Undoubtedly, NVIDIA has remedied all product launch and availability issues with its GeForce 7 series of graphics cards. First it was the 7800GTX and now the 7800GT, NVIDIA managed to deliver both cards right when it made the announcement. Not only that, but the prices from certain vendors are dropping to fairly desirable levels pretty rapidly. Needless to say, the entire community is waiting for a rebuttal from ATI and its R520 core. ATI has been surprisingly quiet about its next generation of graphics cards, but that hasn’t stopped the community from speculating. Whatever the case may be, ATI is in a critical position right now. The company must deliver a competitive solution to NVIDIA’s 7800GTX or risk losing market share.

Speaking of market share, an insider close to one of ATI’s board partners disclosed that ATI is expected to cut prices on its X850XT graphics adapter to compete against NVIDIA’s recently announced 7800GT in order to stay competitive in the market. Whether ATI will cut prices for the entire X850 product line is currently unclear.

Even though ATI is doing everything it can to stay competitive in the market, unfortunately it’s not nearly enough to give it an edge in the community. As ATI continues to delay the R520 launch, it’ll have to jump over more hurdles in order to be successful. Right when the 7800GTX debuted, ATI just had to manage a similar launch with competitive performance. Today, however, not only does it have to have the availability, product launch and performance issues sorted out, but it’ll also have to match the price point with enough yields with the 7800GT in mind. Logically, we don’t believe ATI would introduce both the midrange and high-end products at the same time, as they would take away from the limited high-end sales. From that standpoint, it appears that ATI would always remain a step behind against NVIDIA, which would certainly give NVIDIA an edge.

And the wait continues…