Last month NVIDIA and its partners introduced a new product into the market known internally at NVIDIA as the GeForce GTX 260. One problem, that name was already taken by a GPU released in June. What NVIDIA had done was the same GPU core that existed in the original GeForce GTX 260 with 192 shader processors and bumped it up to 216 shaders and this to better compete with AMD's updated Radeon HD 4800 series of graphics cards. And while NVIDIA seemed determined to call the product just GeForce GTX 260 neither the press nor NVIDIA's partners seemed to fall for trick. Many went with call it the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 or the GeForce GTX 260+ version. - PCPerspective

Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB Video Card Review

Galaxy has been quickly making a name for itself in the consumer graphics card market under its new US based brand, KFA². And we already checked out the Galaxy GeForce 9800 GT and GeForce 9500 GT but the new GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB card is their highest performance offering in the channel to date. The cooler design on the Galaxy GeForce 260+ is the same as the reference cards and other retail cards so there isn't much to talk about on this area. Obviously there is an all new sticker on the board. The GeForce GTX 260+ is one of just a handful of cards that officially supports NVIDIA's 3-way SLI technology.

Now unlike the GeForce GTX 280 that requires a single 8-pin PCI Express power connection and one 6-pin, whereas GeForce GTX 260 cards require two 6-pin connections making them more compatible with existing systems and power supplies. The smaller opening to the right of the power connectors is for the digital audio connection that allows for audio pass through on the card and out an HDMI connection on the back. The Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ board is highly overclocked as well. And Galaxy went with much higher rates than reference, 656MHz core, 1405MHz shader and 2260MHz memory speed.

The new Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ is showing itself to be formidable contender in the mainstream performance graphics market. By using the new, upgraded GeForce GTX 260+ chipset the KFA² brand is able to take that a bit further by pushing up the clock rates of the core, shaders and memory producing a much faster than stock graphics card. In our testing the Galaxy card was able to beat out the highly overclocked FTW edition card and was almost on par with the GeForce GTX 280 1GB graphics card in many cases. Though it won't be a match for an overclocked version of the GeForce GTX 280 in the long run.

We should note that there are a couple of bonuses you get with the GeForce GTX 260+, and all GeForce GTX 200 series GPU's. NVIDIA has made it a point to just push their PhysX technology and their CUDA enabled applications. One of Galaxy's graphics card series' best selling points is its price. You can currently find the GeForce GTX 260+ model for $335. Obviously this means you can buy the card today, which is another big plus. And if you aren't interested in an overclocked model, or are comfortable doing the overclocking yourself you can grab the stock version from Galaxy for $285 and save some cash.

Considering that you will be paying about $100 more for a bone stock GeForce GTX 280 card, the GeForce GTX 260 and Core 216 version are looking like a better and better deal in the performance graphics market. The Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ is an impressively fast graphics card that will offer up more gaming performance than most users will need for today's titles while staying in the $300-ish price range depending on your choice of stock or overclocked.