With the economy being in a huge recession, banks falling left and right, the computer industry has taken a hit in every sense of the word financially. Companies like NVIDIA and AMD are trading at near their all-time lows on the stock market, with problems throughout the economy and purchasing decisions being put off. With the holiday season upon us and a new President in office hopefully this will mark the change that this country needs.

So what does this have to do with a video card review? Most people that want to buy a high-end card or any computer component are looking for the best price/performance. Some want the absolute best performance willing to pay any price but surveys have shown a move towards buying the best performing part for the video card.

NVIDIA and ATI compete against each other on virtually every price point imaginable from the 9300GS and HD 3650 to the GTX 280 versus the ATI HD 4870 X2 dual graphics chip card at the very high end of the spectrum. NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 280 card for a whopping $649 on June 26, 2008. Due to competitive reasons NVIDIA has lowered the price of the card so that it is now selling for $399 or even lower and is much more price competitive with ATI’s counterpart. XFX manufactures their cards based upon NVIDIA chipsets and today’s review is on the GeForce GTX 280 XXX Edition from that company.