As announced, NVIDIA presented their new GeForce GTX 260 with larger amount of stream processors. This is consequence of the facts that the regular GeForce GTX 260 didn't have expected performances levels and that price was too high compared to similar products on the market. Simply put the GeForce GTX 260 was very fast but since the Radeon HD 4870 had better performance to price ratio NVIDIA had to do something and as result we have now the GeForce GTX 260+ version. The difference between the two are the 24 shaders that have been added. This time we got the GeForce GTX 260+ graphics version signed by XFX that belong to the Black edition series, tuned for the hardcore gamer. - InsideHW

XFX GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Black Edition Review

The package for this graphics card is big and nicely designed but more important is what can be found inside. Besides the card itself there are disks with drivers, all cables and adapters and bundle version of Assassin's Creed. All that is niftily packed along with I'm gaming, don't disturb door sign and invitation to join XFX's Black edition club for all you out there that wanna join the dark side. Since all GeForce GTX 260+ cards look the same all that was left for XFX to do is to design the sticker but they did great job with it. The cooling solution follows the reference design, with body mainly aluminum except copper contact surface.

This is great solution for the GeForce GTX 260 but it proved to be also good for the GeForce GTX 260+. This graphics card has two DVI's and one video output. For powering this video card it used two 6-pin connectors, so you won't need to fiddle with 8-pin connectors. We already mentioned that the GeForc GTX 260+ has 216 shaders but the fact is that this card has also 72 texturing units. The frequencies that NVIDIA suggests for the GeForce GTX 260+ are 576MHz core, 1240MHz shaders and 2000MHz memory clock speed. Since this is the Black edition of the GeForce GTX 260+ series, XFX took matter in their own hands.

As a consequence we have their GPU that operates on 666MHz, with stream processors on 1404MHz and the memory running at 2300MHz effective. This overclocked model of the GeForce GTX 260+ is getting dangerously close to the GeForce GTX 280. The memory bus is still 448-bit wide and there is 896MB of GDDR3 memory present on the circuit board. We are very pleased with this card especially if we compare it with the previous GeForce GTX 260 version. Last time when the GeForce GTX 260 was tested we said that it is good graphics card but overpriced and not so well tuned against ATI Radeon HD 4800 series.

This situation is now significantly better because the price for this card is below $300. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 still offers a better price to performance ratio but the XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black edition is nicely tuned graphics card that bring a lot of XFX goodies with it. Welcome to the dark side!