Nvidia Corp. has quietly started to offer GeForce GTS 240 graphics cards to original equipment manufacturers. The new offering from the leading designer of graphics chips is not something new, but a rebranded version of the GeForce 9800 GT product that is a re-named version of the model 8800 GT, a device launched back in late 2007.

Nvidia GeForce GTS 240 is based on the aging G92b chip that was initially released back in late 2007 and which performance was similar to the G80 (GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS), launched in late 2006. The G92b graphics processing unit (in its GTS 240 incarnation) made using 55nm process technology features 112 stream processors, 28 texture units, 16 render back end units, 256-bit memory controller, hardware acceleration of video playback and post-processing, etc. Clock-speeds of the GeForce GTS 240 graphics solution are generally similar to those of the previously available offerings: 675MHz for the chip, 1620MHz for stream processors, 2200MHz for GDDR3 memory. Nvidia GeForce GTS 240 will be equipped with 1GB of memory, hence, will provide an advantage of two-year-old solutions.

Since the GeForce GTS 240 is based on the generally outdated graphics processor, it will not offer functionality like DirectX 10.1 or more advanced.

Currently the GeForce GTS 240 is only offered to PC makers, but it is likely that at some point such graphics cards may be offered on the channel market. In fact, rebranding of the product comes months after Nvidia was rumoured to rebrand its GeForce 9800 GT to GTS 240, but decided not to do it on the channel market for some reasons.

Tags: Nvidia, Geforce, G92, 55nm, 65nm, G92b