In response to AMD's release of its R9 300 graphics card line up, NVIDIA add-in-board partners have silently dropped their prices for the high-end Maxwell series, which includes GeForce GTX 960, 970, 980, GTX Titan X and the current GeForce 900 flagship, GTX 980Ti.
NVIDIA started its price cut down for the GeForce 900 last month after the 980Ti's release. The GTX 980, which was initially offered at $549, was dropped to $499 when the 980Ti came out. With the new AMD graphics card releases, however, the price is expected to drop down to $479.
In fact, Newegg and Amazon now list the Asus Strix GTX 980 at $508.99 at the time of writing. Note that this is an AIB overclocked card. This an overclocked AIB partner version that previously retailed for $579 on Amazon.
Even NVIDIA's own flagship graphics card, the Titan X, is also forecasted for a price cut in the near future. Titan X is still currently listed at over a thousand on most online listings. However, WCCF Tech estimates that the 12GB video card will drop down to as low as $679, which is just $30 higher than the current market price for an AMD Radeon R9 Fury X that is listed at $649.
Know that the Titan X still beats the 980Ti and the Fury X in the majority of single GPU on stock settings benchmarks. It does fall off compared to the other cards on when 2-way SLI running triple 4k resolutions, which was noted on another news article here on Christian Today. Dropping the price to $679 will make the Titan X so much more desirable to people who run their systems in 1080p, 1440p and single 4k displays, which ninety percent of computer owners do.
The 980Ti is also foreseen to drop in price. Even though the card outperforms the Fury X on most benchmarks, on single both GPU and 2-way SLI, NVIDIA is still expected to drop its prices for the GeForce 900 flagship card. It is currently listed on the same price as AMD's best graphics card at $649. Of course, add-in-board partners with their overclocked versions of the 980Ti will have varying prices. Most, however, are listed at $659 on Newegg.
AMD's answer to the NVIDIA price cuts comes in form of the R9 Fury, which is aimed to offer performance that cuts in between the GTX 980Ti and the GTX 980. A few hours prior to this post, Asus released its R9 Fury Strix and priced it at $579, which is a $30 raise from its projected price of $549.
Extreme Tech has released benchmarks for the R9 Fury and it does stay true to its goal by offering performance that sits between the 980Ti and the 980. While it traded blows with the 980 at 1080p on games like Bioshock Infinite, Company of Heroes, Metro: Last Night, Total War, Shadow of Mordor and Dragon Age, it showed significantly better performance on the aforementioned games at 4k resolution. In fact, it edged the 980Ti on Company of Heroes, which is to be expected because it is a trimmed down version of Fury X; 50 Mhz less on the clock speed and 512MB less on the VRAM.
This close competition between the two graphics card manufacturers is proving to be beneficial for consumers. The wise should take advantage of the coming price drops from both manufacturers. The wiser, however, will wait for the Pascal, which is set to come out next year.
