When Nvidia release the GTX 460 recently, it has shown to the world what a bit more design time with its latest generation architecture can do, by cutting down on power requirements and heat yet still maintaining highly competitive performance on the market. They hope to do the same on the upcoming GTS 450 which will be based on the GF106, containing 1GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit memory interface. Nvidia is hoping for a release by the end of August, presumably targeting ATI’s Radeon HD 5770.

Not much else is known about the GF106. To compete with the HD 5770, though, it has to be 240 SP products (if the SMs are arranged like GF104). Price is also unknown, but $150-$170 is likely. Interestingly, Nvidia’s AIC partners will be free to make their own non-reference designs at release.

Two other GTS 400 products have been rumoured in the past – a GTS 445 based on a crippled GF106 and a GTS 455 based on a heavily crippled GF104.

The Geforce GTS 450 is likely to be the first in line, though, but it is still over a month away. The GF106 releases will be followed by GF108, which will fit in the under-$100 market. Nvidia would be hoping for a possibility of taking back their market share from AMD as these midrange graphic cards are the ones that will be selling in large quantities, unlike the speed kings GTX 480 and GTX 470, and they’re the ones that will determine the bigger percentage of the green giant’s quarter revenues.

[via vr-zone]