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Published in Reviews

EVGA GTX 260 at 666MHz 'For The Win'

by on10 July 2008

Index


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Review: Breathing down GTX 280’s neck

 

GT200 GPU core is the basis for two of Nvidia’s latest graphics offerings. The full version of GT200 is used on GTX 280, whereas the crippled version of GT200 serves as a backbone to GTX 260 cards. GTX 280 packs all the hardware treats, whereas the GTX 260 has one ROP channel and two Shader clusters less. Each shader cluster features three shading multiprocessors, each packing 8 stream processors (SP), totaling to 24 SPs per cluster. That tells us that GTX 260 is left with 192 stream processors, but it’s still more than G80 8800 GTX (128 SP) or G92 9800 GTX (128 SP) cards have to offer. Of course, all this means less performance, but the price is also set accordingly and is significantly cheaper than GTX 280.

Our today’s guest is an overclocked EVGA GTX 260 card running at 666MHz. Three sixes are here to win, and the card bears the name FTW – “For The Win”. You’ll see that EVGA GTX 260 FTW card is very fast, thanks to its overclocked core, and it’s closer to GTX 280 results than reference GTX 260 running at reference 576MHz. The shaders on EVGA’s card run at 1404MHz and the memory at 1107MHz.

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Nvidia has built quite a large chip, and GT200 features 1400 million transistors in a 65nm process. Most of the new transistors are used to improve GPU’s computing capabilities, but some were used for, among other tasks, CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture). Compared to the last generation GT200 brings us more threads, stream processors, better shading and texturing and more memory and memory bandwidth. Video engine is left unchanged – VP2 is integrated in the core, just like we’ve seen on G92. That ensures some nice HD video processing, and we can get HDMI through any of the two DVIs with HDCP.

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GTX 260’s clock speed is almost identical to 8800 GTX’s. We often compare it to 8800 GTX, in terms of 8800 GTX (G80) revolutionizing the way we look at graphics card performance. However GT200 is a chip with double the number of transistors and a juiced up setup we’ve seen on G80 – so we’re expecting some serious improvement. Still, the performance increase is not 100%, although it will be in certain cases. While 8800 GTX runs at 575MHz, GTX 260 runs only 1MHz faster. Stream processors on the old 8800 GTX run faster, but GTX 260 has 192 SP running at 1242MHz.

The next photo shows 600mm2 large GT200 dominating EVGA's GTX 260 card

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Talking about memory, we once again see a strange configuration and GTX 260 packs 896MB of GDDR3 memory. Memory interface is 448bit compared to 512bit on GTX 280. This number is a direct result of GTX 260 having one ROP partition less. Each of the GTX 280’s eight ROP partitions is connected to 64-bit memory controller, so we get 512bit memory interface. Knowing that GTX 260 features 7 ROP units, it totals to 448bit memory interface. Each memory controller houses two memory chips, meaning GTX 260 needs 14 chips for its 896MB of memory.

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896MB of memory is simply done by leaving out two memory chips, one on the back and one on the front of the PCB. The card is nicely wrapped and we had to carefully take the back cover off in order to show you the PCB. The cooler is dual slot and identical to those found on GTX 280 cards. It’s made of plastics, metal, aluminum and copper alloy. The back cover is made of metal and it leans on the memory, cooling it in the process. Although the core temperature is cooler on this card (78°C) than on GTX 280 (80°C), we could easily hear the fan running when the card was under a workload, but it wasn’t too loud. In idle mode it ran silent.

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Both the front and the back of the card are painted in EVGA’s colors. This angle shows the power connectors; next to them is the audio in, whereas the other side hides SLI connectors.

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Powering the card is done through two 6pin power connectors, whereas GTX 280 requires one 6pin and one 8pin. The card’s consumption will max out at 182W. However, this is the worst case scenario, because (with an appropriate chipset) HybridPower will power down the card and leave less-demanding tasks to be handled by the IGP. Furthermore, GT200 can turn specific parts of the chip on and off when they’re not needed and can dynamically regulate voltages and frequencies.

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For those who want more than just one GTX 260 cards – this card is Tri SLI capable. For that, we have two SLI connectors that you can leave hidden until it’s their time to shine.

Nvidia’s marketing is selling GTX 200 as a multifunctional architecture locked and loaded for more than just gaming. We see them increasingly use the phrase “beyond gaming”, and it means we can use this card for other tasks besides gaming. That’s mostly thanks to Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). Using CUDA, we communicate with the GPU that feeds back the processed data. One of the functions we haven’t yet tested is this card’s PhysX functionality, but we’ll get into that when we see some games with nicely implemented physics on the GPU.

EVGA GTX 260 FTW comes in the box that clearly states how this is the champ of GTX 260 cards. This time it appears they’re right, because For The Win GTX 260 is, as far as we’ve seen, the fastest GTX 260 on the market.

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Testbed:

Motherboard:
EVGA 680i SLI (Provided by EVGA)

Processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo 6800 Extreme edition (Provided by Intel)

Memory:
OCZ FlexXLC PC2 9200 5-5-5-18  (Provided by OCZ)
        during testing CL5-5-5-15-CR2T 1066MHz at 2.2V

PSU:
OCZ Silencer 750 Quad Black (Provided by OCZ)

Hard disk:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATA (Provided by Seagate)

CPU-Cooler:
Freezer 7 Pro (Provided by Artic Cooling)

Case Fans:
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 12 PWM
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 8 PWM

Vista 32 SP1

Futuremark

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3DMark Vantage shows greater performance difference than Mark06. XFX 670M XXX beats Gainward’s reference card by just 6% and easily outperforms HD 4870 by 28%. Mark06 shows only 4% difference between the fastest GTX 280 and Sapphire HD 4870.

EVGA did well with its GTX 260 FTW card running at 666MHz. In Mark06 it even outperformed GTX 280, but it lost in Vantage by 6%. It beat the reference GTX 260 by 10%, and you’ll see this 10% better result in all the games. The battle between reference GTX 260 and Sapphire HD 4870 is inconclusive and the results are very close.

Gaming

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Sapphire HD 4870 simply blew it in Company of Heroes and couldn’t beat Nvidia GTX 260. With their overclocked GTX 280, XFX managed to score almost 100% better at 1280x1024 4xAA and 8xAF. Gainward’s reference GTX 280 managed to beat HD 4870 by 90%.

EVGA jumped in with their overclocked GTX 260 card ran 10% better than reference GTX 260 and kept this result until we reached 2048x1536 4xAA 8xAF. Here, EVGA showed that the overclocked core packs significantly more power and beats it by 20%. The same resolution shows HD 4870 running 30% slower.

In Company of Heroes, EVGA GTX 260 FTW scores closer to reference GTX 280 than GTX 260. Geforce 8800 GTX ran nicely but it just can’t cope with the highest tested resolutions. That is a clear indicator that newer cards simply have better technology.

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Call of Juarez restores HD 4870’s good name and it holds well versus reference GT280. It even managed to beat it by up to 12%, but it ran on par with XFX 670M. XFX 670M runs up to 11% faster than reference GTX 280.

EVGA GTX 260 FTW follows Gainward’s GTX 280 closely, but it didn’t manage to win against HD 4870. It handled reference GTX 260 nicely so we again see the advantage of about 11%.

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Crysis put all the games through their paces, so at 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF we see enough frames for gaming, but barely anything to brag about. XFX 670M XXX ran the fastest and scored 35fps. It outperformed HD 4870 by 29%, and EVGA GTX 260 FTW by 20%. On the same resolution, EVGA scored a playable framerate whereas we couldn’t say the same for the reference GTX 260. EVGA again outperformed the reference GTX 260 by 11% and HD 4870 by 7%.

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The higher the resolution went in F.E.A.R., the more HD 4870 and 8800 GTX lost their breath, so Gainward GTX 280 emerged a winner with a 24% better result than HD 4870. XFX tops that and we see no less than 108 fps at 2048x1536 4xAA 8xAF. That’s 11% better than Gainward and 38% better than HD 4870.


At first two resolutions, RVGA beats GTX 280, but although it’s slower, at other resolutions it lost to GTX 280 by only 4%. It outperformed the reference GTX 260 by 10%-14%, and the HD 4870 by up to 19%.

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Much like the previous game, the highest tested resolution sees GTX 280 winning the test. This time Gainward beats Radeon HD 4870 by about 23%, whereas XFX topped that and beat it by about 29%. Like many times before, XFX GTX 280 670M XXX shows that overclocking brings significant performance increase, but this time it beats reference Gainward GTX 280 by 5%.

Overclocking did well for GTX 260 too, and EVGA decided to overclock it to 666MHz. All the test show 10% better performance compared to reference GTX 260 card running at 576MHz. 8800 GTX is no longer a feared adversary, but it still scores nicely.

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At 16x12 sa AA i AF, GTX 280 scores 24% better than HD 4870, but at 2048x1536 that number sinks to 13%. XFX GTX 280 670M shows it’s the performance king on higher resolutions so it beats Gainward by almost 12% and Radeon HD 4870 by almost 27%.

EVGA did well and outperformed HD 4870 car, but it wasn’t much slower than GTX 280. It beat the reference GTX 260 by 12%, and we see the same happening in World in Conflict.

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Conclusion

EVGA did a great job overclocking the GTX 260 card. They named it FTW (For The Win) and clocked it to relatively high 666MHz. Shaders on this card run at 1404MHz and the memory at 1107MHz.

We’ve seen that in average, this card scores 10% better than reference cards. EVGA GTX 260 FTW is a GT200 based card with 192 stram processors and 896MB of GDDR3 memory, which makes it one of the best cards on the market. GTX 280 is, of course, better, but it will also set you back €100 extra, whereas EVGA’s overclocked GTX 260 FTW performs close to reference GTX 280.

If you want to treat yourself to some GT200 goodness, and can’t afford GTX 280, EVGA GTX 260 FTW is a great choice and certainly the fastest GTX 260 card on the market.


Last modified on 10 July 2008
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