Remaining unopposed for months, Nvidia's $1,000 GeForce GTX Titan, $650 GTX 780 and $400 GTX 770 had the high-end market pretty well stitched up earlier this year. Although AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GHz was available at $450, it proved slower than the GTX 770, while the company's dual-GPU HD 7990 was somewhat pointless because two 7970s were faster, cheaper and easier to cool.

With the enthusiast community demanding a response, AMD answered last month by delivering Titan-like performance for nearly half the price. At $550, the new Radeon R9 290X is set at the same rate as the HD 7970 when it debuted two years ago. With its age-old adversary swinging full force, Nvidia's back hit the ropes and it quickly countered by slashing prices across its affected upper-tier products.