This year has been one to remember for video card enthusiasts. On the red side of the fence there have been the three series X2 models, the release of the Radeon HD 3400 series that can be used in hybrid CrossFireX. Just recently, the red camp released the Radeon HD 4800 series to the world. The green side of the fence has been far from idle during this time as well. First was the launch of the GeForce 9 series cards, like the GeForce 9600 GT, GeForce 9800 GX2 and GTX. Now, the GT200 series cards are in the pipeline with the GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 video cards. With the performance delivered by the GeForce GTX 280, just how far down the ladder does the GTX 260 fall? - Overclocker Club

EVGA e-GeForce GTX 260 FTW Edition Board Review

The EVGA e-GeForce GTX 260 FTW edition is the top factory overclocked model in EVGA's GeForce GTX 260 graphics arsenal. Most people are aware of the superclocked cards the company makes. This series goes even further. EVGA has pushed the GPU core clock speed to 666MHz, the shader clock speed to 1404MHz and the memory is overclocked by 214MHz to bring the speed up to 2214 MHz on the 898MB of GDDR3 memory. Normally, cards from the factory are not leaned on this hard. Is there something special here or is this maxed out with little left in reserve? Let's hope not, and that there is a bit juice left.

The GeForce GTX 260 uses 192 stream processors, 898MB of GDDR3 memory, 1.4 billion transistors all tied up in one huge 65nm core to deliver jaw dropping video performance. By using NVIDIA's CUDA technology, the GeForce GTX 260 can be put to work with video transcoding and complex scientific simulations. Let's find out if the GeForce GTX 260 is just a neutered version of the GeForce GTX 280 or if it has the same performance potential as its big brother. The only features of the FTW version that are prominently featured on the front are the amount of GDDR3 memory and that the card is PCI Express 2.0 compliant.

The cooling solution is the standard reference cooler for the series and is a two-slot solution. Are the flames on the back end of the video card indicative of just how hot this card gets or is the performance smoking hot? The connections available on the e-GeForce GTX 260 FTW include two dual link DVI connections as well as an high definition video out port that can be used with the supplied dongle to connect to a composite video cable. Above the high definition video port is an LED that changes color based on the power connections. The rear view has the air intake for the cooling fan.

With a factory overclocked video card there is usually not too much left on the table for the enthusiast to gain on top of the speeds the manufacturer has pulled from the silicon. The stock speeds of the FTW edition are 666MHz on the GPU core and 2214MHz on the memory. It looks as though EVGA left a little on the table when it came to the clock speeds. We were able to ratchet the GPU core up another 96MHz and the memory another 202MHz. Both of these clock speed increases are huge. By comparison, we were only able to pull 110MHz out of the GPU core and 294MHz out of the memory on the GeForce GTX 280 version.

With 192 streaming processors, a fair amount of work can be done with the GPU. The parallel computing capabilities open up a whole new world of options. Crunching for a cure for many heinous diseases as well as offloading the load from the CPU when encoding video are all things that can now be done. With the latest drivers, NVIDIA has incorporated a PhysX driver to offload the CPU to the GPU instead of a dedicated PPU, changing where the work is done rather than the work itself. This capability should help immensely when PhysX heavy games begin to appear later this year, especially with the overall gaming experience.

If one of these gems is not enough, the ability to go to or even three is there since the GeForce GTX 260 supports dual and 3-way SLI, making the gaming experience that much more enjoyable. That performance comes with a price tag though, like $429 dollars a piece to be exact. Somewhat high when the ATI solution is almost as fast and costs far less. Performance does sell though. One thing that the GeForce GTX 260 is capable of is saving you some cash. When running in 2D mode, the GPU core, shader core and memory speeds drop well down from the clocks used in 3D performance mode.

The side effect is that energy consumption is reduced, saving the end user some cash. Bottom line on the EVGA e-GeForce GTX 260 FTW version is that you get awesome performance that compares favorably with a video card costing +$200 more, the GeForce GTX 280. Even with the price premium that the EVGA FTW edition has over the stock speed cards, the performance speaks for itself.