Hardware Sales – GTX 980 Ti for $390, R9 390X for $310, Acer Laptop

The RX 480 and GTX 1080/1070 launches have driven down prices of existing video cards. The R9 390X is still a powerful offering in the face of AMD's own RX 480, and nVidia's GTX 980 Ti remains one of the highest performing cards for CUDA-related tasks (at its price). Both are on sale this week, as is a budget Acer laptop.

Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti ($390): After MIR, Gigabyte's GTX 980 Ti “Xtreme Gaming Exition” is priced at $390, or $420 before MIR. The card uses Gigabyte's WindForce / Xtreme Gaming three-fan cooler and is pre-overclocked at 1114MHz (boost). The card has fallen heavily from its $620 price-point, a result of the GTX 1080's launch.

MSI R9 390X ($310): MSI's R9 390X Gaming 8G LE is a more affordable version of the 390X, but can be overclocked to match the frequency of models with a higher pre-OC. Still, we're talking a few percentage points different in overall performance. The “LE” version of the 390X is clocked at 1060MHz, about 40MHz lower than other pre-OC models from MSI. For the $310 price-point, that's not a bad deal.

Acer Aspire E 15 ($480): It's not the world's best laptop, and it's not much of a gaming laptop, but the Acer Aspire E 15 will get the job done for cheap. This is sort of a “transition period” product – if you're looking for something to fight through years and years of life on the move, it's a good idea to invest a bit more upfront to get a higher quality body. For something that's going to be used more gently or won't see more than a few years of deployment, this laptop's current discount lands it on the sub-$500 list.

Check back this week for some content updates regarding our testing methodology.

- Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke.