Quote Originally Posted by annihilat0r View Post
I think a 15 to 20 percent increase in performance seems underwhelming to people because of its incredible power draw. However, I think the card price is just as important, and considering it's only %25 more expensive than the HD5870, its priced quite competitively. It is an almost (but not quite) equal increase in percentage price with percentage performance, which is something you never see on the enthusiast category - not just on graphics cards but on pretty much everything, once you move to the premium products, each dollar you spend returns less. So in that respect, GTX 480 is priced good.
I don't think Nvidia was doing this out of the good of their hearts though... it's simply the matter that they had to price this where it is.

In part, it's because of the performance: if they go higher, it gets too close to the 5970, which beats it across the board.

And also because its 6 months late, they can't dictate price - the 5870 is at $400, the 5970 is at $600-700 - so your only chance, given performance/heat/noise/features, is to price it between there.

I'm sure that if the 480 performed closer to the 5970 than the 5870, or if it had been released in this state 6 months ago, it would have been priced closer to $650 (as the GTX 280 was upon initial release). But it's not the same situation anymore