In recent years it’s become customary to have 3-4 high-end cards on the market at the same time using the same GPU. For the GTX 200 series we had the GTX 260, GTX 275, and GTX 285, while for the Radeon HD 5000 series we have the 5830, 5850, and 5870. With the launch of NVIDIA’s GTX 400 series last month NVIDIA filled in the first 2 spots in their lineup with the GTX 480 and GTX 470, with obvious room to grow out the family in the future.

Above the GTX 480 is of course the “full” GF100 with all of its functional units enabled, and which is still missing in action on both the consumer and HPC markets. However there’s also room for a card below the $350 GTX 470, particularly with AMD being the sole inhabitant of the “bargain” high-end $300 point. NVIDIA is to the point in the Fermi rollout where they want a piece of that market, and they have a stash of further-binned so-so GF100 chips they want to fill it with. This brings us to today, and the launch of the GeForce GTX 465.

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