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Palit GeForce GTS 250 2048MB review | test

Final8y

Final8y

Final8y

Soldato
Joined
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London, Ealing
The graphics industry certainly works in mysterious ways. Sometimes we see products released as a respin, a product that is altered, a little customized but in essence the same product as before. NVIDIA is a star when it comes to this. Last year they introduced the GeForce 9800 GTX+, an update from the standard 9800 GTX, yet now based on 55nm technology and slightly faster. It was NVIDIA's answer to ATIs Radeon 4850.

This week we are landing in March, it's CeBIT (exhibition) time and as such traditionally NVIDIA always releases new products. This year they have GeForce 3D Vision and their ION platform in the lineup, next to that .. a 'new' graphics card. Well, redesigned yes, not exactly new though. NVIDIA is respinning the GeForce 9800 GTX+, this card is now rebranded as GeForce GTS 250.

Though the board design itself definitely has changed, in essence the product is feature and performance wise 98% similar to that GeForce 9800 GTX+, even with the same clock speeds and 128 stream processors, the same 55nm G92b graphics processor. Its clock-speeds are 738/1836/1100 MHz (core/shader/memory), on par with reference 9800 GTX+ speeds. The card will have the same 512/1024 MB of GDDR3 memory and the very same 256-bit memory bus.

Why would this product be interesting then you ask ? Well, though I agree all this not as exciting as a new product release, there are a couple of pointers interesting. For example, a new PCB design, making the card smaller (9" in length). Lower power consumption, only need for one 6-pin power connector and most definitely interesting. NVIDIA lowered it's price significantly.

The GeForce GTS 250 will launch this March, with 512MB and 1GB models, at $129 and $149 respectively.

Of course we'll show you everything about it's performance in this review.

The GeForce GTS 250 will come in as standard at 512 MB and 1 GB configurations, partners will be free to use their own designs as well. Some partners have even been working on a 2 GB model. One such partner is Palit, and a couple of days ago we received such a customized version of the GeForce GTS 250, packed with a nice cooling design, small PCB and and alarmingly high 2048 MB of memory. All in all, these are plenty of new features to grant it a review alright, so let's start up the article, but not before we show you what we are reviewing today.
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http://www.guru3d.com/article/palit-geforce-gts-250-2048mb-review-test/

That 2GB of VRam may come in handy at least for the sake of textures if not res..
I would like to see 2GB per GPU on higher end cards.

More:
http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTS-250-Mainstream-GPU/
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=674
http://techreport.com/articles.x/16504
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gts-250,2172.html
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=725
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3523
http://techgage.com/article/evga_geforce_gts_250_superclocked/
 
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Its the pricing I find interesting, should be £90-£110 here. Thats a lot of card for that money. Then of course, vat etc, ends up £150 plus rip off Britain mark ups.:(
 
Simply put, Nvidia is sending out higher clocked GTS 250 cards to reviewers within the first week of launch, and is then sending out slower GTS 250 cards for the majority of sales from retailers like Newegg, NCIX, Micro Center, and other distributors.

Nvidia is suggesting that its board partners hide the existence of these higher clocked review cards by branding them as "overclocked" models to avoid market confusion. The note suggests that should partners wish to sell the slower cards with 1.0ns DDR3 modules (rated up to 1000MHz) prior to March 17th, the chips must be overclocked to at least 1100MHz, or the speed of the 0.8ns modules.

Moreover, it seems as if the company is concerned about its slower 9800GTX+ stock being rebranded to meet the specifications of the GTS 250. It needs to ensure it can fit cards with both fast and slow memory chips under one product name.
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http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12329&Itemid=1
 
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i can understand the reasoning behind this renaming, new shorter completely revised pcb requireing less power and costing less to make. and this on its own it wouldnt be too bad, of course where it all falls down is the fact that they have already renamed lots of products before this one including this same g92 gpu several times.

of course the plus point is the price, but we will have to see how cheap it equates too for us brits.
 
Anandtech review said:
Early last week Charlie over at The Inquirer posted a story saying that a number of reviewers were cut out of the GeForce GTS 250 launch. We felt a bit hurt, by the time the story launched we weren't even asked to be briefed about the GTS 250. Cards had already gone out to other reviewers but we weren't on any lists. Oh, pout.

Magically, a couple of days after Charlie's article we got invited to a NVIDIA briefing and we had a GTS 250 to test. Perhaps NVIDIA was simply uncharacteristically late in briefing us about a new GPU launch. Perhaps NVIDIA was afraid we'd point out that it was nothing more than a 9800 GTX+ that ran a little cooler. Or perhaps we haven't been positive enough about CUDA and PhysX and NVIDIA was trying to punish us.

Who knows what went on at NVIDIA prior to the launch, we're here to review the card, but for what it's worth - thank you Charlie :)
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The 1GB card now opens up a noticeable lead in most games against the HD4850 with more memory. But still lags behind the HD4870 which it will be directly against once AMD's price cuts come to fruition.
 
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bru said:
i can understand the reasoning behind this renaming, new shorter completely revised pcb requireing less power and costing less to make. and this on its own it wouldnt be too bad, of course where it all falls down is the fact that they have already renamed lots of products before this one including this same g92 gpu several times.

of course the plus point is the price, but we will have to see how cheap it equates too for us brits.
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Well, with this so called economic crysis, I don't think the price would drop much from the 9800GTX+'s current price. I just checked google, and usd to gbp is almost 1:1 :( It isn't looking good for britain.
 
doiks14 said:
Well, with this so called economic crysis, I don't think the price would drop much from the 9800GTX+'s current price. I just checked google, and usd to gbp is almost 1:1 :( It isn't looking good for britain.
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Pound is currently 1.40 dollars which by my reckoning is a long way from 1:1.
 
This is the Original write-up before it was taken down & rewritten.
Originally Posted by Anandtech
NVIDIA's take on this is also flawed in that it treats customers like idiots and underlines the fundamental issue we have. Do I need a card with a new name on it to believe that it is worthy of my purchase, or can I go read reviews comparing the hardware and learn for myself whether or not any card (regardless of the name) fills my need? Maybe this name change is for people who don't know anything about graphics hardware then. In that case the thing that "sells" the card is the simple fact that NVIDIA has convinced someone that this part is an affordable version of a card from their latest line of products. Saying they need a name change to maintain current naming is essentially admitting that the only reason the name needs to be changed is to mislead uninformed people.
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Originally Posted by Anandtech
They have also clearly told us that naming will no longer be attached to GPU architecture, but that vendors may somehow still indicate architecture on the box if they so choose. If nothing else, the feature list and specifications will be a guide.
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elpedro said:
Nice review, however without that additional RAM, the GTS 250 is no better off than a 9800GTX+ it would seem.
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Probably because the GTS 250 is a 9800GTX in sheeps clothing. Nvidia were asked by partners and customers to tidy up the brand so have renamed the 9800GTX to GTS 250 its the same card with just minor differences ie slight higher memory speed.

Bit cheeky, but hey they get away with it.
 
the 250 IS the 9800GTX. Simply Nvidia wanted to get all their cards under one series instead of spread over two (technically 3 if you take that 9series wasn't too big a step up from 8). Supposedly the spread was "confusing" people. Still, seems pointless with
3XX's in the comming year.
 
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