Today NVIDIA launches their updated GeForce GTX 260 series. The new cards feature an increased shader count of 216 versus 192 on the normal GeForce GTX 260. Yet there is no new product name by NVIDIA, the product is still called GeForce GTX 260. We are not sure if this is a good move because it will create a lot of confusion with the users. Calling it GeForce GTX 270 or even GeForce GTX 260+ would have been a better strategy in my opinion. As confirmed by NVIDIA this is the same GPU as on the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280, just with a different number of shaders and texture units. The silicon has also remained the same, which means it is still a 65nm design. - techPowerUp

Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMPē! Edition Design Review

Also it should be noted that this 216 shader GPU will not completely replace the GeForce GTX 260 with only 192 shaders. There will just be three GT200 based products in the future. Even the package of the GeForce GTX 260 AMPē! version is the same, the only difference is an AMPē! sticker on the package. The card looks exactly the same as the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280, the only visible difference are the stickers on the card and on the cooler. The card has two DVI ports which is the standard output configuration nowadays. And we do believe most have now as well a DVI connection on their displays.

The cooler has remained the same big heatsink that is used on the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280. If you look closely you can see that two memory cooling spots are not populated which accounts for the memory difference from 1024MB to 896MB in size. You may combine two or three cards for SLI to improve frame rates or graphics quality. Just like the regular GeForce GTX 260, the AMPē! edition requires two 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. The GDDR3 memory chips are made by Hynix and with a latency of 1.0ns they should be good for at least 2000MHz, and we know it is certainly capable of greater clock speed.

To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of ATITool's successor and our benchmarking suite. The final overclocks of our card are 715MHz core and 2540MHz memory. In our GeForce GTX 280 article we saw exactly the same maximum core overclock of 715MHz. Considering that Zotac already overclocked their card it is just even more impressive to see another boost. Maybe Zotac limited their clock speeds in order to not hurt the GeForce GTX 280 sales too much. The memory overclock is amazing too, over twenty percent out of the GDDR3 memory already running at over 2GHz is impressive.

Back at the launch of the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 the cards were too expensive to be able to compete with AMD's latest offerings at the time. Now the prices have come down so far that the GeForce GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870 are identical when considering price to performance. Zotac's latest addition to their product lineup offers more performance than the Radeon HD 4870 at a slightly higher price. Which makes this a very fair deal. It seems the combination of increased shaders and clocks is a winning team because our benchmarks show the AMPē! edition is only one percent behind the regular GeForce GTX 280.

Of course you have to consider that the potential overclocking headroom on the GeForce GTX 280 will be higher since the chips have been better binned. But unless you are a hardcore overclocker those $130 will certainly be better invested somewhere else. Overall we are very impressed with the improved GeForce GTX 260, even though the naming scheme sucks. There will be lots of drama on eBay and other shops about incorrectly labeled cards. Other than the naming the only other thing that could be improved in our opinion is the fan noise. Slightly higher temperatures for less noise would be very acceptable we think.