Over the past couple of years we have reported several times about Nvidia cutting prices in anticipation to some release from main competitor ATI. However, this time things look much different as Nvidia has been forced to make the move, changing its market dominant position to one in which they have to be extremely careful about a very well regarded new line of Radeon graphics boards.
Things couldn't look better for AMD/ATI right now, who after a long time are enjoying of a great run with the Radeon 4000 series. Nvidia in the other hand, had a less stellar debut with their GeForce GTX boards that despite of being very powerful single-GPU solutions, were seen as too expensive and too power consuming.
Nvidia price cuts should become effective later this week with the GTX 280 board dropping from $649 to $499, and the GTX 260 going from $399 to a more appealing $299, which purposely matches the fastest of the new Radeons, the HD 4870.
In the meantime, ATI is expected to release the Radeon HD 4870 X2 next month which will use two GPUs in a single card using an improved version of the Crossfire implementation we saw months ago in the 3870 X2. Pricing for this upcoming card has yet to be announced, but for now some hands-on performance previews have popped up around the web.