jmke

The retirement of production of 55nm GPUs created a hole in the market where neither AMD nor NVIDIA could really compete well. NVIDIA could never get a massive GPU down to $200, while AMD’s smaller Cypress GPU is profitable enough at that point, but their product lineup dictates that it needs to be a heavily cut-down version of that GPU which doesn’t always work out if you have to cut-down too much of the wrong thing. The Radeon 5830 was a hard sell when launched at $239, but at $200 it’s enjoyed a niche that comes to an end today.

By launching a more market-appropriate GPU for the $200-$250 market, NVIDIA has come in with a GPU that doesn’t need to be heavily cut-down to fit in to the market. At $200 the GeForce GTX 460 768MB is clearly the card to get, offering better performance than the Radeon 5830 with fantastic cooling and a reasonable power draw. AMD has little choice but to bring down 5830 prices further – besides Eyefinity it has nothing to separate itself from the otherwise superior GTX 460.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/n...the-200-king/1

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