Graphics Wars Heat Up As Nvidia, AMD Launch Cards

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Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices released new graphics processors Monday as the two chip makers continued to compete on discrete graphics products while emerging as allies of a sort in promoting the possibilities of GPU computing in the face of CPU giant Intel's uncertain steps in that direction.

Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 200 series includes the GeForce GTX 280, available in quantity starting Tuesday for a suggested manufacturers' price of $649, and the GeForce GTX 260, available June 26 with a price tag of $399. The GTX 280, with 240 processors and a full gigabyte of frame buffer memory, is clearly Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia's latest edge-pushing high-end consumer card, while the 192-processor, 896MB GTX 260 has humbler specs, but not by much.

Up the road in Sunnyvale, Calif., AMD's latest pair of consumer cards from its ATI graphics division target a lower portion of the discrete market. The new ATI Radeon HD 4800 series will deliver a teraflop of graphics performance, according to Rick Bergman, GM of AMD's Graphics Products Group.

And the Radeon HD 4850, set for release June 25, will do it for less than $200, Bergman said. The second card announced Monday is the Radeon HD 4870. It's a bit more powerful and a bit more pricey at around $300 than the 4850, and isn't scheduled for availability until July 8.

"We've adopted a new model for this product and going forward," Bergman said, outlining what he described as an important shift in AMD's strategy for discrete graphics. "It's targeting the $200 to $300 part of the market because we think that's the meat of the market."

Of course, there will be a third card in the 4800 series aimed at the $500-range "ultra enthusiast" segment. That product is still going by its code name at AMD, R700, and should be ready sometime in August. Until the R700 gets an actual name and slot in enthusiast systems, AMD and Nvidia won't be competing head-to-head on price with their latest product lines.

Still, that seems to be largely immaterial in the hyper-competitive world of discrete graphics and each chip maker was touting the alleged technological superiority of its own products in the run-up to Monday's launch announcements. Even as AMD pointed to its leadership on DirectX 10.1 support, 55nm process technology and GDDR5 memory, Nvidia touted its tripling of threads in flight over its GeForce 8 and 9 series architectures.

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