NVIDIA quickly realized that it would need a new card to counter AMD’s coming Radeon HD 4890. AMD looked to target the performance space between GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 285 so NVIDIA presented a design proposal to partners, GeForce GTX 275. There won’t be any reference cards of GTX 275 as far as we’ve been told, but instead graphics card manufacturers get to license the chip and make their own GeForce GTX 275 cards.
Various rumors about the specifications of GTX 275 have been going around and the latest indicate that the card has more in common with big brother GTX 285 than many had hoped.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 vs. GTX 285 | ||
| GeForce GTX 275 | GeForce GTX 285 |
GPU | GT200 | GT200 |
Shader processors: | 240 | 240 |
Memory bus: | 448-bit | 512-bit |
Memory buffer: | 896MB GDDR3 | 1024MB GDDR3 |
GPU frequency: | 633MHz | 648MHz |
Shader frequency: | 1404MHz | 1476MHz |
Memory frequency: | 1161MHz | 1242MHz |
The graphics circuit used by GeForce GTX 275 will sport 240 stream processors, just like GTX 285, but the memory bus has been reduced to 448-bit from 512-bit. Other than that there is a small difference in clock frequency to keep the cards apart on the market.
There is plenty of room in the price segment between GTX 260 and GTX 285, no doubt about that. Now they just have to find the right level of performance for GeForce GTX 275 so they don’t outmaneuver their own GTX 285.