EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked
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CNET Editors' Review
The good: The EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked is the most power-efficient card in its category; $40 less than its primary competition.
The bad: Slowest performance among its peers.
The bottom line: We don't think most gamers shopping for a midrange 3D card are looking for power efficiency, but for those conscientious few, the EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked is the card for you. Otherwise, you can get noticeably more performance and capability from an only slightly more expensive ATI card.
If you analyze the various components in the name "EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked," you can actually learn a bit about its provenance. At its core you'll find the GeForce GTX 260, an Nvidia 3D chip design released in June of 2008. "Core 216" refers to the fact that this is the second issue of this chip, with 216 processing cores, compared with 192 in the original. That it is "Superclocked" means that EVGA has tweaked this $260 card's clock speed to eke out more performance. Despite all of that speed boosting, we found this card ... Expand full review
If you analyze the various components in the name "EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked," you can actually learn a bit about its provenance. At its core you'll find the GeForce GTX 260, an Nvidia 3D chip design released in June of 2008. "Core 216" refers to the fact that this is the second issue of this chip, with 216 processing cores, compared with 192 in the original. That it is "Superclocked" means that EVGA has tweaked this $260 card's clock speed to eke out more performance. Despite all of that speed boosting, we found this card is actually very power efficient. Unfortunately, efficiency in 3D cards doesn't typically translate to speed, and if you spend just a little bit more you'll find a significantly faster graphics card powered by ATI.
| EVGA Geforce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked | Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 | |
| Price | $259 | $299 |
| Manufacturing process | 55nm | 55nm |
| Core clock | 576MHz | 625MHz (2) |
| Stream processors | 216 | 800 (2) |
| Stream processor clock | 1242 MHz | NA |
| Memory | 898MB | 2GB |
| Memory speed | 1GHz DDR3 | 933MHz DDR3 |
Like most cards in this price range, the EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked (chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo), is a double-wide card that connects directly to your PC's power supply, in this case via two six-pin PCI Express power connectors. Unlike the competing midrange card from ATI, Radeon HD 4850 X2, this EVGA card has only a single 3D chip. The only Nvidia dual-chip card is the very high-end GeForce GTX 295. We love that card in its price category, but it's certainly not the most affordable product out there, nor is it appropriate for those of you with smaller monitors. As you'll see in our charts, regardless of the number of GPUs onboard, the GTX 260 Core 216 isn't quite up to par with the other cards at or around this price.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 1,400x960 | 1,680x1,050 | 1,920x1,080 |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 1,440x900 | 1,680x1,050 | 1,920x1,200 |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 1,440 x 900 | 1,680 x 1,050 | 1,920 x 1,200 |
Rich Brown wrote his first review, of the CD-ROM game Voyeur, for "PC Magazine" in 1993. He parlayed that acclaim into his current role as a senior editor in charge of CNET's desktop, printer, and peripheral device reviews. He also writes about the occasional present-day game for CNET, despite their confounding lack of FMV.
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