14 DAY TRIAL // Here's a quick reminder: before NVIDIA decided to roll out its latest generation of discrete graphics cards, everybody had high hopes that the green company would put out one of its best products to date. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the latest GeForce cards have fallen short of expectations and the Santa Clara-based graphics manufacturer had to cut down prices in order to keep the offer interesting.
Then again, NVIDIA's "dry spell" is also explainable by the fact that AMD has finally succeeded to provide the world with two graphics cards that offer one of the best performance/quality ratios out there. Since Micro Devices is offering its cards at lower prices than the ones of NVIDIA's GT200-series, the green goblin was left with no choice but to follow suit and significantly slash the prices for its news products.
Far from solving the problem and putting an end to NVIDIA's predicament, this contributed to the appearance of another one, this time having to do with the company's loyal fans. Those who rushed to purchase the new cards right after their release - as any true fan would have done - were left wishing they had waited a couple of weeks more before acquiring one of the GT200s.
Luckily, it seems that two of NVIDIA's best channel partners, XFX and EVGA, have come up with a plan to help these users feel better about their new GeForce cards. Both manufacturers are now offering reimbursement programs for all those who were among the first to acquire the GTX 260 and GTX 280 cards. However, while XFX customers will get their money back, EVGA users will receive EVGA bucks, of which they can avail themselves to purchase other products under the same brand.
XFX's offer is currently available in the US and Canada and those that have bought one of their GTX 260 or 280 cards between June 16 and July 11 will get up to $120 in cash. EVGA's promotion applies only to customers that made their purchase between June 16 and July 7 - they will receive instead up to $125 EVGA bucks.
Given the actual context, one can only hope that other manufacturers will soon follow in the footsteps of EVGA and XFX.
