Regardless of profession, everyone likes kicking back and playing a game for a while. And in order to enjoy graphics and today's stunning effects, you will need an adequate board capable of handling the massive data processing burden. If you encounter stuttering, it usually means that your card can't take handle the task. Well in that case, you should lower the resolution or detail settings, but not before you try one often overlooked thing and that is installing new drivers. The more advanced users might think it's funny that we'd even discuss this issue, but many users never update their drivers after installing the card for the first time. However, the better the drivers, the better you'll utilize the hardware. - FudZilla

Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Graphics Style Review

This is where the ultimate question comes in, the graphics card of choice. If you take your pick wisely, it will do you a world of good. In order to display all the special effects, a strong graphics processor is a must. It will process data fast enough and display the picture on your screen, whereas incapability to refresh the screen fast enough results in visible stuttering or even freezing. The rule is simple, more processing power results in faster data processing. We played many good games and sequels these days. Sometimes, one graphics card can score very well in one game, whereas in other it will barely manage.

And so we picked the card that will handle the latter, more demanding game. Christmas and New Year are on our doorstep, and this means many will want to buy a new graphics card. The offer is as grand as ever, but we opted on current top two contenders, the GeForce GTX 260 and the Radeon HD 4870. NVIDIA launched a new driver for their GeForce GTX 260 with 216 shader processors. Today we'll find out whether the new driver is responsible for GeForce GTX 260's success. The Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! edition was our test subject, and we used three versions of drivers to find out more about their performance.

The GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! version has 216 stream processors, so unlike the previous GeForce GTX 260 AMP! edition which comes with 192. Increasing the number of stream processors was NVIDIA's answer to the Radeon HD 4870's tremendous success. As such now the situation is more evened out, although the GeForce GTX 260 has a slight performance advantage, and the only thing making these cards less desirable is the steep price, for most users at least. The GeForce GTX 260 is priced at $250 whereas Radeon HD 4870 1GB costs about $225. And NVIDIA's previous advantage lies in the larger frame buffer.

Of course, Zotac pushed their AMP²! version with some overclocking. The core speeds are up from reference 575MHz to 650MHz, and the same goes for shader speeds that are up from reference 1242MHz to 1400MHz. The memory didn't get such serious overclocks, only by about 100MHz over reference 1998MHz. The card features the reference dual slot cooling that performs well and isn't loud. And powering the card is done via two 6-pin PCI Express connectors. After our gaming weekend, it is not difficult to see why installing newer drivers is a wise thing to do, similar in certain scenarios even a prerequisite for playing at all.

We've seen the increase in almost all the tested games, so we're guessing that other games will get better performance too. The Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! edition is only a bit slower than EVGA's overclocked card, but it beats the Radeon HD 4870 1GB version. If you're wondering whether this is the card for you then worry no more, as this graphics card is currently the crème of the crop and we sincerely recommend it.