Nvidia cuts price of 216 SP GeForce GTX 260

Posted at: 4:11pm 19th November 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

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.