[NextGen_Gamer]

SemiAccurate, courtesy of Charlie Demerjian, has recently posted a story claiming that because of profit issues, NVIDIA will be issuing EOL (End Of Life) notices to its partners for the GeForce GTX 285, 275 and 260 (Core 216) GPUs. The GeForce GTX 295 will probably not last much longer either. This story is sure to attract a lot of attention and stir up a lot of controversy, as it effectively means that NVIDIA is abandoning the high-end and performance-mainstream markets for the foreseeable future.

Now, before people jump in and start claiming that Charlie is an idiot and that there are hundreds of GeForce GTX 200 series cards available on Newegg.com right now, keep in mind that it would take some time before he is proven correct (if indeed the story is real). Current inventory levels, along with the most recent batch of GPUs that have been made at TSMC, would be enough to keep the GeForce GTX 200 series alive for another two or three months. In other words, if come late December or January/February it suddenly becomes impossible to find a GeForce GTX 260/275/285 in-stock anywhere, than that would mean that Charlie was right and NVIDIA cancelled the product line sometime in October 2009.

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[xfrgtr]

What's the point of selling old gen dx10 graphic cards when the gt300 will be available? Gt200 will be replaced by the gt300.And it's logical that nvidia stop selling obsolete cards when the new dx11 cards are on sale. How Nvidia is abandoning the high-end and performance-mainstream markets when gt300 is just around the corner?

[lennardseah]

some of the highly clocked 260s are quite a wrecker for the high end models haha

[khaos83_2000]

This is going against their SLI effort

[NextGen_Gamer]

Originally Posted by xfrgtr

What's the point of selling old gen dx10 graphic cards when the gt300 will be available? Gt200 will be replaced by the gt300.And it's logical that nvidia stop selling obsolete cards when the new dx11 cards are on sale. How Nvidia is abandoning the high-end and performance-mainstream markets when gt300 is just around the corner?

The GeForce GTX 260 (Core 216) products sell for around ~$160 USD right now. The first "Fermi" GPUs will almost assuredly be over $400 at launch. However, I'll be generous and say that the "low-end" cut-down "Fermi" GPU (GeForce GTX 360?) goes for $399 at launch. That would still mean a massive gap between the ~$110 GeForce GTS 250 and the $399 "Fermi" if SemiAccurate is correct in this story. And that is all assuming that "Fermi" comes out this year, which I have some serious doubts about.

[longsiew]

lol...

Should EOL the rebranded gpu long time ago

[beck2448]

Charlie is a pathetic moron whose ridiculous "predictions" about Nvidia have been repeatedly refuted by the facts.

[power666]

Wasn't there supposed to be a 40 nm shrink of both the G92 and GT200 cores? Wouldn't those variants be able to fill the gap currently left by these high end cards disappearing form the market?

Also what ever happened to the rumors of midrange DX 10.1 cards from nVidia?

[NextGen_Gamer]

Originally Posted by power666

Wasn't there supposed to be a 40 nm shrink of both the G92 and GT200 cores? Wouldn't those variants be able to fill the gap currently left by these high end cards disappearing form the market?

Also what ever happened to the rumors of midrange DX 10.1 cards from nVidia?

Those have actually already been "released," if you count a small trickling of cards to OEMs as a release. There are the GeForce GT 220 and GeForce G 210. They are both supposed to come to the retail market sometime this month. Unfortunately, both are very simple GPUs that will sell in the $50-$80 market. NVIDIA has no 40-nm die-shrinks of either the G92/G92b or the G200/G200b GPUs.

[hwmook]

Originally Posted by power666

Wasn't there supposed to be a 40 nm shrink of both the G92 and GT200 cores? Wouldn't those variants be able to fill the gap currently left by these high end cards disappearing form the market?

Also what ever happened to the rumors of midrange DX 10.1 cards from nVidia?

Those were canceled because nvidia could not get them to work and the products keep delaying until the GT3xx is due to be out. The mid range 40nm variants were all canceled. Good luck to nvidia when ATI start their push for low-mid end 40nm GPU starting with the USD100 HD5750, i don't know how cheap can the HD56xx be?

[NerosDevil]

Originally Posted by power666

Also what ever happened to the rumors of midrange DX 10.1 cards from nVidia?

Wai- WHAT?! There are DX10.1 cards from Nvidia ??

[Teemax]

Originally Posted by NextGen_Gamer

The GeForce GTX 260 (Core 216) products sell for around ~$160 USD right now. The first "Fermi" GPUs will almost assuredly be over $400 at launch. However, I'll be generous and say that the "low-end" cut-down "Fermi" GPU (GeForce GTX 360?) goes for $399 at launch. That would still mean a massive gap between the ~$110 GeForce GTS 250 and the $399 "Fermi" if SemiAccurate is correct in this story. And that is all assuming that "Fermi" comes out this year, which I have some serious doubts about.

GT200b is still a pretty big chip. Selling a card at $160 doesn't make a lot of economic sense to NVIDIA.

On the other hand, it surely sounds odd (no mainstream product if this is true). Unless NVIDIA has a whole range of mainstream cards available soon, it's hard to imagine this happening.

[Teemax]

Originally Posted by NerosDevil

Wai- WHAT?! There are DX10.1 cards from Nvidia ??

It's funny reading this article from Fuad written just 2 months ago. He got everything wrong there (there's a directX 11 game already out; and NVIDIA does make 10.1 cards)

[Equin0x]

I'll wait for a reliable source to confirm this before believing it. Charlie is too emotional about NVidia to ever be considered a "reliable source" where they are concerned.

[devhen]

Charlie was right. GTX 275s and 285s have all but disappeared from Newegg with 260s and 295s assumedly to follow. Just two weeks ago when I bought my 275 there were tons of them and now there are none. Thats a sharp decline.

The question is, should I pickup another 275 while I can (ZipZoomFly still has a few) or should I just be happy with a single 275 and wait for the gt300s? What would you do? How important is a DX11 based card? If I picked up a second 275 for SLI my performance would be adequate for all of the games I'm interested in but would I regret not waiting for DX11 cards?