NVIDIA slipping out uprated GTX 260?
updated 08:30 am EDT, Mon September 15, 2008
NVIDIA Updated GTX 260
NVIDIA is quietly releasing an upgraded version of the GTX 260 to fend off advances made by the Radeon HD 4870, according to a claim from those in the industry. On top of price cuts earlier in the year, the California graphics maker is said to be bumping the number of stream (geometry and effects) processors from the original 192 up to 216, bringing the performance much closer to the GTX 280's 240 processors. Clock speeds would still be one of the key differentiators with the 576MHz core and 1.24GHz memory the same as for the version launched in the spring.
The performance difference would be slight but enough to increase speed by as much as 10 percent in some cases. Pricing is understood to allegedly change versus the current card, though it should also be close to the original's $299 and would potentially create problems for resellers carrying significant numbers of the older models.
An update reveals further problems at NVIDIA, which was forced into price drops to remain competitive with AMD and lately has had to foot costs for defective notebook graphics chipsets.
