NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 Mainstream GPU

NVIDIA's is hoping that the GTS and GTX monikers, will ultimately help consumers make easier buying decisions. As it stands today, it can sometimes be confusing when a graphics card has a higher model number, yet a lower price, and usually lower performance. For example, some less informed consumers may think a 9600 GT is a higher-end card than an 8800 GTS or GTX, when it is not. So what NVIDIA wants to do moving forward is use a label to designate a performance segment--in this case GeForce GTX or GeForce GTS--in conjunction with a model number. Cards in the GTX family will offer higher performance than cards in the GTS family, regardless of the model number. NVIDIA used the automobile industry as an example--few ever think a 5-series Bimmer is a lower-end model than 3-series. Think of the GTX as a 5-series and the GTS as the 3-series.

Although it is based on an existing GPU, NVIDIA has done some optimizing to differentiate the GeForce GTS 250, somewhat. The card you see pictured here is an early sample of EVGA's GeForce GTS 250 Superclocked edition. It is representative of a retail product for the most part, except for two things; retail-ready cards will have a dark colored PCB (not green) and they will have HDTV out. The card pictured here does not.

You'll notice in the pictures above, that the GeForce GTS 250 has a much short PCB than the GeForce 9800 GTX+, 9" versus 10.5" to be exact. It also has a new cooler, and required only one PCI Express 6-pin power connector. Changes to the board design have also resulted in lower power consumption (150 watt TDP), hence the ability to eliminate one of the connectors.

Reference GeForce GTX 250 cards call for a 738MHz GPU clock, with 1836MHz shaders, and 1100MHz (2200MHz DDR) memory. Also cards feature a 256-bit memory interface, with 128 processor cores, 16 ROP units, and 64 texture filtering units. The EVGA offering you see here, however, is overclocked at the factory to 770MHz, 1840MHz, and 1123MHz (2246MHz DDR), for its GPU, shaders, and memory respectively. This specific card also sports a full 1GB frame buffer, but 512MB versions will be offered at a lower price point as well.

EVGA includes only a basic bundle with the GeForce GTS 250 Superclocked edition. Along with the card, we found a driver CD, which also contained a copy of EVGA excellent Precision overclocking utility, a dual 4-pin Molex to 6-pin PCI Express power connector, and a DVI-to-VGA adapter. And that's about it. Clearly this cards is targeted at budget conscious consumers, as is evident by its basic bundle.