14 DAY TRIAL // Only a few weeks ago, the green graphics card manufacturer NVIDIA released an improved version of its GeForce GTX 260 high-end graphics processing unit (GPU). The move was supposed to provide a better product compared to some graphics solutions offered by the company's Arch-rival ATI, the graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices. Although the new GPU was said to bring a lot of advantages over the old version, many leading-edge graphics card makers decided it could wait for a while.
The Santa Clara based graphics chip manufacturer upgraded its GeForce GTX 260 graphics card by increasing the number of stream processors form 192 to 216 on the new board. The new version brought performance increases and it was expected to become a competitive solution for ATI's Radeon 4870 cards which began invading the higher-end market. The new 260 model even had the same price as the less powerful 192 stream processors version, $299 a card, and this was supposed to ensure a better market penetration.
NVIDIA's attempt proved to be unsuccessful after all, as some of the largest suppliers of GeForce based cards like Asustek Computer, Gainward, MicroStar International or Leadtek Research seem to have delayed the adoption of the so-called GeForce GTX 260-216 card.
The reason is a simple one. Many vendors still have lots of GeForce GTX 260-192 graphics cards in stock and would rather get rid of those first. Since NVIDIA advertised aggressively its GeForce brand as well as the new GeForce GTX 200-series graphics cards lately, vendors would have many cards in stock for sure. The green company has been pushing older cards towards its partners and into the channel as well.
Also, there seems to be a second reason for the low popularity of the new card, namely the fact that it brings only a small computing power improvement. GTX 260-216 comes only with an increased number of stream processors, while other fixed-function execution units and the 448-bit memory bus are the same as the predecessor. Given the fact that there is only little improvement in performance, the demand towards the new GeForce GTX 260-216 is low as well.
The ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 graphics cards are still seen by many vendors as being very popular, although NVIDIA revealed the improved version of GTX 260, so the transition to the new flavor of the card is going to be a slow one. Even so, it will happen at some point, and it remains to see how ATI will react to it.