Cover HolidayM.indd

W

hen Nvidia unveiled its G200 GPU,

we were immediately drawn to

the shiny, speedy GeForce GTX

280. Why wouldn’t we be? With high core
     and memory clocks and 240 stream proces-
     sors to churn through the toughest shaders,
     it was sexy and fast. We were less excited
     about the 260, which sported 192 stream
     processors and slower clocks speeds but
     cost about $100 less than the 280 (at the
     time). Since then, ATI has released its R700-
     based Radeon 4870, which outperforms the
     original 260 but costs the same amount.

And that’s where the Core 216 edition of

the 260 GTX comes in. With the same stock

clock speeds but 24 more shader processors

than the original, the new version of the

260 GTX delivers comparable performance

to the 4870 at a similar price. The speeds

and feeds are about the same as the original

260’s, although EVGA clocked this card’s

core at 626MHz (up from 576MHz stock)

and includes 896MB of GDDR3 running on a

448-bit bus at 1053MHz (stock is 999MHz).

Aside from the additional shader

processors, the Core 216 version of the GTX

260 is identical to the

original. The card

features all the video

decoding and playback

power of the GTX 280,

including hardware-

accelerated H.264

decoding to accelerate

Blu-ray playback.

Performance was

about what we

expected; the

card delivered scores that were slower than a

GeForce GTX 280’s but slightly faster than

the 4870’s in shader-intensive games such

as Crysis. We’re seeing significantly better

performance with both Nvidia and ATI

cards after recent driver releases, so

we’ve rebenchmarked both the 4870 and

GeForce GTX 280 to maintain an even

playing field.

We’ve seen this card for less than $300

online already, which puts it firmly in the

midrange category. You can find 512MB

Radeon 4870 HDs, which are slightly

faster, for less money online, but the GTX

260’s extra memory will likely help the

card do better than the 512MB Radeons

with games released in coming years. Of

course, the 1GB 4870 boards are avail-

able for about $300, but unfortunately, we

don’t have one in the Lab for comparison.

- W I L L S M I T H

IN THE LAB^

REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

EVGA GeForce GTX 260

Core 216 Superclocked

A midrange G200-based card that delivers

80 | MAXIMUMPC | HOLIDAY 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com

+ -

VERDICT

$370, http://www.evga.com

9

Good performance for a

midrange card, especially

in shader-heavy apps.

Less memory

bandwidth than

the 4870.

WAX PAPER

EVGA GEFORCE GTX 260 CORE 216

CLING WRAP

Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 260 Core

216 board fi nally gives the Radeon

4870 HD some competition.

GeForce GTX

260 Core 216 Radeon 4870 HD GeForce GTX 280

Crysis (4xAA/aniso) (fps) 15.1 13.9 17.4

Crysis (no AA/aniso) (fps) 20.4 20.5 20.8

Call of Duty 4 (fps) 57.4 52.7 68.3

Unreal Tournament 3 (fps) 83.1 72.5 124.0

Grid (fps) 40.5 30.0 46.0

3DMark Vantage Game 1 (fps) 14.2 12.2 17.6

3DMark Vantage Game 2 (fps) 10.7 9.6 12.1

Best scores are bolded. All benchmarks run on a Core 2 Quad Q9770 Extreme with 4GB of memory running Vista Home Premium. Crysis and 3DMark are run at 1920x1200, all other benchmarks are run at 2560x1600.

BENCHMARKS