NVIDIA's attempts to reignite its ageing graphics card line-up took a turn for the better with the release of big bang drivers, also known as revision 180, which were made public nearly two weeks ago. At that time, we mused on the tri-fold benefits such as multi display SLI, free performance and GPU specific PhysX and thought it a positive step. Now with the GeForce GTX 260, the 216 core edition pricing coming down a touch, it's time to revisit the old NVIDIA versus ATI debate, to see who wins at around the $300 mark. Point of View sent us its GeForce GTX 260 Premium edition, a Core 216 version and we put it up against some ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB loving, to see who's on top. - Hexus

Point of View GeForce GTX 260 Premium 216 Review

Point of View uses the Premium nomenclature to differentiate the 216 core based GeForce GTX 260 from the regular, though older model shipping with 192 stream processing cores. Further, their Premium line is sub-divided into the standard, running at reference speed frequencies of 576MHz core, 1242MHz shader and 1998MHz memory memory and the Exo edition shipping with 650MHz core, 1400MHz shader and 2000MHz memory speeds. Whilst well overclocked on the core and shaders, Point of View should have boosted memory clocks on the latter. Anyway, the Premium can be thought of an average GeForce GTX 260.

Everything that we have previously reported about the reference heatsink also applies to this board, so in a nutshell it can be attached to a further two boards and run in 3-way SLI mode, and it's power hungry enough to require two 6-pin PCI Express connectors. The fan is very quiet in 2D mode and, whilst louder when running full chat 3D, it can hardly be called intrusive when gaming. The side-on shot highlights the dual slot taking nature of the card. Very few if any, manufacturers deviate from the reference design because it does the job well and minimizes production time and cost, but also quite essential the time to market.

The two SLI connectors are hidden underneath rubberised protection, and the card is fully enclosed in the cooling apparatus. The front reinforces the enclosed nature of the cooling, and the two auxillary power connectors line the right hand side. Drawing some 180W under load, we recommend users have a good quality 400W power supply for single card operation and plus 600W for two cards. Basically, Point of View has taken just a reference card and labelled it up as a Premium model. There's nothing wrong with this line of thinking simply because practically everyone else does the same and is ready to roll it out.

Cranking it up some more from the base, we managed to really push the card to decent levels, topping out at just 704/2450MHz memory and 1414MHz for the shaders. Seeing this, we wonder if the same base binning is used on Exo samples too. Point of View's GeForce GTX 260 Premium card is a good example of how to market the underlying GPU because the company does more than shoehorn it into a box and be done with the package. Rather, a competitive price is maintained in spite of having an excellent bundle that comprises of two leading games that would set you back around $60 if purchased separately.

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 graphics card is now priced just a touch over the $300 mark and battles squarely with ATI's Radeon HD 4870 1GB video card. The benchmark performance is generally similar once a broad cross section of the games are taken into account, but we are now more partial to NVIDIA entire ecosystem than ATI's, which whilst undeniably good from a hardware standpoint, appears to be somewhat lacking in providing developers with the needful right ammunition by which to optimise games around. And our benchmarks will soon change to reflect more of what today's gamer is playing.

And the current blockbuster games have all been the recipients of NVIDIA's attention, to the extent that it purports to offer a better gaming experience than ATI. We've yet to confirm this and will look into it shortly, but if NVIDIA can keep making strides, it will go a long way into mitigating the sheer horsepower lead that price comparable ATI cards have. Putting this all into perspective, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 looks to be a slightly better all-round bet than ATI's Radeon HD 4870 1GB. Knowing this and appreciating the quality of Point of View's bundle, we reckon you should definitely put it on your shortlist.