Rebranding issues asside - and much to my surprise - the GeForce GTS 250 packs some power... efficiency. 40W less, on average, is a considerable improvement - especially given that it's a 1GB card running with the same clocks as the 512MB 9800GTX+.
Performance is mostly the same, which is not bad for a $149 card. It's not groundbreaking but at least Nvidia is keeping the price tag down. $129 will get you a 512MB verison.
AMD will be lowering the price of the Radeon HD 4850 512MB to $129, which is an even better offer - 1GB isn't needed on this class of cards for most stuff.
PCPer is instead quoting the HD4850 1GB ATI cards at $124 after rebate, with the HD 4870 512MB at $149 - if true, this will be the deal.
I've always been an apologist of recycled midrange cards since you get the intact memory bandwidth from a performance card, without going to 128bit and loosing some stuff along the way - it's cheaper for the card maker, not exactly better for who's buying it. Getting new shader model support with crap performance is not the way to go.
Either red or green, you get a great card for little money.
Performance benchmarks and full review at PC Perspective
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