At alternate

Yesterday, Zotac was among the first companies to have its Geforce GTX 260 listed at alternate at €319 and the same card at press time dropped to €289.

Nvidia and Zotac want to make Geforce GTX 260 more attractive and at €289 they have much better selling arguments than at higher prices. Radeon HD4870 is listed at the same time at the same store, but unavailable for €249 or more, but this is not a huge price difference to give ATI much breathing space.

We implied that this summer will bring a lot of price wars and it looks that it has already started. This is a Zotac vanilla card and the other closest competitor, XFX, sells its vanilla GTX 280 for €299, while Zotac Geforce GTX 260 AMP overclocked edition sells for €359.

The good news is that the GTX 260 is available today, the prices are going down and €289 gets you the cheapest GTX 260, the card that should be faster than Radeon HD 4870.

You can get one here.