New X800 GTO competitorNvidia today announced their latest graphics chip designed to go head to head with ATI's X800 GTO and upcomimg X1600 XT. The new card is slotted in between the vanilla 6800 and the 6800 GT with an MSRP of $249. Some e-stores have the cards in stock, and the EVGA version of the card is already selling for $229 at both Monarch Computer and M Wave.
The card ships with a 425 MHz core clock and 1000 MHz on the 256 bit interface GDDR3 memory, though the card comes with only 12 pipes and 5 vertex shaders. We will have to wait to see whether options for unlocking more pipes and such come up ala the X800 GTO2 although we suspect that these are not surplus cores in the same vein as what ATI have been doing.
The new cards are SLI ready, and although this is nice, being that this is the end of the product cycle for 6 series cards, it would be much more handy for 6800 GT owners if the two slightly different cards were compatible in SLI. There is already a large installed base of users running 6800 GT cards, and although the mechanics of it might be tricky, it would have been nice if Nvidia had worked on some form of compatibility between the two.
Either way, Nvidia has a definite winner on their hands with this card. The price/performance ratio is great, and it's only going to get better with time, in the same fashion as the X800 GTO cards from ATI have. Both of these cards will undoubtedly beat the X1600 XT in most benchmarks due to their 256 bit memory interfaces, and either would be a good choice for anyone looking to upgrade to PCI Express for a minimal wallet hit.
Although ATI is offering a 'next-gen' mid range card for the holiday season, it's performance is seriously lacking and availability so far is nil, meaning that it will be variations on last years tech (which is still very capable mind you) that will be duking it out for a spot under the tree this christmas.
