To help get a leg up on the HD 4850, it seems that NVIDIA well be giving the GTX 260 a shader boost.

The GTX 260 is having a whole bank of shaders unlocked, so it'll be gaining 24 shaders, going from 192 to 216. This should boost the card's performance by about %7 or there abouts.

Currently selling for about $100 more than the HD 4850, which beats the GTX 260 in many benchmarks, the shader boost could only help the GTX 260 be more competitive.

The new flock of GTX 260's should be coming within a matter of weeks. It appears that the new GTX 260's will still be called GTX 260's, but, depending on NVIDIA board partners, will be gaining different additional names: think Asus T.O.P edition, or EVGA GTX 260 SSC 216SP editions, or similar. Regardless of the name, it seems like all new box art will be designating whether the GTX 260's have the extra shader processors, or not.

It seems that the first 216SP edition GTX 260 out of the gates is the Zotac 260 Amp2. No word on when it'll touch down in stores, but it probably will not be long.