New York – Nvidia has dropped the price on its 3D Vision kit by
$50 and is in the process of updating its GeForce graphic card line.
Effective March 15, the Nvidia 3D Vision kit will carry a $149
suggested retail; this is the first price reduction for the product since it
was introduced two years ago, the company said.
Nvidia, today also introduced its new entry-level graphics card,
the GTX 550 ti. It will carry a $149 suggested price.
Nvidia said the price drop on the 3D Vision kit will hopefully
help solve one of several problems that have plagued faster adoption of the 3D
for PC gamers. The company conducted a customer study and found many have shied
away from jumping into 3D because of the price point, along with the need to
upgrade their monitor, or in some cases buy several new monitors, he said.
To help promote 3D gaming and other 3D PC activities the company
has launched
.
This site is designed to act as a 3D community where consumers can find games,
view 3D photos and videos, it said.
Eventually, Nvidia would like to sell downloadable 3D movies
through the site.
Nvidia is also working with monitor vendors to integrate a 3D
emitter in the monitor to help reduce the customer’s overhead.
On the gaming side, Nvidia is working with game-engine developers
to include 3D Vision technology directly in the game, making it instantly
compatible with the Nvidia kit.
Overall, Nvidia hopes these additions and price changes will bump
up 3D Vision kit shipments this year three times higher than the number shipped
in 2010.
The GTX 550 ti is part of Nvidia’s Fermi line of consumer GPUs
and is the follow-up product to the GTX 450, which will stay in production and
sell for $129, the company said.
The 550 offers a 28 percent performance improvement over the
older model and it includes Nvidia’s SLI technology, allowing gamers to double
up the number of cards in their PC and improving a computer’s gaming capability
even further.
