Nvidia launches new high-end graphics cards

 

Gallery

By Darien Graham-Smith

Posted on 16 Jun 2008 at 13:54

Nvidia has formally launched its two new enthusiast graphics cards. The GeForce GTX 260 and GeForce GTX 280 extend the company's range upwards, delivering the highest ever levels of performance in a consumer-oriented single-ASIC package.

The top-end GTX 280 boasts 240 stream shaders, clocked at 602MHz, and 1GB of 2.2GHz GDDR3 RAM. The lesser GTX 260 reduces the shader count to 192, and runs them a little more slowly, at 576MHz. Onboard RAM is slightly reduced too, going down to 896MB clocked at 2.0GHz.

Click here for a full review of the GeForce GTX 280.

The new cards don't come cheap, however: the GTX 260 will retail for around £230 exc VAT, while the GTX 280 launches at a monster £365.

Though the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 raise the performance bar in many applications, it's an open secret that graphics rival AMD - owner of the ATI brand - is putting the finishing touches to its new Radeon HD 4000 series that will compete directly with the new Nvidia cards.

AMD hopes to unseat Nvidia's offerings with a smaller fabrication process, GDDR5 RAM and - since the two firms joined forces last week - support for Havok physics APIs. Look out for a full review as soon as samples are available.