XFX was kind enough to send us two of their most powerful single GPU's based on the GT200 core. We know them as the GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260, but it's their price and performance that made sure we don't forget them. The cards themselves didn't change since the launch, but the price did, and we're talking about a price drop of over $150 for the GeForce GTX 280 board. The new price adjustments made the GeForce GTX 280 much more affordable for an end-user, and if you want the fastest GPU around look no further than this baby. Of course, if you want even more speed then XFX's offering might better suit your needs, we're talking about the triple-X version of the GeForce GTX 280. - FudZilla

XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX Video Edition Review

The 670M suffix in the card's official name suggests the core speed of 670MHz. XFX did a core overclock of almost 70MHz whereas the shaders got a boost from reference 1296MHz and now run at 1458MHz. The XFX card is still coming with reference dual slot cooling. The cooler performs well but it's a bit too loud for our taste. The temperatures on the overclocked card went up to 86°C, which is getting quite hot. The GeForce GTX 280 has a 1GB frame buffer and uses 512-bit memory interface coupled with a fast GDDR3 memory running at 2214MHz. XFX has taken this a step further so the memory on their card runs at 2500MHz.

XFX did a nice paintjob on their card, and you can see the silhouette of a wolf in the background. The back of the card also got a nice make-up job, so it's worth taking a look at it. NVIDIA stuck to 65nm process with their GT200 chip and its 240 stream processors, and they managed to pack as much as 1400 million transistors. That's how this chip got a title of the largest single GPU ever made. Compared to the G80, the GT200 has more than twice the number of transistors, where most of them are used to improve the GPU's computing capabilities. The GT200 brings more threads, stream processors, better shading and texturing.

These GT200's, as well as G80 and G92 based cards, feature PhysX support that helps the GPU with physics acceleration, but we currently don't have any games to try it out. NVIDIA thinks it's quite important to portray the GT200 as a multifunctional architecture locked and loaded for more than just gaming. We see them use the phrase beyond gaming more and more often, and it should mean that we can use this card for many other tasks thanks to compute unified device architecture. Using CUDA, we communicate with the GPU that feeds back the processed data. It's probably closer to a multifunctional GPU than many think.

XFX did a good job overclocking the GeForce GTX 280 card and we see that it paid off. The core is overclocked from reference 602MHz to 670MHz whereas the shaders got a boost from 1296MHz to 1485MHz. The card packs 1GB of GDDR3 memory, which should be enough for any current or soon to launch game. The new GT200 graphics processor is bursting with power and XFX's overclock helped in pleasant gaming in all the gaming tests. It's time to replace the old, but still popular, GeForce 8800 GTX cards. Luckily, after the initial price shock, we can find the GeForce GTX 280 graphics card priced at around $499.

The XFX version will be a bit more expensive, but if you want the best then pay for it. And you don't get just a reference card as it come pre-overclocked and full warranty as such from the manufacturer. Besides, we can't forget that you also get Assassin's Creed as a gift. This overclock definitely makes this card stand up.