Author: Ben Sun · 07-22-2008
With the recent launch of the ATI HD4870 and HD4850, NVIDIA's strategy for their GTX cards has changed for the better for the consumer, for the worse for NVIDIA at least for the short term. ATI's launches have forced NVIDIA to lower the prices on their cards to match ATI's market price and cut down on their margins. Today, what was a $399 GTX260 is now selling online for $299 amazingly enough. Similarly, what was a $649 GTX280s are selling for $499 meaning the margins on these new cards is down for NVIDIA, hence the good news and bad news of lower prices.
The GT200 chip was launched last month by NVIDIA as their next-generation graphics chip. There are two versions of this chip available, the GTX280 and the GTX260. I've covered the GTX 280 in a couple of reviews already, but today I'm reviewing the GeForce GTX260. The company that manufactures this particular card is XFX a division of Pine Technologies. It will be an interesting look at a card that has dropped in price to be more competitive with the competition. The GeForce GTX260 XXX Edition is an overclocked card from the reference clocks, and should be a good performer. As prices keep dropping this is a good thing for the consumer looking for a high-end card.
The GeForce GTX260 is the “little brother” to the GTX280 card that is NVIDIA's flagship at the moment. The card is built upon TSMC's 65 nanometer process, with 1.4 Billion transistors. This is the largest graphics card in terms of transistor count in the world. The GTX260 has 192 Stream Processors which is less than the 240 SPs the GTX280 sports.
NVIDIA was the first graphics chip maker on the market with DirectX 10.0 support with the GeForce 8800GTX and GeForce 8800GTS cards in 2006. The key features of DX10 include Unified Shader support, support for Pixel and Vertex Shader 4.0 and Windows Vista Aero Glass support (the GUI). Games that support DirectX 10 include: Crysis, Hellgate London, Lost Planet and many others that have hit the market in recent months.
source : www.motherboards.org
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