In every industry product launches are often the cause of a fair amount of hype. At times this hype can be generated well before a physical product even exists, based solely on the merit of the announced specifications or characteristics. In the hardware industry, there is no kind of product launch more capable of generating hype than video cards. The intense rivalry between ATI (AMD) and NVIDIA, the two main players in the consumer graphics industry, fuels a unique polarization of hardware enthusiasts on review sites and message boards that is characterized by die-hard backing and often downright hateful comments towards their adversaries. Thanks to the relative frequency with which graphics cards are launched, the two ends of this rivalry seem to be in a perpetual argument over who’s favored company will reign supreme when the dust has settled. As a group of people who beyond a shadow of a doubt have no loyalties to either company involved we can say pretty definitively that no matter which one ends up on top after a video card launch, everyone that argued over which side would prevail was ultimately wrong. For the most part, it really doesn’t matter what the result of a video card launch-off is – the consumer usually comes out on top. The fierce competition between ATI and NVIDIA over the years has kept video card prices relatively low, which enables a very large audience of enthusiasts and gamers to gobble up high-end video card offerings from either company. However, a simple trip to and search of your favorite etailer’s website will make it abundantly clear that something is not quite right in the video card world.

For the past year (almost one full year exactly) NVIDIA could do nothing wrong. On November 8, 2006, they launched a series of video cards based on a radically new graphics core called G80. The flagship of this series was a card called the GeForce 8800GTX. Our testing of the card, using drivers that were at the time still pretty immature and not as feature-rich as they would end up being, revealed that it thoroughly dominated everything else on the market almost by a factor of 2 (note: by “everything” we mean video cards, not steroid-popping hunks of silicon and metal that somehow make images appear on your screen). NVIDIA supporters the world over heralded the card as a deathblow to ATI, who at the time was reportedly having all kinds of problems getting their answer to the G80, R600, out the door. Six months gone the release of the 8800GTX, a full three months beyond the typical three month offset, it would appear the rumors about R600’s inadequacies were true. Not even a highly augmented version of the R600’s flagship manifestation Radeon HD2900XT could hold any sort of serious candle to the GTX, the very same card that had gone uncontested at the top of the graphics mountain for six months. To add insult to injury, right before ATI (AMD) launched their red behemoth to the public, NVIDIA announced, launched, and made available a new SKU of their G80 series, the GeForce 8800 Ultra. As the name would imply, the 8800Ultra was designed to be the pinnacle of G80’s incredible performance. It was, despite a pretty much unanimous reaction by publications reviewing the card that it was not worth the stomach churning price of $820 (totally wasn’t, NVIDIA realized that and now it’s going for about $600), and according to the testimonials of many leading system integrators in the area it still sold pretty well. There is something quite appealing about possessing the most powerful graphics card on the planet – and that distinction has gone to NVIDIA products for almost one year (and should remain there until sometime in 2008).

The negative side to this, of course, is that there was very little (read: none) competition for NVIDIA in the high-end graphics segment for pretty much three fiscal quarters. Since they had no competition trying to outsell them by offering similar performance at lower prices, NVIDIA had no reason to drop the MSRP of any of their cards. The 8800GTX, a card that had an initial MSRP of $599 in November of 2006, has only dropped in price to $499 a full year later. This is an extremely tiny price drop for a graphics card, especially one that is kind of old. Then, finally, a couple of months ago some information came through the pipes about something that ATI (AMD) was working on that would finally put an end to this $500 high-end entrance fee. RV670, a.k.a. Radeon HD3800, would supposedly offer HD2900XT performance or better for just $200USD (256MB) or $249USD (512MB). Although the Radeon HD2900XT is not the best card in the world, it’s performance is still undeniably superior to the GeForce 8800GTS 640MB, the third entry down on NVIDIA’s totem pole of performance. Where the GeForce 8800GTS 640MB goes for $350, a card that beats it by what should be a pretty significant margin will go for just $250. The RV670 would not be a champion in the performance market, but its incredibly low price point would effectively eliminate both flavors of NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800GTS and ATI’s own HD2900 series as viable options for consumers looking to get a high-end video card. Beyond that, the HD2900XT is not so far behind the GeForce 8800GTX in performance that paying an extra $250 for the better card would be worth it for most users, which means NVIDIA’s go-to product for the past year might finally have met its match in the form of a smaller, cheaper card from ATI.