Not all was quiet at Nvidia headquarters this July 4 weekend. The rumor mill wound up with news of forthcoming price cuts last week, and HotHardware reported on Thursday that Nvidia would push the GeForce GTX 280 from $649 to $499 and the GTX 260 from $399 to a lower figure. Those predictions didn’t take long to come to fruition, as a cursory check through Newegg’s listings confirms.
The online retailer already sells Palit, Asus, and MSI variants of the GTX 280 at $499.99, and the latter even comes with a $40 mail-in rebate that can take its price down to $459.99. Meanwhile, Newegg offers an Asus GeForce GTX 260 for $329.99 and a Gigabyte variant for $339.99, both dangerously close to the AMD Radeon HD 4870’s home turf of $309.99 at the same e-tailer.
Nvidia doesn’t usually cut prices for new cards barely three weeks after their launch, but folks who’ve read our review of the Radeon HD 4870 should be able to figure this one out. On the very day the GeForce GTX 260 hit stores, the 4870 joined it with a mix of comparable performance and a $100-lower price tag. In fact, the 4870 performs so well that it sometimes matches the GTX 280. With these cuts and the GeForce 9800 GTX’s nose-dive to $199, it’s no wonder Nvidia had to revise its revenue forecast for the current financial quarter.
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