The current graphics market leaves consumers with quite a lot to think about. There seems to be no end of cards placed in the $150-$250 price bracket, which seems to be where all the action is. All this makes it incredibly difficult to know which card to buy, and today we will be looking at the upper end of this scale, hoping to resolve a few things. The updated version was needed to actually clear up the performance different with the Radeon HD 4870, and as such also keep their upper GeForce GTX 280 card going strong. And in that aspect NVIDIA has actually unlock extra shaders of their crippled GT200 core used on their older GeForce GTX 260 to increase the gaming performance. - Overclock3D

Zotac GeForce GTX 260² Core 216 Video Card Review

Although we have had no previous experiences with Zotac's packaging skills, upon first inspection they seem to be rather good. Unfortunately it would appear some Christmas elves had slapped a large label on the back of the packaging, covering most of it. Zotac have decided to cover a large amount of the box with a graphics, then have the company logo in the top left and product name down the bottom. The key specs are listed down the right, and a small, almost triangular sticker has been placed on the left informing you of the bundled Far Cry 2 game. Inside the outer box we have an inner white box with the different components.

Zotac have chosen to replicate the graphics from the front of the box onto the top of the card. The card itself uses the stock NVIDIA cooling, however this is very weighty and feels of good quality, so should keep the card well within operating temperatures. From a connection point of view, we have the standard dual link DVI connections along with a TV outport. At the back of the card we have two 6-pin PCI Express connectors and audio connector. This means the card can act as a pass through for audio when connected using HDMI, cutting down on cable clutter. At the front we have also two SLI bridge connectors.

NVIDIA's second revision GeForce GTX 260 design and ATI's 1GB strong Radeon HD 4870 boards really couldn't get much closer. In some games the frame rate difference was simply too close to call, with tenths of a frame in it. Unfortunately for ATI, the card we tested came pre-overclocked, so squeezing any extra juice out of that will be pretty fruitless. The GeForce GTX 260 on the other hand had quite a lot of headroom, and the extra clocks enabled it to beat the Radeon HD 4870 hands down in most of the games we tested. Based on the card alone, it seems NVIDIA have won this round and is in for some new battle.

To better this, if you are not satisfied by the gaming results, there is also CUDA and PhysX to consider. This may be of particular interest to folders. Although we didn't have a chance to get any meaningful data comparison, a quick search on the web will show you just how powerful and fast these things are at folding, especially compared to the Radeon HD 4870 and other ATI cards. All in all, we are very impressed with todays results, and the card is avaliable for around $249, making it a very tempting upgrade for avid gamers and folders alike.