NVIDIA is certainly not the one to stand arms crossed as its competitor AMD can still claim the number one spot in the high-performance graphics card market segment. After the recent series of rumors on the new 55nm, dual-GPU-based GTX295, which the green company is expected to unveil in early 2009, it appears that several details have emerged on the upcoming single-GPU flagship card, dubbed GTX285. Basically, the new card is going to build on the current highest performance offering from NVIDIA, the GTX 280, but provide a significant boost in performance, while still keeping the same dual-slot design.
As with the dual-GPU GTX295, the upcoming GTX285 is based on a 55nm graphics processor. This translates into a lower power consumption and more room for the much needed performance boost. According to a recent article on Expreview, the 55nm GTX285 can actually be considered a GTX280 Overclocking Edition, as it will be bring about a 110% boost in performance over the GTX280. However, at this time, detailson the card's core frequency are not available, but according to Expreview, the GTX285 will come with 1GB of GDDR3 and 240 stream processors.
In addition to higher performance, the GTX285 is also said to provide a much better power consumption rate, which has been reduced to 183W from 236W on the GTX280. Also, the GTX285 boasts just two 6-pin PEG power connectors, whereas the current GTX280 requires both 6-pin and the 8-pin PEG power connectors.
Given the available info on the GTX285, it is generally believed that NVIDIA is on the verge of claiming the number one spot in the high-performance single-GPU graphics department. However, rival AMD and its graphics subsidiary, ATI, are also expected to come out with an improved version of the current RV770 GPU, which will be dubbed RV775XT. A card based on this graphics processor should basically compete with NVIDIA's updated offer in the high-performance single-GPU graphics card market.