perform very similarly for significantly less money.


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Well....
By Dianoda on 7/14/2008 11:54:30 AM , Rating: 4
I feel bad for all those people who paid the original asking price for either one of these cards.




RE: Well....
By FITCamaro on 7/14/2008 12:01:48 PM , Rating: 5
Agreed. But even with these prices, the 4870 is still better than the 260 and the 4870X2 is better than the 280. So ATI is still winning performance per dollar.

Honestly I wish I'd waited a few weeks for the 4850 to come out instead of getting two 8800GTS 512s. Would have better AoC performance and wouldn't have had to buy a new motherboard.


RE: Well....
By michal1980 on 7/14/2008 2:12:23 PM , Rating: 4
the only thing i'd disagree with you, is that a single GPU system will run nearly ALL games at its max performance. Where as the current crossfire setup is hit or miss.


RE: Well....
By dgingeri on 7/14/2008 3:01:55 PM , Rating: 1
Yeah, the 4870 does beat out the GTX260. That's why I bought one to replace my old 8800GTX. ATI/AMD is certainly winning the performance/dollar crown.

Now, if they'd just get their AA fixed, I'd be happy. Right now, I see no difference between 4X and their max quality 8X other than frame rate. That is one area nvidia wins at. My old 8800GTX did better at 2X than ATI does at 8X, with similar performance.


RE: Well....
By ChronoReverse on 7/14/2008 3:39:41 PM , Rating: 2
Huh?

ATI's current AA scheme is miraculous in performance and it does work. At least on my 4850 it does. I've made some screenshots of this showing the differences between the modes:

http://cid-1b1908eb94064033.skydrive.live.com/brow...


RE: Well....
By Hieyeck on 7/14/08, Rating: -1
RE: Well....
By GlassHouse69 on 7/15/08, Rating: -1
RE: Well....
By SavagePotato on 7/15/2008 10:33:42 AM , Rating: 2
If you look at the recent Hardocp reviews you will see the 4870 outperforms the GTX280 in age of conan.

You are talking about the odd person having problems running xp 32 bit with ATI hardware on age of conan, many many people myself included can run it just fine on ATI hardware. As well every review I have seen using age of conan on ATI hardware shows great performance. Time to get off of that dinosaur OS and get vista 64, where no one has problems running age of conan on ATI hardware.

Now let me also get this straight, you won't go for a 4870 because it's too power hungry? have you seen the wattage the gtx280 draws? The 4870 is an eco friendly flower in comparison.


RE: Well....
By WTFiSJuiCE on 7/16/2008 3:24:02 PM , Rating: 2
Yea, saying the 4870 is too power hungry when comparing to the GT200 series is laughable when you look at the giant behemoths those cards are atm.

And even if XP is a dinosaur OS, it still might outlast vista since 7 is slated at a '09 release ;).

Picture this: Jurassic Park 4, starring...Steve Ballmer holding a copy of vista, walking thru the raptor pen. Oh i would pay money to see that in IMAX. ;)


RE: Well....
By retrospooty on 7/14/2008 12:02:45 PM , Rating: 5
I dont - LOL! =)


RE: Well....
By Polynikes on 7/14/2008 12:08:40 PM , Rating: 2
I don't. They made a stupid decision. ATI's 4K series was clearly the better deal. Still is, if you ask me.


RE: Well....
By MrBlastman on 7/14/08, Rating: -1
RE: Well....
By Parhel on 7/14/2008 2:01:37 PM , Rating: 3
OpenFalcon? I'm not saying I doubt you, but that just illustrates how deep you need to dig to show nVidia coming out on top this time around.


RE: Well....
By MrBlastman on 7/14/08, Rating: 0
RE: Well....
By ChronoReverse on 7/14/2008 3:44:59 PM , Rating: 2
Isn't Falcon like DX6 or something? If it's only getting 70ish FPS even on an 8800GT, I'd say the problem isn't at the video card vendor's feet...


RE: Well....
By MrBlastman on 7/14/08, Rating: 0
RE: Well....
By ChronoReverse on 7/14/2008 5:03:10 PM , Rating: 2
Well, if it's DX7 then it's a "not necessarily". The way 3D was done back then is significantly different from how it's done today to the point that something as "simple" as Falcon in terms of 3D could be utterly bottlenecked by something fairly trivial.

This would also explain why it gets a dismal 70FPS on a 8800GT. And seriously, no matter how accurate the simulation was, that doesn't have anything to do with the GPU but rather the CPU.


RE: Well....
By MrBlastman on 7/14/08, Rating: 0
RE: Well....
By SlyNine on 7/14/2008 6:13:38 PM , Rating: 2