Shootouts

What's the Right Price - A Trio of GeForce GTX 260

By Vincent Chang - 18 Jul 2008

Conclusion

Conclusion

While the GeForce GTX 260 did not experience such a drastic price cut as its bigger sibling, a US$100 price drop is nevertheless a substantial amount, especially coming so soon after the debut. Already, the major graphics vendors in the US like BFG, EVGA and XFX have started offering cash back schemes for early adopters who are probably feeling the blues.

So did the price cuts help improve the competitiveness of NVIDIA's products? Firstly, you must remember that the performance of the GeForce GTX 260 is essentially unchanged and as we found out, that is generally on par with the Radeon HD 4870. By matching ATI's price of US$299, it should make it a more competitive scenario. Leaving aside questions on how this move would affect NVIDIA's bottom line, considering how much more expensive the GTX 260 is to produce compared to the Radeon HD 4870 for now, we have seen today that even the overclocked versions are not significantly faster than the reference model. And these cards still command a premium for its higher clock speeds, in some cases, up to US$50 for the Zotac.

This places them in somewhat shaky territory, since our benchmarks also show a pair of Radeon HD 4850 cards having the advantage over the GeForce GTX 260. At around US$185 for one, a pair of them in CrossFireX would be more expensive than any one of the overclocked GTX 260 models but enthusiasts may find the performance worth the price. In short, the competitive position of the GTX 260 has improved a fair bit with these price cuts but as with such things, the mood has already swung to ATI. Yet another salient point is that these price cuts may not be effective immediately for all vendors.

For example, locally, the Leadtek WinFast GeForce GTX 260 is still selling at S$599 now, which is the older, non-revised price. That would definitely affect its sales here. The XFX and Zotac meanwhile have had their retail prices adjusted (at least in the online scene), though due to their overclocked nature, they are more costly than the standard version. At least both these vendors have bundled decent, new games that truly show the potential of the GPU, unlike the dated one found on the Leadtek. Despite this, and the slight performance boost on these cards, we are leery of recommending them at this moment. Unless of course you are clearly drawing the lines that you wish to use an NVIDIA solution, what we've reviewed here today would give you a taste of what the market offers and it's really up to your preferential choice to splurge on one model over another.

For the rest of you who generally go with whichever option giving you more performance for the buck, you might want to keep watch a little longer. In these volatile and competitive times, prices could be revised quite often and there's no harm sitting back to see how this plays out in the next couple of months before opening your wallet.

The Award Winners
The Leadtek WinFast GeForce GTX 260 896MB.
The XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX Edition.
The Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP! Edition.

 

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