Unlike motherboards, where manufacturers have the options to add features and components to differentiate one board from another, while graphics boards often are manufactured with the same design specifications. And in order to stand out in the sea of vendors, manufacturers often resort to aftermarket coolers to provide better cooling. In addition, they will sell boards with higher clock speeds than the reference, or bundle it with different accessories and games. They may also just provide different warranty options, such as lifetime or a double lifetime warranty. Thus, choosing a GeForce GTX 260 card from one manufacturer that sells at $40 more than another often means that you are getting more gear. - Bjorn3D

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 Super OverClock Preview

Now every single GPU in the Super Overclock series is manufactured with cherry picked GPU's that Gigabyte calls GPU gauntlet sorting. This GPU went through extensive testing of the GPU core engine, shader and memory. If a GPU passed, it then will be tested for the maximum overclocking ability. The Super Overclock is not all about highest clock speed, but rather balanced performance and power consumption. The card was tested to achieve a high overclocking frequency yet keeping the thermal envelope within an acceptable range. And Gigabyte's first Super Overclock series cards will be the mainstream GeForce GTX 260 series.

Gigabyte uses the reference heatsink to keep their graphics board cool. These GeForce GTX 260's generally do not get too hot and our benchmarks have shown that the reference heatsink and fan design does pretty well keeping the board running cool and the noise level down. With the added benefit of 2oz of copper and better power efficiency, it should be expected that the card should run cooler than a reference card, so there is no need for aftermarket cooling. It is actually quite refreshing to see blue PCB while we do not often see such a color. Though some people may prefer black color PCB, we like to see some choices.

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 Super Overclock just offers an average of around fifteen percent consistent performance gains in all of our benchmarks. At clock speed of 680MHz it is one of the highest factory overclocked GeForce GTX 260 we have seen. We experienced no issue whatsoever at this speed and the card sailed through every single game we threw at it. Although, Gigabyte claims that the graphics card consumes less power, our benchmarks shows that it actually consumes 30W more under load. Its temperature is also not significantly cooler due to the use of the NVIDIA factory heatsink and cooler.

And what is nice about the Super Overclock version, is that it is able to offer the performance gain without incurring much additional cost. The board is currently selling at Newegg for about $199. Although, it is $25 more than other GeForce GTX 260 we think it is a very good investment as its performance clearly warrants that extra. The card actually is capable of competing against the GeForce TX 275 that is selling at $50 more. We think this is one of the best cards in its price bracket and we would not be hesitant to recommend this card to anyone who is looking for a card at sub-$200 mark.