Nvidia cuts prices on GTX 260, 280 graphics boards

Nvidia has slashed the price of products with its newest GTX 260 and 280 graphics processors only a few weeks after it launched the chips, in response to stiffer competition from Advanced Micro Devices' ATI unit.

Nvidia said Sunday night that the GeForce GTX 280 is now available for $499 and the GTX 260 for $299. The high-end GTX 280 was originally $649, while the 260 was priced previously at $399. Both products were rolled out less than a month ago.

Nvidia's graphics boards are now more in line with ATI's newest offerings. At $299, the GTX 260 price now matches that of ATI's comparable HD 4870.

There's more to come from ATI too. Later this quarter, ATI is expected to launch the 4870 X2, which combines two chips on one board. This will be ATI's high-end offering for the enthusiast gaming market. The lower $499 price for Nvidia's high-end GTX 280 should bring it close to 4870 X2 pricing.

ATI appears to be faring well in this round of graphics chip competition, putting more pricing pressure than usual on Nvidia. Not only are its individual chips more competitive than previous generations, but its strategy of building smaller, lower-cost chips is paying off. Instead of building one large, expensive graphics processor as Nvidia does, ATI is building less power-hungry chips for the mid-range market, then ganging them together to boost performance for the high-end enthusiast market.

[i_made_this]

AMD/ATI does business in a more reasonable, long-term way than Nvidia. I have sensed strongly that - though it cost them a lot of pain to buy ATI - in the end, AMD would come out the winner in the long-term war for OEM dollars. Nvidia would be well advised to hold its offer price on its latest wonder GPU for at least a month or two before screwing all its customers who were foolish enough to buy that GPU at ridiculous prices on the day it first shipped. All you ever read is "Nvidia Slashes Prices" - you play this card as frequently as Nvidia does, you make lots of enemies and your stock price becomes a target for the shorts. Nvidia had better take the firm private awful fast before they have no choice but to accept Intel's price - a price you can be sure that Nvidia shareholders will start the lawsuits flying over and Intel's shareholders will walk away with a smirk on their faces owning the firm. I've said that Nvidia's been in Intel's sights for quite a few years but the markets been too hot - we're getting closer by the day. And this would be no "Microsoft buys Yahoo" type of minor impact - Nvidia owned by a well-managed firm like Intel will change your and my lives.

[rk2469]

Doesn't ATI's graphic card consume more power than NVidia's?

on Idle
260 (119 W), 280 (126 W) consumes less power by
119 W, 126 W,
vs
4850 (131) 4870 (153)

according to toms hardware.

With what information does this author state that ATI's graphic cards consume less energy to run? Also, running 1 (100w) object is better than running 2 (50w each) objects. I don't have source to cite for the latter one. So, ATI having smaller parts to match up with big parts that leads to lower energy consumption may be false.. more likely than not.