|
|
Nvidia cuts price of 216 SP GeForce GTX 260
Pick up a Crysis-beating graphics card for under £200
In a bid to compete with the threat of ATI’s Radeon HD 4870, Nvidia has informed us that it’s now cut the price of its GeForce GTX 260 GPUs with 216 stream processors.
Accordingly, an 896MB Palit card with the standard clock speeds can now be had for £193.01 inc VAT from Scan, while the cheapest 1GB Radeon HD 4870 card from the same retailer costs £211.44, and the cheapest 512MB 4870 costs £190.34. As a point of comparison, when the new GPU launched in September, the cheapest GTX 260 with 216 stream processors at Scan cost £281.81, so that’s a pretty substantial drop in a couple of months. We’re hoping that other retailers will shortly follow suit.
When we first tested the GTX 260 with 216 stream processors in September, we found that it was particularly quick in Crysis, in which it still managed to produce a minimum frame rate of 28fps at 1,680 x 1,050 with 2x AA, although a 512MB Radeon HD 4870 proved quicker than the new GTX 260 in all our other game tests. That said, both Nvidia and ATI have released several driver updates since then, and the performance difference may have accordingly changed. We're currently testing both GPUs with the latest drivers for an upcoming graphics card group test in Issue 65 of Custom PC.
Still, it’s good to see Nvidia dropping the prices of its new GPUs, and £193.01 is a reasonable deal if you want the quickest Crysis frame rate for under £200. Would you be interested in a GeForce GTX 260 with 216 stream processors at this price, or is ATI winning the circa-£200 battle at the moment? Let us know your thoughts.
Reddit | Technorati
fitted a palit HD4870 1gb dual bios to replace my 8800gt and had nothing but trouble from it black flickering squares in game and ATIkmdag display failures cheaper is not allways better, going back to nvidia from now on and the ATI has rma'd
Comment by rembrandt8 at 6:23pm 9th January 2009
Vulcanproject, stop repeatedly posting the same nvidia fanboy twoddle and forcing your opinions on everyone else, let them make up their own minds from the benchmarks and the fact that seeing as the nvidia card has just dropped, it's inevitable that ati will be dropping their prices pretty soon as well. I'm reckoning we'll see the 4870 at under £150 pretty sharpish.
Comment by thom804 at 6:12pm 29th December 2008
the 4870 at pc world today [in store] was £180 which was great i thought and they were asking £150 for the 4850.Only wish they were in stock last week when i got 2 x BFG 8800GT Thermo-Inteligence GeForce 8800GT OCX.Still these card's have to be the fastest 8800GT at 700/1000/1728 stock.Thought they would've been reviewed in the magazine though...
Comment by BLAKIE33 at 9:39pm 24th November 2008
nvidias new drivers puts this card over the top of the 1GB 4870 in many big games and new releases. its reduced price and the fact its now faster in most big titles this year is why people would buy it over the 4870.......
Comment by vulcanproject at 7:01pm 23rd November 2008
I have been using ATI in the past but switched to Nvidia this year for other reasons than just raw performance. As long as the cards provide similar performance at a similar price - and I do not mind differences of say up to 15% - do I rather go with Nvidia. AMD/ATI's regular driver updates do not compensate for the amount of bugs these have introduced, or just have failed to fix. I ended up with a lot of buggy drivers and it made it worse for me. They need to provide better drivers before I consider buying them again, and so far have I not been disappointed by Nvidia.
Comment by sdack at 11:45am 23rd November 2008
One thing that should sway people Nvidia's way is the fact that the 4870 uses more power at idle than a GTX 280 and more power at load than a GTX 260, so whilst the 4870 is cheaper to buy, you pay for it in your bills.
Comment by gavomatic57 at 10:04pm 22nd November 2008
Pixmania are selling the standard 4870 for £163.90 I was lucky enough, just the other week to buy the 4870 toxic for £168 with a discount voucher. 3D Mark Vantage 3870 Toxic - GPU 9317 260 216 - GPU 9240 Not much in it, both good cards.
Comment by saltyzip at 8:22am 22nd November 2008
The reason i would get this card is for folding only bacuse the points per day is huge compared.And of course for game's too,But the 4870 is a great card also for games to they level there selve's out only the ATI card is cheaper.
Comment by BLAKIE33 at 9:44am 20th November 2008
My 1GB HD4870 was £189.99 from ebuyer. Doing price comparisons for different manufacturers' kit at one store only is, imho, pointless.
Comment by Xonerater at 8:22pm 19th November 2008
the gap is so close between the cards in most games, its academic what card you choose. so the radeon wins by two frames, getting 89 frames instead of 87 in one game. or it wins by one frame in another game. wow yes, its faster and you cant even tell when you play the game. except in crysis you can. the radeon is so much slower in that game crysis is far better playable on nvidia hardware than ATI hardware. so you can buy the radeon and then boast about how its two frames faster- two frames you cant even see because both cards are plenty fast. or you can buy the geforce and make a game playable that simply isnt playable on the ATI. like i said all along, i would much rather have a card that can run every game at 40 frames than a card that runs one game at 60 frames and another at 20. this is just my opinion.
Comment by vulcanproject at 5:34pm 19th November 2008
This is super news for consumers, shame we don't have any proper competition forcing prices down in the CPU market as well.
Comment by drhorse at 5:12pm 19th November 2008
If the ATI card is quicker overall why go for something else? Yes the 260 might be quicker in Crysis buts that's one game and it's sponsored by the green team TWIMTBP so would expect a twee bit more out of their cards in that one game.
Comment by steeli at 5:01pm 19th November 2008
Fair point. It makes sense to compare from the same seller I just thought it may be good to give one of the other e-tailers prices on the 4870 to give a balance on the potential differential. ATi still seem to edge it on the pricing, I thought nVidia may have been even more aggressive.
Comment by adidan at 4:31pm 19th November 2008
Take your point, but we chose to concentrate on Scan because it had implemented the new Nvidia pricing, so it represents a fair comparison of the prices across one retailer and its mark-up strategy. If we'd compared the Scan GTX 260 price with the eBuyer Radeon HD 4870 price (or that of any other cheaper retailers) then it would only show the difference between retailer markups, rather than the price-difference between Nvidia and ATI cards.
Comment by hardwidge at 4:23pm 19th November 2008
the radeon is good value, but in the most demanding games, the geforce is faster. notably crysis. its a tough choice, because the geforce is so much better in crysis and crysis warhead, while its not really much slower than then 4870 in everything else where it matters. in reality the geforce delivers more consistantly playable framerates, whereas the radeons fall apart on the most demanding of all. so i can see why people would choose the geforce, and why some would pick the raeon.
Comment by vulcanproject at 4:24pm 19th November 2008
Considering this only came on the site today I'm surprised you didn't take a quick look at ebuyer where you can buy a Sapphire 4870 for £174.54 at this moment in time.
Comment by adidan at 4:20pm 19th November 2008
Considering this only came on the site today I'm surprised you didn't take a quick look at ebuyer where you can buy a Sapphire 4870 for £174.54 at this moment in time.
Comment by adidan at 4:20pm 19th November 2008
Although I prefer Nvidia in general (especially with the introduction of Fizz-X), I wouldn't go for a 260. For me it would have to be 280 or 4870. I'd wait for a 55nm version of the 280. Hopefully Nvidia will price it below £600.
Comment by feathers633 at 4:17pm 19th November 2008
Make a Comment
- One top four motherboard maker will die, says MSI
- AMD plans supercomputer with 1,000 GPUs
- Nvidia announces GeForce GTX 285
- Creative takes wraps off Zii processor architecture
- Nvidia announces stereoscopic 3D glasses
- BFG unveils hand built Phobos gaming PCs
- UPDATED: LiveJournal announces mass layoffs
- Top 10 PC games chart
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 gets 500GB on single platter
- Creative reveals new Zii processor
These are the most popular news articles over the past seven days.
- Phenom II overclocked to 6GHz
- GeIL unveils Cyclone RAM cooler
- Rumour control: GeForce GTX 260 GX2 in January
- Nvidia cuts price of 216 SP GeForce GTX 260
- VIDEO: PC version of Mirror’s Edge features hardware PhysX
- Get Half-Life for less than a dollar on Steam
- IBM plans to build virtual human brain
- RivaTuner 2.20 adds SLI and CrossFire support
- VIDEO: ArmA II trailer released
Mobile Broadband
Fastest, cheapest 3G mobile broadband dongles from 3, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange
from just £10/month
