Jon Peddie Research - a technically oriented marketing, research, and management consulting firm in the graphics industry.

Nvidia’s GeForce GTS 250

Posted by Robert Dow and Alex Garovi on March 3rd 2009 | Comments Closed
Categories: Hardware Review
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Nvidia’s new old GeForce GTZ250.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

Figure 2: GTS 250 benchmark scores.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

Nvidia’s “new” AIB isn’t new at all; it’s the branding and marketing effort that is getting the true overhaul. It’s not the fastest card in the world, but it’s got style, vive and brand—who needs anything else?

The GTS 250 is a reintroduction of our old friend the G92 first introduced in the 8800 series back in Q4 2007—it was then shrunk from a 65NM to a 55NM part and rolled out as the 9800 GTX+. The GTS 250 has virtually the same specs as its G92 predecessors—738 MHz core, 1100 MHz memory clock—however, the GTS 250 will have 1GB of on-board memory. The earlier versions had 512MB. Also, it has one single 6-pin power connector as oppose to two on the 9800 GTX+ and the board itself has been shrunk from 10 to 9 inches.

Nvidia, a bit on the defensive from some critical web articles, was quick to point out that they are not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes with this reintroduction but rather it’s an effort to clarify the branding between Enthusiast and Performance segments. In future series releases, Enthusiast boards will be branded with the GTX moniker reserving GTS for the Performance AIBs. Decoder rings will be sent to the press and key OEMs later in the year.

Nvidia says it was been getting reports from retail vendors that consumers were confused with not only the numbering series (9800, 8800, 280, 260 etc...) but the Prefixes and suffices (GTX, GTS, GTX+), and so on. Nvidia also got complaints from analysts and the press, but since they don’t buy anything, they were easily and quickly ignored. The new branding will hopefully address most branding/marketing concerns.

We were lucky enough to get our hands on one of the first “new” boards from our friends at EVGA. We couldn’t get two, so there’s no SLI scores in this report, but we were told by Ujesh Desai, Nvidia’s AIB boss, that this puppy will run triple SLI.

EVGA’s version of the GTS 250 is over-clocked by 32 MHz to 770 MHz and includes EVGA’s respected Precision “advanced graphics tuning” software, which makes it easy for the laymen to over-clock the GPU. As stated above, EVGA turned up the clock up by 32MHz using Precision and we were able to roll core speed up to 801 MHz which equates to a 200-point increase on average on our PC Mark Vantage scores and roughly a 2 FPS difference on Crysis Warhead.

In comparing the GTX 250 over-clocked to its predecessor the 9800+ we recorded a 500-point advantage for the GTS 250 at 2650x1600 No AA in PC Mark Vantage. The Precision software also keeps tabs on your GPU temperature. Under stress, at default settings, the GPU was running at 65 degrees Celsius—which is pretty damn hot. Fortunately it was a cool day and since Jon never lets us turn on the heat in the lab, the card didn’t melt.

The GTS 250 is 3-way SLI capable. Although there does seem to be a decreased demand for SLI, given economic pressures and the fact that most high-end enthusiast boards run current games smoothly enough in 1900x1200 without SLI. However, Nvidia expects SLI to become more important next year when games start to take more advantage of Physics functions. Nvidia expects to see hardcore games use SLI, dedicating one GPU specifically to physics.

Stereo

We hooked the AIB up to the Samsung 100 Hz monitor and ran some games in Stereo to see how it felt compared to what we’d seen with the GF 295 and other Nvidia AIBs. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get it to run, the drivers are just too new. We’ll take another run at this feature when the drivers catch up.

The GTS 250 will run between $149 and $129 and is set for a hard launch on March 10th.

What do we think?

Well, we have seen this board before and have been running benchmarks on the G92 for over 13 months now—it has always been a solid mid-range offering. The size of the board and switch to a 6-pin power connector will make the AIB more attractive to some consumers, no doubt. We hope that Nvidia will stick to their commitment to make segment branding more clear with the GTX and GTS monikers. This will go a long way to easing the product confusion for the masses (and us as well).

We really enjoy EVGA’s Precision “advanced graphics tuning” software that makes it simple to over-clock your GPU and keeps tabs on the temperature.