Final thoughts and rating
Cutting to the chase, NVIDIA's GeForce GTS 250 graphics card will be the mainstay in the mid-range space for a large portion of 2009. The nomenclature would indicate that it's a cut-down version of the current GTX 200-series range, but, in fact, it's based almost entirely on the GeForce 9800 GTX+ that has already been around for nine months and is in turn based on GeForce 8800 GT, launched almost 18 months ago.Talking specifics, the GeForce GTS 250 512MB is the GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB by another name, save for a few pragmatic changes relating to PCB design. NVIDIA's partners should bring in the 'new' card at around £15 lower than what we have now, leading to a street price of £99 for basic models.
NVIDIA, too, has now brought the GTS 250 1GB to market, without partners having to do the design legwork, and it should come in at some £125, but keeps frequencies the same as the 512MB model. Looking across to ATI's current stack, the GTS 250 512MB should line up against the very cheapest HD 4850s and the 1GB model against, well, the 1GB variants. Partner pre-overclocked models, much like eVGA Superclocked, should come in at just below the price of the cheapest Radeon HD 4870 512MBs, as well.
Our benchmarks highlight that NVIDIA's got its pricing just about right with the GeForce GTS 250, in both variants, and the entire range is backed up by the CUDA and Graphics Plus ecosystem that's made decent strides in the last year.
Overall, though, we're quite miffed that NVIDIA's chosen to re-brand an older card - GeForce 9800 GTX+ - as its standard-bearer for the mid-range through much of 2009, because that's what the GTS 250 is. There's no really new architecture here, and all the non-hardware improvements such as CUDA-driven apps apply to the older cards too. The technology enthusiast in us would have much preferred a cut-down version of the GTX 260, for better performance, but NVIDIA's chosen to drop price instead of really innovate.
You can make any technology attractive enough if the price is cut on a regular basis, and a £99 GeForce GTS 250 512MB is attractive. But how soon will it be until we see the real GeForce GTS 250, based on the better architecture?
Pros
NVIDIA boosts performance a touch in the £100-£150 space
CUDA and Graphics Plus offer compelling reasons to go for NVIDIA products
Power-consumption figures have improved over previous generation cards
Cons
No really new hardware innovation
Nothing much more than a rebranded GeForce 9800 GTX
ATI's strong presence in the mid-range space continues to be a thorn in NVIDIA's side
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS.net scores products out of 100%, taking into account technology, implementation, stability, performance, value, customer care and desirability. A score for an average-rated product is a meaningful ‘50%’, and not ‘90%’, which is common practice for a great many other publications.
We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
The rating is given in relation to the category the component competes in, therefore the card is evaluated with respect to our 'mid-range components' criteria.
eVGA GeForce GTS 250 Superclocked 1GB
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