NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216: Competition for the 4870
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on September 16, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
EVGA's GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked
In North America there are only two vendors launching a Core 216 today: EVGA and BFG. We're not sure what this will mean for street pricing and availability but it is what it is.
EVGA sent us one of their Core 216 cards, the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked. As the name implies, the Superclocked version will ship overclocked:
| GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 (stock) | EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked | |
| Core Clock | 576MHz | 626MHz |
| Shader Clock | 1242MHz | 1350MHz |
| Memory Clock | 999MHz | 1053MHz |
| Price Point | $279 | $299 |
The factory overclocked nature of the card means that EVGA will charge a bit more for it, $299 to be specific. For this comparison we've tested the Core 216 at its stock clock speed, but the chart below shows the sort of performance advantage EVGA's overclock gives it:
We're looking at a 7% increase in performance here for an extra $20. Chances are that you'll be able to pull off something close to this overclock on your own so we'd recommend sticking with a stock card especially given how close the Core 216 vs. 4870 is, as you'll soon see.
The Test
| Test Setup | |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 @ 3.20GHz |
| Motherboard | EVGA nForce 790i SLI |
| Video Cards | ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 ATI Radeon HD 4870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 |
| Video Drivers | Catalyst 8.7 ForceWare 177.34 |
| Hard Drive | Seagate 7200.9 120GB 8MB 7200RPM |
| RAM | 4 x 1GB Corsair DDR3-1333 7-7-7-20 |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1 |
| PSU | PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 1200W |
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AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, September 17, 2008 - link
> 2560X1600 (which I may ask why? since these are not high-end parts?!?)Uhh yeah they are...the 216 is only the second-fastest card in the world. Plus, that ultra high resolution can help expose things like memory size, memory bandwidth, and less CPU influence.
helldrell666 - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link
The new 216gtx is obviously slower than the 4870.It loses against the 4870 in 4 out 0f 6 games at 2560 res. and 5 out of 6 games at 1920 res.At 2560 res. they should've used the 4870 with 1 GB version.
AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, September 20, 2008 - link
Looking at all the bar graphs in this review, the 216 beats the 4870 6 out of 10 times.strikeback03 - Wednesday, September 17, 2008 - link
Because the difference between 96.8 and 111.2 is rather irrelevant? Both cards can rock those resolutions, so the difference might lise elsewhere in the test systems. Since they aren't reporting minimum frame rates, both of the above are well into the playable range.7Enigma - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link
Not to me it isn't. Those numbers today can be 1/2 tomorrow with the latest game. I'd love to see the % of people purchasing these cards with a monitor capable of the highest resolution benchmarked. I think 1% is a safe bet. That 1% benefits from the game summary while the remaining 99% of potential buyers with lower res monitors that fail to read the broken-line graph and instead just read the game summary are given bad/incomplete information.Trust me, I'm not saying Anand is conspiring to put the Nvidia card in a better light, just that the summary as it stands is very misleading.
Jedi2155 - Wednesday, September 17, 2008 - link
Or maybe it is the lack of memory in the frame buffer for the 4870 that prevents it from scaling its performance all the way to 2560.I believe it is a very important fact that the 4870 is faster at the lower resolutions than the Core 216, this omission shows a lack of attention to detail on the summary :-/.
Jedi2155 - Wednesday, September 17, 2008 - link
Or maybe it is the lack of memory in the frame buffer for the 4870 that prevents it from scaling its performance all the way to 2560.I believe it is a very important fact that the 4870 is faster at the lower resolutions than the Core 216, this omission shows a lack of attention to detail on the summary :-/.
Stupido - Wednesday, September 17, 2008 - link
Few days ago I got my new 24'' monitor... So I'm curious and would like to know your opinion:Currently I own Asus 8800GTS 512 but want to move to Sapphire HD4780 1G... Is it worth doing so?
P.S.
I have Vista machine and mainly (90% of the time) is for gaming (TF2, COD4 & Crysis. But planning to buy FarCry2 and Crysis Warhead?)... It is a Q6600@2.4GHz (planning to OC) on Gigabyte P35-DS3R with 4GB DDR2-800.
AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, September 17, 2008 - link
GT200 gives very poor performance! It has double the transistors of the previous generation for marginal gains. The GX2, with the same total transistors as GT200, blows it away.Since the Geforce 256, every new series has basically doubled performance, but this trend stopped from 8 to 9, and again 9 to GT200. The 8800 GTX is nearly 2 years old, and is still in the same league.
CollectorZ - Wednesday, September 17, 2008 - link
Perhaps if Nvidia spent a little less money on marketing defective 280s and got on with the 55nm parts....Post exam October 25 would be a nice time to replace my 8800GT....