The XFX GeForce 260 Black edition came out just in time for Halloween. This Black edition has come back from the near death with a new, more robust pixel pushing ability, and a kick ass bundled game as Far Cry 2. What's the difference between the old GeForce GTX 260 and this newest version? This new crop of GeForce GTX 260 cards have got 216 shader processors, as compared to the previous card's 192 shaders. Unfortunately, often at times it is hard to distuigish which GeForce GTX 260 has 216 shaders, and which has got only 192 shaders. NVIDIA seems to have given free reign to its partners this time around, and which means several pre-overclocked versions are available. - NeoSeeker

XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition Cool Card Review

Besides the shader processor boost, this GeForce GTX 260 has also received a aggressive overclocking boost. In fact you can not buy another GeForce GTX 260 that has faster clocks than the Black edition. The core clock for the XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black edition is a very aggressive and scary 666MHz. With these extra shaders and overclocked core and memory clocks, this is the first GeForce GTX 260 to come into our labs that will be able to put up a very good fight against the real villain, the Radeon HD 4870, which previously bested most prior GeForce GTX 260 graphics cards without contest and real competition.

The XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black edition may have some killer specifications, but on the surface, it follows the reference board design for the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 cards. But if something works, no need to change things around too much right? Previously inspected in our first GeForce GTX 280 article, XFX's GeForce GTX 260 Black zdition has a capable and effective cooler. It is a small evolution of the cooler found on the GeForce 9800 GTX+ edition, and the same cooler found on the GeForce GTX 260's bigger brother, the GeForce GTX 280. And a black backplate cools the other side of the full black PCB.

Sure, this is the fastest GeForce GTX 260 you can buy, but can it be pushed any further? We weren't expecting to be able to squeeze much more performance out of this already heavily overclocked card, but we did. Setting the fan to run at 85% we found stability at 679/2340MHz with the shaders at 1431MHz. Sure that is only a slight rise over the stock clocks, but when you consider how heavily this board is already overclocked, getting any extra mileage at all is encouraging. Honestly though, in the end there probably isn't much need to push this card's already very aggressive overclock, the card is already quite zippy.

The XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black edition put in a quite impressive performance, basically this video card single handedly re-establishes the GeForce GTX 260 as viable alternative to the fearsome double punch of Radeon HD 4870 512MB and 1GB models out on the market today. Of course, this is no regular GeForce GTX 260. XFX did a nice job, but what really made this card scream is the aggressive overclocking that XFX executed. Some overclocked graphics cards offer a little performance boost. And the Black edition however has enough of a nitro kick to propel it to another and higher level of performance entirely.

But the veritable icing on the cake is that the Black edition comes with Far Cry 2, which is one of the best games that we have played since Half Life 2. When the first GeForce GTX 260 went up against the first Radeon HD 4870, there was no contest. But seeing the performance of the Black edition throughout all of benchmarks, we can't even tell if this board is related to a GeForce GTX 260 anymore. If you had any thought of buying a GeForce GTX 260, or even a GTX 280, the first place you should look at is right into the darkness.