Well the arrival of the new HD5870, NVIDIA have retaliated by issuing a drop down of the prizes of their current GTX series to keep the competition availability of one of their products, well we still have the dual core GPU behemoth of NVIDIA’s GTX295 with CUDA features for all of those parallel GPUPU capabilities, to make things easier for coders’ n games and also physics games to enhance simulation calculations like folding@home software for simulating the folding of protein.
NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 card to compete with ATI’s Radeon HD 4870 series of cards in terms of performance and price. While there are many video cards on the market with this chip modified cards with higher clocks are available giving higher performance and overclocking that the reference cards. GIGABYTE manufactures video cards, motherboards and other computer equipment. Today they are releasing a new video card called the GeForce GTX 260 216 Core Super Overclock card called the GV-N26SO-896I.
I’ve covered the features of the GeForce GTX 260 series ad nauseum on many other reviews so today I will focus on the features GIGABYTE brings with their new card. These include the Ultra Durable features, the GPU Gauntlet, the Super Overclock and support for HDMI out of the box. NVIDIA features including CUDA, PhysX, Shader Model 4.0 haven’t changed since the 8800GTX launch.
GIGABYTE guarantees a 1500RPM fan speed when the card is running highly rated 3D games and physics accelerated games. The card uses a low-noise fan that does not kick in with high noise even at maximum speed. According to GIGABYTE the GTX 260 Super OC delivers a 25% increase compared to a standard GTX 260 card. The card also is guaranteed to have the same overclocking capability as a regular GTX 260 dual-fan card but with lower power consumption.
The GIGABYTE card has the standard GTX cooler with a 47-fin fan on the far right of the front of the card. The GIGABYTE logo is in the upper left hand corner. The GTX 260 name is prominently displayed on the bottom left hand corner. Above the name is the Super Over Clock logo. The card has a black cover for the GPU. The top of the card has two SLI connectors. You can install three total NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 cards on the same motherboard assuming you have enough PCI Express x16 slots and proper spacing between the slots for installation. You need GeForce GTX260 cards, a SLI compatible motherboard and three open dual slots if you want to use three cards.
The issue with the GeForce GTX260 Super Clocked card from GIGABYTE is not the performance or the features; the main issue is the price with the card. The card is retailing for $199.99 on Newegg bringing it within $10 of the GeForce GTX 275 and with the fluctuations in the video card market due to the launch of the HD 5870 I would expect the price to drop soon. The GIGABYTE GTX260 Super Overclocked is an excellent card with high quality components and clear performance leadership over the other GeForce GTX 260s. So in the conclusion in points like a overly clocked GPU and memory frequency with the help of ultra durable 3 features dies give out more performance in about 15 to 20%.