As most of you expected, NVIDIA has lowered the prices for its latest GeForce graphics cards. Even more, to make sure that everybody turns their attention to the company's latest cards, it has also gone official with the new prices. So, all of you out there who want to upgrade to the latest in graphics performance, as NVIDIA's says, can now do so, but at a much more convenient price.

Sunday night, the Santa Clara-based graphics manufacturer announced that its GeForce GTX 280 had just been made available for $499, while the GTX 260 could be acquired for $299. That is most certainly an impressive price cut, considering that the GTX 280 was originally priced at $649, while the mid-range GTX 260 went for $399. In fact, the discount is all the more impressive also because both of these cards were rolled out less than one month ago. Needless to say, those of you that rushed to purchase the new NVIDIA cards when they came out might now be feeling a bit sorry about it.

The new prices are more in line with ATI's newest offerings, making the GTX 260 to match ATI's HD 4870. This is in terms of both price and even performance, as recent test reveal that AMD's current flagship model is comparable to NVIDIA's mid-range GTX 260.

However, considering that AMD is about to launch its dual-core "Spartan" graphics card, then this might not be the last time we get to hear about price cuts for the latest GeForce cards. On top of that, there is yet another detail we must consider: the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is expected to top the performance of NVIDIA's current flagship model and thus put AMD in the leading position for the best-performance graphics card.

After August 12, when the new AMD card is believed to be made available, the price tag of the GTX 280 will probably go as down as $450, which would only be all the better for the end-user.