Introduction

Welcome to the world of Gainward, a world beyond your senses! Gainward is a world leading producer of high-quality, high-end 3D accelerators for the personal computer market. Gainward offers a full product line of value adding products targeting gaming enthusiasts as well as entry-level consumers. Founded in 1984, Gainward has grown exponentially in the channel, serving the system builder, distribution and retail markets with products that offer the highest in quality and customer satisfaction, thereby making the computing experience transparent to the hardware supplied in the box. Their graphics products are known to deliver an incredible realistic gaming experience and highlighting effects as never seen or experienced before. Together with Gainward we share their passion for exciting products and innovations.

Wasn't it really a great period the previous six months? Who doesn't recall the introduction of the GeForce 9 series graphics cards? Cause if you look back on some months ago the GeForce 9 series did get a very fast successor with the newly GeForce GTX 200 series. And what a change really. Where the GeForce 9 series are mainly nothing more than what we would call refresher products give and take a few, the GeForce GTX 200 series are what can just call a new technology. Maybe new technology is a bit farfetched but at least it is a totally new chipset that is powering these series. With the introduction of the GT200 chipset, the reign of the G92 based products has come to an end. These GeForce GTX 200 series are taking the lead on the performance and gaming experience. Though this time they are not alone, as also ATI has been making progress and is back to take on the world.

The past few months have been hectic with a lot of rumors and new products being released by both ATI and NVIDIA, but with NVIDIA somehow being more successful in the beginning of the year. With the GeForce 9800 GX2 coming to the market NVIDIA crushed the competition as well as their own product range to a certain extend. But half way through the year we are no longer sure is NVIDIA is still on top of things, mainly due to ATI which struck back with their Radeon HD 4800 series. And as it stands now the Radeon HD 4870 X2 edition is really the card to beat. Yes you got that right, for a long time now we have seen NVIDIA at the top of the chain but this time around it's ATI that is holding the pole position. Though don't get us wrong as they are not fighting with equal weapons since ATI is using a dual GPU monster to stay on top of NVIDIA's single GPU high-end GeForce GTX 280 graphics card.

Main Specifications

• GeForce GTX 260 (GT200 at 576MHz)
• 896MB 512-bit GDDR3 Memory (1998MHz)
• High-speed 448-bit Memory Interface
• Memory Bandwidth of 111.9GB/s
• PCI Express x16 2.0 Compatibility
• High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection
• H.264 Playback with PureVideo HD Engine
• Multi-GPU SLI Bridge Interconnect Support
• DVI-I Connector for Analog/Digital Display
• High Performance Silent Cooling Solution

Where the G92 chip was not really a new chip design but rather a die shrink of the very successful G80 graphics core which introduced the new unified shader technology though with some extra features, the GT200 is still based on this architecture but is surely a new chip packing a lot more processing power. This is really again a product that has advanced, while we somehow perceived the GeForce 9 series merely the same as before but in a new package and name. The GT200 is what we call a big chip and that also means we will have quite big card. It is the first GPU which has a 512-bit memory controller from NVIDIA, as we all know that ATI did have this already some generations ago. And in fact it is really a combination of eight separate 64-bit memory controllers, which means that the GeForce GTX 260 card had one of these disabled to come to a 448-bit memory interface.

The Gainward box comes with some plastic shrink wrap around it. So we had to remove the plastic covering first. This is an extra protection to the package as a whole. The box itself details very clearly the product that you are buying as well as the main features, that it is a PCI Express 2.0 card with high performance GDDR3 memory. A meanly blue colored box, with some green/black to cover the back of the box. This is the standard version, which comes with default clock speed settings and supports the 3-way SLI technology. The box has changed since the previous series and we do like it a lot more as blue color really does well and is a bit more attractive. The front of the box is really nice and does mention clearly what you are getting. This is also the standard version, meaning that Gainward did stick with the reference cooling solution and clock speeds.

Turning the box around we find out even more details on the product enclosed. The back of the paperboard package lists all the features of the GeForce GTX 260 graphics card and what is included in the package. Further checking the box reveals also some more information on the sides that might come in handy upon purchase of the GeForce GTX 260 accelerator, like the system requirements and also the contact details. All these add up in the first impression of the Gainward package, a very detailed and professional box. Gainward did also dedicate some space specifically to the SLI technology, which is quite useful and needful to highlight that the GeForce GTX 260 features as well the 3-way SLI with on top the PhysX technology bringing your games to life with massively destructible environments and ultra realistic interaction.