XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition

[PAGETITLE=Introduction, Closer Look][Top Ad] When writing a graphics card review today, it's very easy to start off with a line like, "ATI struck back, NVIDIA weeps", but the truth is, although ATI did release some killer GPUs this past summer, as we've covered multiple times, saying NVIDIA is out of the game couldn't be something further from the truth. There's little question that over the course of the past few months, there has been a massive shift towards ATI, and NVIDIA is undoubtedly feeling the effects. Coupled with company layoffs, ongoing lawsuits and defective product, it couldn't be much fun being an NVIDIA employee right now. But while the company is going through a rough patch, some of their best GPUs are getting overlooked, like the GTX 260/216, which competes very nicely with ATI's 1GB HD 4870, for roughly the same price. Given the choice personally, I tend to be drawn more towards NVIDIA's offerings, but it's for a few different, but very specific reasons. The first is the drivers, which I find to be much more reliable in terms of installation when compared to ATI's bloated .NET-based offering. I've installed ATI drivers many times in the past that didn't take effect until I installed them a second time. Something like that just shouldn't happen. Second, NVIDIA's drivers are far more Linux-friendly, but that's going to appeal to a much more specific crowd. But I digress, and when all said and done, both companies offer superb GPUs for prices that are unbeatable. Just take a look at what was available at this time last year, and the year before. Just this past January, I recall talking to friends about how great the 8800 GTX still was, even a year after its release. But fast forward ten months later to today, and that card looks completely outdated when compared to the latest offerings. What am I getting at? It couldn't be a better time to upgrade your machine with a new graphics card. Prices are great, and performance greater. It's almost impossible to go wrong. Closer Look. As I mentioned above, the GTX 260/216 is quite comparable to ATI's HD 4870 1GB. Where things begin to change is with overclocking, because while NVIDIA's GPUs are quite open-ended (thanks in part to RivaTuner), ATI's Catalyst Control Center, for some reason, gives poor top limits on both the Core and Memory clocks. Part of that reason might be due to heat, but that still gives the advantage to NVIDIA for overclocking fanatics. In the case of XFX's "Black Edition", the company wanted to make sure that the HD 4870 1GB took a seat on the runners-up bench, and given the pre-overclocked nature, it might even come close to GTX 280 performance. As a quick recap, there are two different versions of NVIDIA's GTX 260. The first saw a release in late June, while the follow-up came months later. The reason was of course to help combat ATI's fresh releases, and while such a move is understandable, it certainly adds to the confusion factor. The differences between the two are minimal, but the most recent version has had its stream processors count bumped to 216, from 192. That can cause a slight issue when looking to purchase one. For some reason, many of the older 192 cards are still selling for close to the same price as the 216, and sometimes even more, so without looking closely, it's easy to end up paying more for a lesser-performing card. It's made more difficult because even the core clocks are identical, so it's important to make sure what you are buying has 216 available cores, unless you find the older model for $30+ less than the newer model. Model Core MHz Shader MHz Mem MHz Memory Memory Bus Stream Proc. GTX 280 602 1296 1107 1GB 512-bit 240 GTX 260/216 576 1242 999 896MB 448-bit 216 GTX 260 576 1242 999 896MB 448-bit 192 9800 GX2 600 1500 1000 1GB 512-bit 256 9800 GTX+ 738 1836 1100 512MB 256-bit 128 9800 GTX 675 1688 1100 512MB 256-bit 128 9600 GT 650 1625 900 512MB 256-bit 64 9600 GSO 550 1375 800 384MB 192-bit 96 What helps set XFX's Black Edition apart is a pre-overclocked Core Clock, which at 666MHz, is 90MHz above stock. That's no small change, so compared to a stock-clocked GTX 260/216, differences are sure to be seen. The Black Edition is set to carry an SRP of $329, although the street price is going to be closer to $299 - $309, which puts it on par with other GTX 260/216 models out there. To help increase the value further, XFX is bundling the Black Edition with a copy of Far Cry 2, which seems to be a great choice. That game has been receiving rave reviews so far, and it sure looks more attractive than the games being bundled with other GTX 260/216's, if they happen to (Zotac bundles GRID). Due to time-constraints, I was unable to test out the game in order to include results in this article, but when able, I'll explore the game and see if it makes sense to include results from in in our forthcoming reviews. XFX's card follows the reference design to a T, with a bulky, yet capable cooler that truly helps make the card feel like a tank. Included on XFX's model are two DVI ports along with a TV-Out. For those looking to use other connections, the company also includes a DVI-to-VGA adapter and also a similar adapter for HDMI. Since the card utilizes HDCP, you'll have no problem enjoy your high-definition content with this GPU. Like ATI's HD 4870, NVIDIA's GTX 260 (and 280) require two PCI-E 6-pin connectors, and a power supply requirement of at least 500W with 36A available on the +12V rail. If you wish to take the SLI route, finding an "SLI Certified" PSU is a good idea, or at least finding one with an even higher amount of amperage on the +12V rail. With our look at the card out of the way, we can jump right into our testing methodology. We highly recommend you read through this page if you are unfamiliar with how we conduct testing, as it differs from what you may be used to. If you are already familiar with how we do things, feel free to skip to page three, as we kick off our testing with Crysis Warhead. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Test System & Methodology] At Techgage, we strive to make sure our results are as accurate as possible. Our testing is rigorous and time-consuming, but we feel the effort is worth it. In an attempt to leave no question unanswered, this page contains not only our testbed specifications, but also a fully-detailed look at how we conduct our testing. If there is a bit of information that we've omitted, or you wish to offer thoughts or suggest changes, please feel free to shoot us an e-mail or post in our forums. Test System. The below table lists our testing machine's hardware, which remains unchanged throughout all GPU testing, minus the graphics card. Each card used for comparison is also listed here, along with the driver version used. Each one of the URLs in this table can be clicked to view the respective review of that product, or if a review doesn't exist, it will bring you to the product on the manufacturer's website. Component Model Processor Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 - Quad-Core, 3.6GHz (Overclocked), 1.35v Motherboard ASUS Rampage Extreme - X48-based, 0501 BIOS (08/28/08) Memory Corsair XMS3 DHX 2x2GB - DDR3-1333 7-7-7-15-1T, 1.91v ATI Graphics Palit Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB (Catalyst 8.9) Palit HD 4870 512MB (Catalyst 8.9) ASUS EAH4850 512MB (Catalyst 8.9) NVIDIA Graphics Palit GTX 280 1GB (GeForce 178.13) XFX GTX 260/216 896MB (GeForce 178.24) Palit 9800 GX2 1GB (GeForce 178.13) ASUS EN9800GTX+ 512MB Dark Knight (GeForce 178.13) ASUS EN9800GTX 512MB (GeForce 178.13) Gigabyte 9600 GT 512MB (GeForce 178.13) Audio On-Board Audio Storage Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11 x 2 Power Supply Corsair HX1000W Chassis SilverStone TJ10 Full-Tower Display Gateway XHD3000 30" Cooling Zalman CNPS9700 Air CPU Cooler Et cetera Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit When preparing our testbeds for any type of performance testing, we follow these guidelines: General Guidelines No power-saving options are enabled in the motherboard's BIOS. Internet is disabled. No Virus Scanner or Firewall is installed. The OS is kept clean; no scrap files are left in between runs. Hard drives affected are defragged with Diskeeper 2008 prior to a fresh benchmarking run. Machine has proper airflow and the room temperature is 80°F (27°C) or less. Windows Vista Optimizations User Account Control (UAC) and screen saver are disabled. Windows Defender, Firewall, Security Center, Search, Sidebar and Updates are disabled. To aide with the goal of keeping accurate and repeatable results, we alter certain services in Windows Vista from starting up at boot. This is due to the fact that these services have the tendency to start up in the background without notice, potentially causing slightly inaccurate results. Disabling "Windows Search" turns off the OS' indexing which can at times utilize the hard drive and memory more than we'd like. Game Benchmarks. For graphic card reviews that pit us with a mid-range card or higher, we test at three popular resolutions that span the mid-range to high-end ground, consisting of monitor sizes of 20" (1680x1050), 24" (1920x1200) and 30" (2560x1600). In an attempt to offer "real-world" results, we do not utilize timedemos in our graphic card reviews, with the exception of Futuremark's automated 3DMark Vantage. Each game in our test suite is benchmarked manually, with the minimum and average frames-per-second (FPS) captured with the help of FRAPS 2.9.5. To deliver the best overall results, each title we use is exhaustively explored in order to find the best possible level in terms of intensiveness and replayability. Once a level is chosen, we play through repeatedly to find the best possible route and then in our official benchmarking, we stick to that route as close as possible. Since we are not robots and the game can throw in minor twists with each run, no run can be identical to the pixel. Each game and setting combination is tested twice, and if there is a discrepancy between the initial...

XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition

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Rob Williams