As time marches on, Nvidia has gone from an extremely confusing line-up just a few short months ago to one that is quite a bit more streamlined. Within this same timeframe there have been a number of new cards released from both Nvidia and ATI which have hit at different portions of the market. If you take a step back and look at what has happened since the release of ATI’s R770-based HD 4870 and HD 4850, Nvidia’s role has shifted from taking and keeping the performance lead to desperately trying to react against unforeseen competition. The problem for Nvidia was that both of ATI’s new cards hit straight into price / performance categories where Nvidia didn’t have much to answer with. To partially rectify this situation, Nvidia’s partners introduced the 9800 GTX+ to compete with the HD 4850 and after a short delay, showed us what their competitor to the HD 4870 looked like with the GTX 260 with 216 Stream Processors.
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Review: Hardware Canucks
