Final Words and Conclusion

Geforce GTX 260

When two products launch on the same day the lower specification part often gets lost in the excitement of how good or bad the high end model is. The GTX 260 hopefully will not suffer this fate because it is actually a mighty impressive product.

On a PCB level this card shares all the components present on the GTX 280 and it even has the same cooling fan, therefore 260 owners will certainly feel they are not really missing out on anything compared to those with deeper wallets, well apart from enhanced clock speeds and performance obviously.

This lower performance really should not be seen as an issue though as our results show the GTX 260 outperforms both the Geforce 9800 GTX and the Radeon 3870 X2 in the majority of games.

Zotac Geforce GTX 280 AMP! Edition

When designing the GTX 200 series Nvidia set themselves a number of goals, these included performance twice the level of a 8800 GTX, improvements in power efficiency and creation of an architecture which is suited to future games which make use of complex shaders, high volumes of memory and various DirectX 10 technologies.

On the first goal of gaming performance it is clear that the GTX 280 is almost a complete success as there are a number of occasions when the performance of the card is significantly higher than the last generation models, World in Conflict and Assassins Creed being two prime examples.

Power use is also very low with idle use ranging from zero watts to twenty five watts. This of course keeps temperatures at a minimum with our reference sample sitting at forty two degrees Celsius when not in 3d gaming mode. At maximum output the GTX 280 uses 236 watts, higher than previous generation cards, but the overall temperature is still very low. Our review sample, despite being an overclocked model, never rose above seventy Celsius ... however these load and idle temperatures were achieved with 55% fan speed, approximately 950rpm. Forcing the fan into higher CFM would lower the temperatures even further.

While it is clear that gaming performance is exceptional we also should consider the flexibility of the GPU when considering the GTX 200 series. Although the various GPU computing initiatives are not quite ready for public consumption the limited experience we have had with each gives us great hope for the final software. Video transcoding for example creates a high quality output file very quickly but we are most looking forward to seeing what Nvidia can do with PhysX.

Similar to the GPU computing software, 3-Way SLI was not quite up and running in the press driver and there are a number of games which do not yet scale. Nvidia have informed us that an updated driver will be available soon which resolves this. What we can say today is that based on results such as Lost Planet Colonies and World in Conflict - 3-way GTX 280 SLI will be incredibly impressive, just as the standard SLI already is.

With the Geforce GTX 280 Nvidia have created a product which has unmatched performance in today’s games but more importantly it has huge potential for non gaming tasks. Time will tell if Nvidia and 3rd parties can make best use of this potential. When we consider that Zotac have taken this excellent reference product and factory overclocked it, as well as providing an excellent bundle it is impossible not to give this product, and the GTX 200 series as a whole the Driver Heaven Gold Award. Without a doubt the best graphics series available today.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 & Zotac GeForce GTX 280 AMP!