March 13th, 2009
NVIDIA cancels plans for GeForce GTS 240 graphics card
NVIDIA will not be going ahead with its controversial GTS 240 rebranding of the GeForce 9800 GT graphics card, reports DailyTech.
Instead, NVIDIA is telling customers to focus on the three cards using the 9800 GT name: the standard version, a reduced power version and the 9800 GT OC version.
The graphics chip manufacturer has been under pressure from frustrated GPU board partners after it decided to rename its product line. The company originally wanted to “ease confusion” among its products by renaming many of its graphics cards; in practice, the move has only added to the confusion.
The card in question, the 9800 GT, has actually already been renamed once: it was formerly the successful 8800 GT card.
The original 65nm 9800 GT used the same original G92 chip as the 8800 GT and had the exact same specifications. A new 55nm die created the G92b chip, which NVIDIA used in both the 9800GT as well in the 9800 GTX+, also a renamed card.
The 9800 GTX+ has been rebranded as the GTS 250 in a last ditch effort to compete with the ATI Radeon 4850, DailyTech writes. Moreover, AMD’s graphics arm has been leveraging very high yields and small die sizes to lower its prices very aggressively, DailyTech writes — forcing a race to the bottom (of prices, of profits) with NVIDIA.
What’s more, AMD’s ATI is preparing to introduce 40nm desktop GPUs for likely low prices.
Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet.
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