randomizer :
By then the GTX280 should be cheaper too. I doubt it will stay at its current price for long. But as I've said before, why not rip off the consumer when you have a monopoly in the high end? AMD hasn't released a competitor yet, they've only shown us graphs.
By your logic, Nvidia should drop the price $200 come high noon on Wednesday. I expect the card will only drop in price by $50 to $100 after the 4870x2 arrives. I don't see Nvidia dropping the price on this soon. How much has the Ultra dropped in price and how long did that take?
I know, you're an Nvidia fan and want to see Nvidia win. I'm an ATI fan and don't care about ATI wins at the high end, because I don't allow a trickle down effect where I make my decisions on what to buy based on what's the high end at the time.
Oh all right, I did buy one high end card the month it was out and on top; my current 3870x2, but I had quite a bit of a tax return and no major bills so I could splurge for once. Since then, it's dropped about $51 and I still don't have a 24" LCD to do the card justice, or the CPU to match.
So, maybe I was the idiot then? But there are "Nvidiots" in every card generation who pay around $600 for Huang's high end single GPU monster. At least I didn't pay more than $449 for my card the week it was released, and it's factory overclocked.
Know what? When ATI occasionally has the high end, they still don't rip off consumers.
EXT64 :
Haha, I love this. I 've seen so many people say they like the 4870/50 because their INTEL motherboard has Crossfire. So, right now ATI's best ally is...INTEL!
No, Nvidia's worst enemy is Nvidia's CEO. If Nvidia had allowed Intel a free SLI license, then we might be seeing SLI on Intel, though I think Intel does see using Crossfire as an easy way to keep AMD alive as a competitor and to stave off regulators. ATI keeps AMD afloat and Intel using ATI standards and sharing Havok does not endanger competition in the CPU arena. We'll see how it all pans out once Larabee is in the marketplace. Hopefully, it will use Crossfire as it's standard too.
Nvidia's going for the gold but getting a silver. Huang insists on massive monster GPU's, can't give CUDA away and talks trash vs. Intel long before Intel has Larabee to market. Nvidia partners with Via at the low end to compete against Atom and has no high end CPU plans they'll talk about for the days when Fusion arrives.
To get SLI, you need Nvidia chipsets, so perhaps that's their way of ensuring a total platform for the loyal fans?