Asus this week broke NDA with Nvidia and accidentally leaked details of the upcoming GeForce GTS 250 based cards. Although the original press release was removed just several before time of writing, we were able to save details of the release.
Technically, the new GeForce GTS 250s don't bring anything new to the table, since they're simply a relaunch and re-brand of Nvidia's venerable GTX 9800+ which again, was a die shrink of the GTX 9800. The point of the new card is to realign the 9800+ into Nvidia's current naming convention, so that customers clearly see where the card is positioned relative to the current GTX 2XX series.
One of Nvidia partner's informed us that the GTS 250 also gives way to a price drop--how much of a price drop, we don't know. Newegg is offering discounts on the GTX 9800+ cards, with an average price of roughly $149.99, so we can expect the GTS 250 to be in that range.
Despite the vague prices, Asus is launching its GTS 250 line up with no less than five flavors of the GTS 250, with the top one being called the ENGT250 DK TOP/HTDI/512MD3. However, Asus claims that its offering leaps ahead of other cards by 20-percent. We can't confirm these numbers yet, but Asus says its ENGT250 DK TOP/HTDI/512MD3 has overclocked core, shader, and memory speeds of 775 MHz, 1950 MHz and 2.36 GHz respectively. These are up from 738 MHz, 1836 MHz and 1.18 GHz reference speeds. Asus is also offering a board with 1 GB of memory, but doesn't come with the same speed increases.
All five boards are based on the Dark Knight theme, which is relatively old at this point. Ironically, the theme has nothing to do with the Dark Knight movie, but Asus is betting on the namesake to boost sales. Asus will also offer games a discount coupon, valued at $25 or up to 10-percent off a selection of games--300 titles are available to choose from says Asus. Asus says games such as Fallout 3, Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty: World at War are part of the selection.
No final pricing or availability dates are available at this present time. Last we checked, the original press release was no longer available on Asus' website, but should reappear again.
Update: We mistakenly wrote the GTS 250 as GTX 250. It's now been fixed. Thanks for the quick feedback guys.
