Gigabyte GTX 260 Super Overclock Review - PAGE 2

Impressions

On the surface, the Gigabyte GTX 260 Super Overclock looks the same as many other GTX 260's we have seen since they started arriving on the scene about a year ago now. In the case of Gigabyte's S.O.C, all the interesting stuff is going on under the hood.

This cooler is Nvidia's all-purpose, primary double-slot cooler they employ across much of their gaming cards for the last while. First appearing on the 8800 GTS 512MB, Nvidia has made some tweaks and changes since. To save production costs the same cooler is used for the GTX 260, GTX 280, GTX 285.

These days, video cards are just plain big. The Gigabyte GTX 260 Super Overclock is no exception -- it will hang about a half inch off of a standard ATX motherboard. If you have an older case with a big HD bay in it, you might have a tough time squeezing it in there.

Unlike the usual standard for this generation, the Gigabyte GTX 260 Super Overclock has three display ports: an HDMI, a DVI, and a VGA. This is nice change of pace.

Currently, the primary competition for the GTX 260 is OC'ed HD 4870 and HD 4890 cards on the ATI side, and on the NVIDIA side is the  GTX 275. Coming in a bit slower than this video card should, you might find the GTS 250 / 9800 GTX from Nvidia, and from ATI, you could go for a HD 4850 or HD 4770.

Specifications

As per the usual Gigabyte style, the GTX 260 Super Overclock is built with 'Ultra Durable VGA' components. From prior time spent testing Gigabyte video cards we can say that this not just empty marketing claims -- as advertised, Gigabyte does indeed utilize higher quality Japanese solid capacitors and Ferrite Core chokes, which help stabilize power distribution to the GPU, potentially extend the life the card, and aid overclocking. Additionally, Gigabyte incorporates a solid 2 oz. of copper into the PCB, to enhance conductivity.

As part of the NVIDIA technology arsenal, the GTX 260 features HybridPower technology for power savings (with motherboards that support this feature), support for OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 10.0, PureVideo technology (which improves and performs HD video playback), PhysX support, and NVIDIA's CUDA technology. Not a bad feature set.

As GTX 260 overclocks go, Gigabyte's SOC can make a fair claim to having a strong overclock. Just take a gander at the chart below and you'll see what a huge increase in clock speeds the Super Overclock has been subjected to. GTX 260's running at this level of performance are almost in a different performance class than standard-clocked GTX 260 cards. Gigabyte reports that they have done extensive testing of chips to find the absolute top-performing silicon -- and they need the best chips made, to support these high factory overclocks:

* denotes cumulative effective efforts coming from 2 GPU's (i.e GTX 295: two GPUs with 240 cores equal 480)