NVIDIA debuts GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 graphics card
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/394480802/
NVIDIA has already slashed the price of its GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 graphics cards in order to better compete with AMD's bang-for-the-buck-beating ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 cards, and it's now taken things one step further by introducing a new, slightly improved model. While it likely won't cause anyone to ditch their existing GTX 260, NVIDIA is betting that the 216 stream processors of its new GTX 260 Core 216 (up from 192 before) will be enough to win over at least a few new performance-happy gamers. Apart from that upgrade, it seems the only other real improvement you can expect is a boost to 72 texture filtering units (up from 64), but HotHardware found that those tweaks were just enough to deliver some fairly substantial performance gains, with the GTX 260 Core 216 outpacing the Radeon HD 4870 in the "vast majority" of its tests. Best of all, the Core 216 will also apparently work just fine in an SLI configuration with an original GTX 260 and, at an MSRP of $279, it doesn't demand too much of a premium either.