We took a stroll down our price search engine and we ran into some rather interesting price cuts on several Geforce GTX 460 boards. The first price cut rumours appeared on the interweb a few days ago and the cuts seem to confirm the rumours.

Over the past 48 hours numerous European retailers have cut prices on 768MB boards by as much as €20 and some cards are already available for less than €150. The move seems logical, as 768MB versions were simply priced too close to the 1GB model, which also features a wider 256-bit bus. We're still not sure whether the 1GB model will see any significant cuts.

In any case several reference clocked cards are now priced in the €140 to €160 price range. As of Thursday, they are readily available for just over €150 on the continent. However, this is a rather interesting development as Geforce GTS 450 boards are just around the corner and they are expected to sell for around €130. Clearly the new board is going to face a fair bit of in-house competition, Nvidia style.

It’s also interesting to see how Geforce GTX 460 768MB pricing measures up to AMD cards, as it is one of few competitive Nvidia products on the market. Well, actually, it’s the only competitive Nvidia card at the moment. The Radeon HD 5830 is currently selling for €170+, while the Radeon HD 5850 costs more than €220. Obviously, Nvidia’s price cut might force AMD to respond in kind and slash HD 5830/5850 pricing, but it appears that AMD isn’t overly concerned with Nvidia at the moment. AMD has already dropped HD 5830 pricing by €20 in light of the GTX 460 launch, but it hasn’t cut HD 5850 pricing since launch.

Nvidia on the other was forced to drop 400 series pricing several times over the past few months, even on the relatively fresh and competitive Geforce GTX 460. Although this is rather bad news for Nvidia, it’s great news for the average consumers, as the Geforce GTX 460 is now a much better deal than the Radeon HD 5850 and it even comes close to some non-reference Radeon HD 5770 boards. We just need to wait for AMD’s response and it is likely to come over the next few weeks, as the company gears up to introduce the Radeon HD 6000 Series and cut Radeon HD 5000 Series inventory.