When a new graphics card comes out, we tend to do an article and then have a look around and see what some others thought of the card. However, we've been so busy lately with the new release of the Radeon HD 4800 series from AMD and the GeForce GTX 280 from NVIDIA that we haven't had a chance to check out any other GeForce GTX 200 series articles. What we have mostly seen, though, is that the majority of GeForce GTX 260 articles floating around the internet are just the standard NVIDIA model, which is a bit boring. Today we will be looking at the XFX offering, and not just some stock clocked XFX offering, but a full tilt XXX version which has some clocks to get excited about. - TweakTown

XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX Version Graphics Preview

We are looking forward to seeing how the GeForce GTX 260 fairs in this extremely competitive graphics card market, and hopefully its cheaper price tag can win us over. The graphics card market has never been this hot before, and while AMD are fighting the good fight to take the market share crown back, NVIDIA is battling them off with sticks at the moment. On the front of the box, version clearly stands out with a bit of an explosion thing going on. Across the top we have the XFX logo next to the NVIDIA one and to the right of that we have mention that a full version copy of Assassin's Creed is included in the box.

Across the bottom we have mention that the card is PCI Express 2.0 and comes with 896MB of GDDR3 memory. Above the memory amount we have some more NVIDIA logos along with mention that the core comes in at 640MHz. Above this we also see XFX make mention that the card is an XXX edition. The back of the box has a picture of the card, and below that we have some of the key features which include 192 processing cores, PhysX, CUDA and more. To the left of this we have a blurb on the card and below that some more details on some of the particular features of the GeForce GTX 260 graphics card.

With the package out of the way, let's look what's going on with the card itself. Straight away you see just how much it resembles the GeForce GTX 280 as far as the cooler goes. The cooler manages to take up the whole front of the card while XFX have brightened it up a bit with a sticker that looks similar to the front of the box. Turning the card over, we can see that XFX has gone to extended lengths to provide a sticker on the back of the card. If you find yourself with a window on the side of your case, you can display your GeForce GTX 260 loudly and proudly, which is quite a nice feature to say the least.

The top of the card shows us two SLI connectors while the other end gives us two PCI Express connectors and the port for the loop back audio cable. This is actually the first time we've been able to tell the difference between the GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 with the latter having dual 6-pin while the GTX 280 carries with it a single 6-pin and a single 8-pin connector. The weird memory amount is thanks to the 448-bit memory bus width which is down from 512-bit on the GeForce GTX 280. The card of course uses the same 65nm GT200 based core it's overclocked out of the box.

The core has been bumped to 640MHz which we saw mentioned on the front of the box, and a memory clock of 2300MHz effective has been set. We do have to say that it's surprising to see just how close the GeForce GTX 260 performs to the GeForce GTX 280 in the ultra widescreen resolutions. Only at that highest resolution does the GeForce GTX 280 begin to show clear signs of a performance increase. Considering the price of the GeForce GTX 260 compared to the GTX 280, it could be considered quite the bargain. There are a few things we have to wonder though, the Radeon HD 4870 is just around the corner.

The Radeon HD 4870 is going to come in cheaper again, and the GeForce 9800 GTX+ should also begin to show up in the next few weeks. While the GeForce GTX 260 looks like an attractive buy at the moment, NVIDIA could be making a mistake by releasing the GTX+ at a cheaper price which may offer extremely similar performance once again. XFX has done a good job with the card. The price is alright, availability is growing, performance is attractive and the bundle is pretty good with a full version copy of Assassin's Creed in the package. As of this second, the GeForce GTX 260 does look like quite the card to buy.

The one thing is though, will the next days change this as we get samples of the Radeon HD 4870 graphics card? Well, we can't see into the future so we won't know till tomorrow. For the most part though, the XFX does seem like a very good value card with some good performance to boot.