Final thoughts: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
The latest mid-range graphics-card updates from NVIDIA and ATI are based on proven technology that's been around for a while now. This news will come as a disappointment to folk who were envisaging brand-new architectures for Q2 2009. GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890 are clear derivations of existing designs, albeit manufactured to compete in the £200/$250+ space.In spite of the ever-dwindling value of the pound, recent price-cutting from both companies has meant that quality mid-range parts such as the GeForce GTX 260 896MB and Radeon HD 4870 1,024MB are now available from around £150, so following on from them becomes an intrinsically difficult task.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
NVIDIA's method of designing a £200 (at etail) graphics card has been to harvest the next architectures up, GTX 295 and GTX 285, and to release a GPU that's a bit of both - and some 15-20 per cent faster than incumbent GeForce GTX 260. The sharp pricing has significant ramifications for the GeForce GTX 285 in particular, because why would you pay £300 for a card that's barely any quicker than the new GTX 275? We'll let NVIDIA and its partners indulge in some 'price realignment' before passing final judgement on that.
Due to its obvious lineage, GeForce GTX 275 is a quality graphics card, starting at £199, that should see gamers sated when running at either 1,680x1,050 and 1,920x1,200 resolutions, along with decent eye candy: an average 60fps should be possible with most gaming titles. Whilst the HEXUS.bang4buck isn't quite as good as the price-chopped GTX 260's, spending an extra ~£50 does bring tangible performance benefits.
NVIDIA, too, has been labouring the whole GPGPU message for a while, proclaiming that its cards do more than paint pretty-looking pixels. That's becoming more justifiable month on month as PhysX and the whole CUDA environment begins to gain traction. So whilst there have been no leaps in architecture over the past nine months, the £199 GeForce GTX 275's overall proposition is still compelling enough to make it worthy of serious consideration. Will it be eroded with the announcement that Havok is offering GPU-accelerated physics - Cloth, to be exact - via 'open' OpenCL? Only time will tell.
This portion of the conclusion is based on the GPU itself and it doesn't take into account availability, which looking at day-zero shows GeForce GTX 275s to be, in the main, available as pre-order only.
