Pre-emptive price drop by Nvidia

In preparation for the Radeon HD 6800 launch

NVIDIA SEEMS TO be worried that AMD’s Radeon HD 6800 cards are going to be too competitive in terms of price/performance compared to some of its line-up and as such the company has today revised its pricing on a couple of its models. Both the 1GB GeForce GTX 460 and the GTX 470  have had their prices cut to make them more competitive, all of which is good news for the consumers.

Judging by this, we might end up with something of a price war in the graphics card market in the run up to the holidays, although we doubt AMD is going to be too willing to play this game. When you’re the market leader you don’t tend to have to compete on price, something AMD has already shown it understands with the Radeon HD 5000 series which hasn’t dropped at all in price over its lifetime, something that’s very unusual in the graphics card market.

TechPowerUp is reporting that the new MSRP for the GeForce GTX 460 1GB cards will be $199 in the US and €169 (including VAT) in Europe. Considering that the 768MB cards have already had an unofficial price drop, there’s no additional reduction in price here. The 768MB cards can be had for as little as $170, but with various rebate schemes some cards retail for less than $150. Some brands appear to already have adjusted their pricing to the new $199(.99) level, although again we’re seeing some fairly significant rebate offers here taking some of these models down to the $170 mark.

The GeForce GTX 470 now has an MSRP of $259 in the US and €219 (including VAT) in Europe and again we’re seeing price drops from various online retailers that have these cards selling for $259.99. Unlike the GTX 460 there aren’t nearly as many rebate offers here, most likely due to the more expensive nature of making these cards. This still makes the GTX 470 price competitive with the Radeon HD 5850 and as the Radeon HD 6870 is expected to perform in a similar ballpark; since we do not have actual MSRP for the 68xx series available to us at this point in time we recommend spending your time reading the reviews first.S|A

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