XFX GeForce 260 GTX Review

Today we examine XFX's take on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260. In particular the XFX GX-260N-ADF9, which is strictly following the reference guidelines set by NVIDIA for both card design and GPU clock speed.

The GTX 260 has been on the market for just over five months and has gone through a radical metamorphosis. Priced at $599 when launched, it was a powerful card that came with an accompanying price tag. Only five months later, due to some very healthy competition from AMD, it can be purchased for about $200, under half the MSR price at launch!

XFX 260 GTX

Another noteworthy change that the GeForce GTX 260 has had to face is the arrival of the 260 GTX Core 216. This new iteration of the GPU has an increased number of core and texture processing units.

XFX GTX Logo

The Core 216 GPU's are a replacement for the current "traditional" 260 GTX GPUs due to their slightly higher performance. As such, they are currently commanding a price premium over the standard 260 GTX GPUs, allowing the 260 GTX to be found for quite a bargain.

GPU-Z Information

FEATURES

The GeForce GTX 200 Series has a number of architectural improvements over the previous generation of GPUs.

• 2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture: Second generation architecture delivers up to 50% more gaming performance over the first generation through 192 enhanced processing cores that provide incredible shading horsepower.



• NVIDIA PhysX-Ready: GeForce GPU support for NVIDIA PhysX technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce.



• 3-way NVIDIA SLI Technology: Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing 3-way AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) for the world's fastest gaming solution under WindowsVista with solid, state-of-the-art drivers.



• NVIDIA CUDA Technology: CUDA technology unlocks the power of the GPUs processing cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks ( such as video encoding ) delivering up to 7x performance over traditional CPUs.



• NVIDIA PureVideo HD Technology: The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented pictureclarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.



• NVIDIA HybridPower Technology: Lets you switch from the GeForce GTX 260 graphics card to the motherboard GeForce GPU when running non graphically-intensive applications for a quiet, low power PC experience.

Additional Product Information

Let's take a closer look at what this card has to offer...