Microsoft's Xbox 360 runs on an custom ATI graphics chipset that's based on the Radeon X1800 series and Sony's PlayStation 3 has an NVIDIA based chip that's essentially a GeForce 7800 from some years ago. Meanwhile these GPU's from NVIDIA for the PC have had two full generations of graphics re-architecturing, the first in the form of the G80 architecture that powers the GeForce 8800 series and the second in one of it's latest chips, the massive GT200 chipset. And the same does count for ATI really which has also evolved with their technology. Now this means that these current computers can be equipped with some serious power. Who ever said PC gamers didn't have it better than console gamers? - PCStats

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 Core216 Graphics Review

This brings us to the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 graphics card which is based on the GT200 chipset, being the flagship PCI Express board having 216 shader processors that can work as vertex or pixel shading pipelines. Best of all, Gigabyte have pre-overclocked their GeForce GTX 260 from the default 578MHz clock speed to 630MHz, and bumped up the shader clock to 1356MHz. And the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 video card also boasts an healthy 896MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 1998MHz, running on a 448-bit wide interface. This GeForce GTX 260 is a rather big chip, though built on a reduced 55nm process.

Now there is a lot to love about the GT200 architecture designed by NVIDIA. And as we discovered with the Sparkle GeForce GTX 260 previously, these versions have consistently delivered solid performance in pretty much every benchmark. Gigabyte has taken this just a step further with their GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 edition, by factory overclocking the GPU and shaders. This has actually pushed the performance of this GeForce GTX 260 even closer to that of the Radeon HD 4890, even exceeding it in certain benchmarks. And of course, we didn't settle for just factory settings and cranked the core speed up to 704MHz.

While there wasn't any official benchmarking done at these speeds, the Gigabyte was definitely a force to be reckoned with. Even with its factory overclocks, these Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 graphics boards actually drew less power under load than the stock clocked GeForce GTX 260 version. It's heat and noise levels also stayed impressively low during testing, while only ramping up to their maximums during boot-up. If you are still clunking through the latest game titles on an old beater, then maybe it's time for you to consider an upgrade just like the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 accelerator.