There is another card that is almost as good as the GTS260M,
The GeForce GTS 250M
8 cores at 500MHz GT215 (40nm), 1024MB GDDR5, 96 shaders at 1250MHz, 360 GFlops, 28W TDP.
Basically its the same card, just clocked lower.

Thanks again for the helpful explaination. One more question concerning notebook versions:
What are the differences between GTS 260M and GTS 360M? Just the slighty higher clocked shaders in the 360M?
I cannot find any further differences here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_NVIDIA_Graphics_Processing_Units#GeForce_300M_.283xxM.29_series (scroll up tp see the GTS260 data).
The NVIDIA Spec pages also do not show any further differences:
GTS 260M:
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/product_geforce_gts_260m_uk.html
GTS 360M:
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/product_geforce_gts_360m_uk.html

:-/

YES, the only difference is the slightly faster clocks:
GTS360M GT215 40nm 550MHz GPU, 1436MHz shaders, 3600MHz RAM, 413 NVidia GFlops
GTS260M GT215 40nm 550MHz GPU, 1375MHz shaders, 3600MHz RAM, 413 NVidia GFlops

Basically the 300 series cards are rebranded 200 series cards. There are some dubious naming differences here and there; things to watch out for.

The NVidia site does not give much info!
Your wiki link shows the shear number of yesteryear cards they rebrand and re-release.

... interesting way to make the customers believe that there were any new products on the table.
Thanks again, skgiven :-)

Yeah, it's gotten kind of disgusting. Every couple of months they take the same cards and give it a new name with a higher number to make them appear better. OK, that's a little exaggerated, but not that far from the truth either..

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

What bugs me even more is that NVidia’s own specification pages don’t even tell you the core type!

Instead you get fobbed off with false technical waffle such as "Vibrant Multimedia"

It's as well the specs can be found on wiki - otherwise buying NVidia cards would be a lucky dip.

Makes you wonder what's more vibrant: 16 or 32 shaders? :p

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

There are useless ways of rebranding, playing word games, & setting the clocks slightly higher or slightly lower. But Nvidia spends more money on software, so why not do something useful with that?

There must be some way fx of reprogramming that 3D vision to also support dual view. Then 2 different people can use the same screen at the same time w/o using half the screen. Just use two shutter shades, half the refresh rate, two keyboards & mice. Heck, if Philips, Samsung, Sony, etc want to add an extra bundle with their 3D, all it takes is 2 headphones to have two people watch two different channels.

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LOL! Now that's creative. At my work we're mostly using 2 19" screens per person.. mainly because we have them anyway and this gives more useable space than buying a new one. Having 2 people share a monitor would make work a little more.. intimate.

BTW: you'd also want to make sure you're running at least 120 Hz. Splitting 60 Hz would be quite unpleasant ;)

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

A comparative look at some of the Fermi cards and G200 cards

The following GeForce cards are the present mainstream choice, with reference clocks,

GT 220 GT216 40nm Compute Capable 1.2 128 BoincGFlops peak
GT 240 GT215 40nm Compute Capable 1.2 257 BoincGFlops peak
GTX 260 GT200b 55nm Compute Capable 1.3 596 BoincGFlops peak (sp216)
GTX 275 GT200b 55nm Compute Capable 1.3 674 BoincGFlops peak
GTX 285 GT200b 55nm Compute Capable 1.3 695 BoincGFlops peak
GTX 295 GT200b 55nm Compute Capable 1.3 1192 BoincGFlops peak
GTX 480 GF100 40nm Compute Capable 2.0 1345 BoincGFlops peak
GTX 470 GF100 40nm Compute Capable 2.0 1089 BoincGFlops peak
GTX 465 GF100 40nm Compute Capable 2.0 855 BoincGFlops peak

Two new cards will work here soon,
-edit; working now, but not fully optimized just yet.

GTX 460 GF104 40nm Compute Capable 2.1 907 BoincGFlops peak (768MB)
GTX 460 GF104 40nm Compute Capable 2.1 907 BoincGFlops peak (1GB)

Values are approximate, and unconfirmed here. There will be a large performcne variety of GTX 460 cards, as many do not follow reference design!

It is expected that a GTX 475 following the above GF104 architecture will be released in the Autumn - it should have a full complement of 384shaders and use all 8 GPU cores.

Also expected is the release of several so-called ‘low end’ Fermi’s:
In August two cards are expected based on GF106 architecture (GTS450 and possibly GTS455).
Then in September a GF108 cards is due out.
The GF106 and GF108 will bring DX11 and Fermi architecture to mid/low end cards.

People might want to note that the scarse 1GB version of the GTX 460 are about 10% faster than the 768MB version, going by recent Betas.

Relative to CC2.0 and CC1.3 cards and compared to their Compute Capability and reference GFlops peak, the GTX460 cards (CC2.1) are presently underperforming by approximately 1/3rd. This will likely change in the next few months with new drivers and app refinements. So this ball park correction factor is temporary.

Boinc GFLOPS ???

I don'tknow where to find this.
Boinc (last Win x64 version) messages give only the peak GFLOPS for my cards:

230 (yes ! two hundreds and thirty) GFLOPS peak each !!!
2 x Gigabyte 9600GT TurboForce NX91T1GHP, 64 shaders 1GB GDDR3

Where may I found Boinc GFlops ?

Boinc Manager (Advanced View), Messages Tab, 13th line down.

Boinc (last Win x64 version) messages give only the peak GFLOPS

That's the value we're talking about. The word "BOINC" is added to this number because there are different ways to obtain such a number.

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

Two new cards will work here soon,

GTX 460 GF104 40nm Compute Capable 2.1 907 BoincGFlops peak (768MB)
GTX 460 GF104 40nm Compute Capable 2.1 907 BoincGFlops peak (1GB)

Values are approximate, and unconfirmed here. There will be a large performcne variety of GTX 460 cards, as many do not follow reference design!

Hi,
since I plan to replace my GTX260/192 with a GTX460 in autumn, this info is of high interest for me.
Could owners of this card type please post their experience here? Not always is the most expensive card the fastest and the cheapest the slowest.

Regards,
Alexander

There is a GTX460 thread here.
This is just a GFlops comparison thread, so we can compare relative card performances, and discuss things such as Compute Capability and Correction Factors. When the GTX460 becomes optimised I will rebuild a table of recommended cards and their relative performances, including correction factors.

Boinc Manager (Advanced View), Messages Tab, 13th line down.

That's exactly what I said : Under Win64 you only get peak GFLOFS , without rhe word Boinc)

So , for a Gigabyte 9600GT NX96T1GHP Rev 3.0 , Boinc says 230 Gflops .

Cheers.

jlhal, I was just confirming that the place to read the Boinc value, is within Boinc. This is different to NVidia's theoretical Shader Processing Rate of 312 GigaFlops, which is not an applicable reference to go by when comparing cards for crunching here. Also of note on that line is the Compute Capability, which calls for a correction factor when comparing cards from different generations. The Operating System, CPU and configurations in place contribute to performance too. So the Boinc GFlops rating acts as a raw guide, and when combined with the Compute Capability gives a more accurate performance picture.
Take this card for example,
08/08/2010 23:37:44 NVIDIA GPU 3: GeForce GT 240 (driver version 25896, CUDA version 3010, compute capability 1.2, 475MB, 307 GFLOPS peak)

It is overcloced and has a peak GFlops rating (according to Boinc) of 307, but it also has a Compute Capability (CC) of 1.2. This presently means it tends to perform about 30% faster than an equal card with a CC of 1.1.
CC1.3 cards are slightly faster again, but not much. The Fermi cards are all CC 2.0 or 2.1 (so far), but these cards can still be further optimized for crunching, so we will look at the Correction Factors again, hopefully in the autumn. The purpose is to give people a clear picture of card performance across the NVidia range and allow people to make better informed decisions as to which card they select WRT crunching here.

This is different to NVidia's theoretical Shader Processing Rate of 312 GigaFlops, which is not an applicable reference to go by when comparing cards for crunching here.

[provocative]Not any less useful than the BOINC rating without correction factors, isn't it?[/provocative]

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

I looked at 4 cards, all on Win XP Pro and all crunching TONI_CAPBIND tasks, to re-evaluate/confirm the Compute Capable correction factors.

CC1.1
9600GT (234 Boinc GFlops peak)
h232f99r449-TONI_CAPBINDsp2-50-100-RND6951_0 (RunTime 60600, points 6,803.41) Host

CC1.2
GT240 (307 Boinc GFlops peak)
h232f99r516-TONI_CAPBINDsp2-50-100-RND8103_0 (RunTime 34981, points 6,803.41 Host

CC1.3
GTX260 (659 Boinc GFlops peak)
h232f99r91-TONI_CAPBINDsp2-64-100-RND9447_0 (RunTime 15081, points 6,803.41) Host

CC2.0
GTX470 (1261 Boinc GFlops peak)
f192r291-TONI_CAPBINDsp1-62-100-RND4969_1 (RunTime 8175, points 6,803.41) Host

CC1.1
9600GT (86400/60600)*6803.415=9699 (Average Credits per Day running these tasks)
9699/230=42.20
CC Correction Factor = 42.20/42.20=1.00

CC1.2
GT240 (86400/34981)*6803.415=16804
9699/307=54.74
CC Correction Factor = 54.74/42.20=1.30

CC1.3
GTX260 (86400/15081)*6803.41=38976
38976/659=59.14
CC Correction Factor = 59.14/42.20=1.40

CC2.0
GTX470 (86400/8175)*6803.41=71904
71904/1261=57.02 (35.5%)
CC Correction Factor = 57.02/42.20=1.35

CC2.1
GTX460 and GTS450
CC Correction Factor = roughly 0.90

Comparison of Optimized and Recommended Cards, with CC Correction Factors (in brackets):

GT 220 GT216 40nm Compute Capable 1.2 128 BoincGFlops peak (173)
GT 240 GT215 40nm Compute Capable 1.2 257 BoincGFlops peak (347)
GTX 260-216 GT200b 55nm Compute Capable 1.3 596 BoincGFlops peak (834)
GTX 275 GT200b 55nm Compute Capable 1.3 674 BoincGFlops peak (934)
GTX 285 GT200b 55nm Compute Capable 1.3 695 BoincGFlops peak (973)
GTX 295 GT200b 55nm Compute Capable 1.3 1192 BoincGFlops peak (1669)
GTX 480 GF100 40nm Compute Capable 2.0 1345 BoincGFlops peak (1816)
GTX 470 GF100 40nm Compute Capable 2.0 1089 BoincGFlops peak (1470)
GTX 465 GF100 40nm Compute Capable 2.0 855 BoincGFlops peak (1154)

GTX 460 GF104 40nm Compute Capable 2.1 907 BoincGFlops peak 768MB (816)
GTX 460 GF104 40nm Compute Capable 2.1 907 BoincGFlops peak 1GB (816)

Only Reference specs listed. The two GTX 460 cards are Recommended, but the applications are not fully cabable of supporting these cards, hence the low correction factor. The limitations of this table are accuracy and lifetime; comparable but different systems (CPUs) were used, not all cards used the same drivers, only one task type was looked at, and only the Fermi ran the v6.11 app. 6.13 for the GTX460 and GTS450