As you may already know, Nvidia has officially released its first batch of Nvidia Kepler models, namely the Geforce GTX 680. The reference models are all that are available and the price will run around $ 500.
You may have also noticed that there have been significant price drops on Nvidia’s latest generation, the 500 series. The GTX 580s have been dropped to just $ 359.99, a huge discount compared to their pre-Kepler price. . Days before Kepler’s launch, you’d be lucky to find a GTX 580 for $ 400 and prices hadn’t fluctuated much over time. Deal sites all over the web have been posting price drops.
Is $ 359.99 enough to entice you to buy a GTX 580? Let me explain why your answer should be a big, fat NO!
While the price may seem attractive to some, you should consider AMD’s role in all of these. If you’ve forgotten, the Radeon HD 7970 launched in January for $ 550 and outperformed the GTX 580 in most benchmarks. With these stats on the books, most people expected the GTX 680 to cost AT LEAST $ 650 due to Nvidia claiming it would destroy the 7970’s performance figures.
The surprising point I’m trying to make is this: Not only is the Geforce GTX 680 below the expected price of $ 650, it’s actually $ 50.00 cheaper than the 7970 as expected, and it performs better as is. I expected. If the GTX 680 had been priced at $ 650, then I would consider the GTX 580’s price drops somewhat lucrative. But because we have the EXTREMELY rare case where an Nvidia card not only performs better (which is usually the case), but is cheaper (NEVER the case). Many people don’t mind paying the extra $ 50- $ 100 for an Nvidia GPU compared to its AMD counterpart, including me, mainly because Nvidia generally wins benchmarks and gaming compatibility / optimization. What can AMD say now?
The lesson here is, don’t be tempted to jump in for a GTX 580 even considering the price drops. The reasons listed above should be enough to convince players of the kind of deal they would get here. If the 580 is under $ 300 then it may be worth it. The generation-to-generation comparison between Nvidia and AMD has had consistent trends around fuel for years now. Until 2012 came that is.
I hope this has given you some insight into why buying a GTX 680 greatly outperforms any retail priced GTX 500 series card. You can find good deals on video cards on the web, but keep an eye out for the launch of the 670, where we can expect the price of the GTX 570 to drop this time.