8600 price decline?

[CSpinner]

I'm in the market for a new video card, given I only upgrade every 3yrs I'm looking into a Dx10 card. My max is $150. I would love an 8600GTS, but they are our of my range so I'm looking at the 8600GT's.
When ATI releases their mid-range cards, how much if any should I expect video card prices to drop? Would it be reasonable to expect to get a GTS for ~150? Or am I dreaming?

 

[FallenMystic]

Hard question to answer; ultimately it's going to boil down to how good AMD/ATI's card performs at a similar price point and how threatened nV feels at the release.

 

[Silus]

I'm in the market for a new video card, given I only upgrade every 3yrs I'm looking into a Dx10 card. My max is $150. I would love an 8600GTS, but they are our of my range so I'm looking at the 8600GT's.
When ATI releases their mid-range cards, how much if any should I expect video card prices to drop? Would it be reasonable to expect to get a GTS for ~150? Or am I dreaming?

Not at all. $150 is a more than reasoanble price for a 8600 GTS. It will happen eventually, but only until NVIDIA has any sort of competition.

 

[defaultluser]

If ATI follows their lead with their previous midrange cards (x700 series, x1600 series), they will get clobbered, even by the overpriced 8600 series.

For those short of memory, the x1600 XT card dropped from an MSRP of $249 on launch to $199 within a couple months, then $149, because it barely bested the $149 6600 GT. When the 7600 GT was released, the x1600 went off in a corner to hide. ATI only came back to play six months later with a $100 x1600 XT (now renamed x1650 Pro), and the beefy x1650 XT to compete with the 7600 GT.

The x700 XT was supposed to compete with the 6600 GT (it could, I saw the benchmarks), but it was never released, and the x700 Pro was left to fail miserably against the 6600 GT.