It is amazing what a little competition can do, especially in the high-tech sector. Competition is part of what drives innovation and often benefits consumers through better pricing. I bring this up because there appears to be a price war brewing between AMD and Nvidia in the GPU space. At the very least, it's a bit of a skirmish.

EVGA, one of Nvidia's allies, announced two new GeForce RTX 2060 models at CES. They are dubbed KO and KO Ultra, and coupled with aggressive pricing, seem intended to deliver a "knockout" punch to AMD's recently announced Radeon RX 5600 XT. Of course, EVGA has not explicitly said so, but there is no doubt what "KO" means.

"The new RTX 2060 KO enters the ring with ONE-TWO punches to any competitor who tries to step in, the EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 KO and RTX 2060 KO Ultra are new editions to EVGA's RTX lineup. Experience superior cooling, superior overclocking, and superior performance," said EVGA. [The RTX 2060 KO will retail for $279.99 (discounted from $299.99) and the factory overclocked RTX 2060 KO Ultra will retail for $299.99 (discounted from $319.99). There is no mail-in rebate. [Meanwhile, AMD has announced the 5600 XT for $279, which is gaining momentum over Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. Once we get a chance to put the 5600XT through the game benchmarking gauntlet, it will be clear how it compares, but from AMD's perspective, the 1660Ti is is the 5600XT's competitor.

Once the RTX 2060 drops in price, everything will change. Maybe Nvidia did exactly that and gave EVGA a head start over other hardware partners (as a reward for selling only Nvidia GPUs), or maybe EVGA is taking the lead. Either way, EVGA simply switched game boards, and it would be shocking if the other participants did not comply.

Meanwhile, cheaper RTX 2060 options are already available, albeit with mail-in rebates and coupon codes. Some examples:

Most RTX 2060 cards are still priced at $349 or more, but that won't last very long. It is important to note that even though Nvidia has refreshed its lineup with the RTX 2060 Super, the RTX 2060 is not being discontinued. In other words, this is not a case of EVGA clearing out its RTX 2060 inventory by selling a less expensive KO model. [When AMD announced the Radeon RX 5700 series, the 5700 XT was initially said to cost $499 and the 5700 $379. In contrast, Nvidia announced a super refresh of the RTX 2070 ($499) and RTX 2060 ($399). Then, just before the 5700 series was released to retailers, AMD announced that it would release the 5700 XT for $399 instead of $499 and the 5700 for $349 instead of $379.

In a subsequent interview with HotHardware, AMD's Scott Herkleman said that this had been the strategy all along, and that AMD had lured Nvidia into holding out (this discussion begins at 25m35s). So perhaps the same thing will happen again, and the 5600 XT will be available at a lower price than announced.