When NVIDIA announced the release of the GeForce GTS 250 series of graphics cards, quite a buzz was created. Now it wasn't because it offered unprecedented performance features, a whole new level of gaming realism or anything else that might be considered truly buzz worthy. The chatter was all about this being just a refined version of a graphics chipset that had already been reborn and that had seen numerous variations since its inception in the GeForce 8800 series. At this point even these GeForce GTS 250 have lost their new car smell, but it remains popular due to their balance of price to performance, and because simply many manufacturers continue to offer new versions with tweaks or extras. - BigBruin

ASUS Extreme GTS 250 1GB Graphics Board Preview

Now this specific model from ASUS we are looking at is their Extreme GTS 250 Dark Knight graphics board. One of their more obvious changes to the reference design comes thanks to the unique cooler that uses four heatpipes to draw heat away from the GPU chipset. This ASUS GeForce GTS 250 graphics card is sold in an vibrant box. On the front of the box you see the Dark Knight himself riding alongside printed details on some of the features, including the enthusiastic four heatpipes. On the back of their box you get much more information on the card's features, specifications and recommended system requirements.

The unique heatpipe cooler is the most interesting physical feature and definitely the item that first caught our attention. The large array of silvery fins and the four heatpipes looks like quite an aggressive approach to the thermal management. Because the cooling fins are kept so close to the PCB and the low profile fan is nestled into a valley at the center, the whole thing can still be kept to a dual slot solution. The ASUS Extreme GTS 250 Dark Knight version looks and stays cool even under a heavy load. The heatsink is unique and not only gives it a different look, but also makes it appealing in situations where low noise is a real must.

But performance wise, we were a bit surprised to see that a previous generation GeForce 9800 GTX+ version was able to consistently outperform these GeForce GTS 250's. Just a look around the web we found this card on sale at a variety of popular online retailers. And Newegg offers it for around $149 with free shipping. Compared to other 1GB strong GeForce GTS 250 cards it is on the higher side of the price range, but of more interest to us is how it compares with that GeForce 9800 GTX+ version. Looking around again we see it at $119 without any rebates, and as such it appears to be the better deal seeing the performance.

While checking out all of the other GeForce GTS 250 cards, we also noticed that most have memory set to run at 2200MHz, while the Dark Knight's memory runs at only 2000MHz. While we doubt the extra 200MHz would have helped it do all that much better in testing, extra speed couldn't hurt. Although the extreme low noise of this Dark Knight version is certainly a great feature and selling point.