Just when you thought that you're buying an Ati product at the best possible price, AMD announces that you can get it even cheaper than before. But don't hurry back into the stores because the product you're searching for may not be on "Santa's list". This move is designed more to attract attention than to enhance profits. And you'll get a better picture if you see what gets cheaper and how much of the price is being slashed.

AMD has announced that they have cut prices on four ATI products. The products "affected" by the price cut are AMD ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire Edition, the TV Wonder 200 PCI tuner card and ATI Radeon 9550. Regarding the new price tags AMD ATI Radeon X1950 XTX and ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire Edition will go down from $449 to the "amazing" price tag of "only" $429 while the ATI Radeon 9550 will drop to $79. At least it's cheap and Vista Capable at the same time. AMD TV Wonder 200 PCI will drop down to $49 making it a strong contender in the analog TV tuner business.

These price cuts are meant to affect only the distributors and not the large retailers. Motive for which it is unknown at the moment how will the retail prices of the products fluctuate. The price cuts became effective on December 3rd, 2006 with the first feedbacks from the retailers being expected at the end of this week. Nice move overall and just in time for the holiday shopping season.

On the other hand, the mainstream X1950Pro and X1650XT/Pro price tags remain unchanged. Translated into words, that means the crown is back in Ati's hands at least when regarding the mainstream sector, motive for which the manufacturer will keep the existing price line.