The latest incarnation of the GeForce GTX 260 not only packs the upgraded 216 stream processors, but it also carries with it a 55nm core. What this means is that the card can run cooler, which in turn means it can run faster. While NVIDIA chose not to do anything with the clocks of the card, it doesn't mean companies out there won't. Today we're looking at the Palit GeForce GTX 260 Sonic edition. The Sonic means the card is overclocked and the 55nm means that we have the upgraded stream processors. This is our first 55nm based GeForce GTX 260, but we think we've picked out a good one. Let's just have a quick look at the package to see what Palit has included before we look at the card itself. - TweakTown

Palit GeForce GTX 260 Sonic (55nm) Graphics Review

Looking at the box, there isn't anything we haven't seen before. FroBot manages to take up most of the package with the big GeForce logo going across the middle. Being an NVIDIA card the green theme is also used in this case, versus the red one we see on ATI offerings. Apart from a few logos, the bottom right corner has a sticker that gives us all the important information we need. As we've mentioned, this card is the GeForce GTX 260 Sonic. We can also see it comes with 896MB of GDDR3 memory on a 448-bit bus. Turning the box over, we have a small amount of information on some of the features the graphics card offers.

With the package out of the way and now moving onto the board, we can see straight away the massive heatsink and fans that takes up the majority of the card. This cooler might look familiar, the reason for that is due to the fact it is the same design we saw on the Palit Revolution 700 we looked at a few months back. We can see that on each fan we have the Palit logo, while at the top of the cooler we have the mention of the card being part of the GeForce GTX 200 series. With the cooler taking up the majority of the board, there isn't much to see. Towards the back we can see two 6-pin PCI Express power connectors.

Closer to the front of the video card we have two SLI connectors which gives us the ability to run up to three of these cards together. Unfortunately due to the massive cooler that Palit has opted for, this is probably not only going to be a hard task, but likely impossible. With the card being part of the Sonic series, it does come out of the box overclocked. As you can see, the core has moved from 576MHz to 625MHz. The memory has also been increased from 1998MHz to a more even sounding 2200MHz. Finally, we have the shader clock and this has also gotten a bump. We see it's been moved up to a sounding 1348MHz.

The GeForce GTX 260 really has had some good development since its release and it's nice to see that Palit has moved with the card. The Sonic version of this 55nm based GeForce GTX 260 is great. Performance is great and the overall design with the choice of cooler is also great, in fact the card really is just great. It helps fill a price gap that ATI currently don't have. If you want to spend more than a Radeon HD 4870, but not as much as an X2, get a GeForce GTX 260. If you want something that packs a bit more punch though, and you're willing to spend a few extra dollars, get yourself the GeForce GTX 260 Sonic edition.

While on the topic of the 216 shaders, this is an extremely important part to look for, otherwise you could well end up with a video card based on the original 65nm design with 192 stream processors. Now as we have just mentioned, the Palit GeForce GTX 260 Sonic is a great card, there's not really anything wrong with it and while the bundle might not include a full version game, it's one of the cheaper overclocked GeForce GTX 260's on the market which is a more important feature.