<p><span style="font-size: small;">To get our weekly geekiness quota out of the way early, the desktop video card industry is a lot like The Force. There are two sides constantly at odds with each other for dominance of the galaxy/market, and balance between the two sides is considered one of the central tenants of the system. Furthermore when the system isn&rsquo;t in balance something bad happens, whether it&rsquo;s galactic domination or uncompetitive video card prices and designs.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"> To that end &ndash; and to bring things back to a technical discussion &ndash; while AMD and NVIDIA&rsquo;s ultimate goals are to rule the video card market, in practice they serve to keep each other in check and keep the market as a whole balanced. This is accomplished by their doing what they can to offer similarly competitive video cards at most price points, particularly the sub-$300 market where the bulk of all video card sales take place. On the other hand when that balance is disrupted by the introduction of a new GPU and/or new video card, AMD and NVIDIA will try to roll out new products to restore that balance.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"> This brings us to the subject of today&rsquo;s launch. Friday saw the launch of AMD&rsquo;s Radeon HD 7790, a $149 entry-level 1080p card based on their new Bonaire GPU. AMD had for roughly the last half-year been operating with a significant price and performance gap between their 7770 and 7850 products, leaving the mid-$100 market open to NVIDIA&rsquo;s GTX 650 Ti. With the 7790 AMD finally has a GTX 650 Ti competitor and more, and left unchallenged this would mean AMD would control the market between $150 and $200.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"> NVIDIA for their part has no interest in letting AMD take that piece of the market without a fight, and as such will be immediately countering with a new video card: the GTX 650 Ti Boost. Launching today, the GTX 650 Ti Boost is based on the same GK106 GPU as the GTX 650 Ti and GTX 660, and is essentially a filler card to bridge the gap between them. By adding GPU boost back into the mix and using a slightly more powerful core configuration, NVIDIA intends to plug their own performance gap and at the same time counter AMD&rsquo;s 7850 and 7790 before the latter even reaches retail. It&rsquo;s never quite that simple of course, but as we&rsquo;ll see the GTX 650 Ti Boost does indeed bring some balance back to the Force.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6838/nvidia-geforce-gtx-650-ti-boost-review-" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>