Published in Graphics

The new and improved GTX 260 is here

by on16 September 2008

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EVGA and Zotac lead the pack


We've been
talking about Nvidia's GTX 260 upgrade for weeks now, and finally vendors have started announcing actual products. In case you're not a regular reader, Nvidia decided to enable an additional cluster on its GTX260 series cards, hence the new version has 216 versus 192 stream processors, or cores if you ask Nvidia, and 72 instead of 64 texture units.

EVGA and Zotac lead the way with two cards each. EVGA is offering a reference card, branded GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, as well as an overclocked SC edition card, however we still don't have the exact specs for the overclocked card. They are currently listed at €288 and €315, respectively, and aren't available. These are the first listings, so take them with a grain of salt, a big one. You should expect prices to drop significantly as they hit the shelves.

Zotac is unleashing the GeForce GTX 260² and GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition. The latter is overclocked to 650/1400/2100 for the core, shaders and memory. No words on pricing yet, but Zotac is promising a 10 percent performance increase in DX10 games compared to first generation cards.

We are expecting the new cards to end up marginally pricier than the current GTX 260 cards, while the old cards should shed a few euro off the price tag. The cheapest GTX 260 cards on the market currently retail at just over €200, so even a slight price cut should let retailers drop prices under under the €200 mark, to Radeon HD4870 levels. Keep in mind that we're talking about the 192 stream processor version, the new ones will still end up more expensive than ATI's HD4870.

Last modified on 17 September 2008
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