Gigabyte's GTX 260 Super Overclock: A GTX 275 on the Cheap?
by Ryan Smith on October 11, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
If you want to differentiate yourself in the crowded and competitive video card market, you have two ways to do it. One way is to offer a card with a non-stock design, using things such as different coolers or a new PCB design. The other way is to build a card that you can overclock the hell out of. Today we’re looking at an interesting card from Gigabyte that takes a little from column A, and a whole lot from Column B: The GTX 260 Super Overclock
Gigabyte sells no less than three overclocked GTX 260s right now, which means they’re binning chips to assign them to the appropriate product line. Gigabyte’s formal name for this process is called “GPU Gauntlet Sorting”, which is composed of testing them with FurMark and 3DMark at various speeds, and examining their power characteristics to make sure that they aren’t going to start a small fire while in use. From the results of their binning process, they can assign chips to specific cards based on how they perform.
| GTX 285 | GTX 275 | Gigabyte GTX 260 SO | GTX 260 Core 216 | |
| Stream Processors | 240 | 240 | 216 | 216 |
| Texture Address / Filtering | 80 / 80 | 80 / 80 | 72/72 | 72/72 |
| ROPs | 32 | 28 | 28 | 28 |
| Core Clock | 648MHz | 633MHz | 680MHz | 576MHz |
| Shader Clock | 1476MHz | 1404MHz | 1500MHz | 1242MHz |
| Memory Clock | 1242MHz | 1134MHz | 1250MHz | 999MHz |
| Memory Bus Width | 512-bit | 448-bit | 448-bit | 448-bit |
| Frame Buffer | 1GB | 896MB | 896MB | 896MB |
| Transistor Count | 1.4B | 1.4B | 1.4B | 1.4B |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 55nm | TSMC 55nm | TSMC 55nm | TSMC 55nm |
| Price Point | $320 | $210 | $199 | $160-$199 |
From the very best of Gigabyte’s chips, you get the GTX 260 Super Overclock, the cream of the crop of their GTX 260 lineup. It comes in at 680MHz/1500MHz/2500MHz, giving it an 18% core overclock, a 21% shader overclock, and a 25% memory overclock as compared to a stock GTX 260 Core 216. And just to give you an idea of how aggressive Gigabyte is here, we’re pretty sure that makes it the fastest overclocked GTX 260 as sold by anyone, period.
What’s the significance of being so fast, you may ask? It’s what you end up beating when you overclock a GTX 260 to that degree. Above the GTX 260 in NVIDIA’s pecking order is the GTX 275, which averages around 15%-20% better performance than the GTX 260. With a GTX 260 so heavily overclocked, you can meet (and sometimes beat) a GTX 275, which is what we’ll see today with the GTX 260 Super Overclock.
And what’s the significance of being able to catch a GTX 275 with an overclocked GTX 260? Pricing. Gigabyte can build the GTX 260 Super Overclock for less than anyone can build a GTX 275 (or at least is willing to sell them for), which means that this GTX 260 that wants to be a GTX 275 sells for less than any GTX 275 we can get our hands on today, if only marginally. Gigabyte has put an MSRP of $199 on it, which is $10 less than the cheapest GTX 275 as of today.
Of course this makes it a very expensive GTX 260, but one that is priced appropriately, at least compared to other NVIDIA cards. Compared to AMD’s recent offerings however, $199 is an odd place to be. But we’ll get to that in due time.
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palladium - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Just wondering, with HAWX, is DX10.1 enabled for ATI cards?Ryan Smith - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
No.Nfarce - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
I just ask because I bought a stock EVGA 275 and have it overclocked quite nicely, which puts it above the performance of this o/c 260. Even AT posted about the 275's performance capabilities in an article back on June 4. You aren't really comparing apples to apples here other than one being purchased factory overclocked and others being purchased factory stock. No serious gamer ever keeps a video card stock just like a CPU.Ryan Smith - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Absolutely. User overclocking is by no means guaranteed, whereas factory overclocking is as good as anything else sold.As I stated in the article this card is a poor choice if you intend to do any overclocking on your own, but if you're the kind of person that does not do any overclocking (and I do know "serious gamers" that don't touch their card's clocks) then this is just as good as a GTX 275.
Abhilash - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
It is not worth the 25% premium over a stock gtx260.Where is the power consumption results???
Ryan Smith - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
My Kill A Watt decided to kill itself during some testing this weekend. There wasn't time to get it replaced and run new tests while still meeting all of the article deadlines this week. It'll be back soon™.SirKronan - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
That's what I was wondering from the first page of the review: "Ok, so it performs like a 275, but how much power does it consume to do the same amount of work?" The title and conclusion indicate the performance is there for $10 to $20 less, but I kept looking on the review pages for the only thing I really wanted to know: "How do they differ on power?"I am typically one who praises Anand's articles, but I wouldn't have even published this without at least some kind of power figures. I understand that your Killawatt got "killed" (er... died, heh), but at least give us figures from a UPS that has a wattage meter built in. What was the difference in overall power consumption? That would at least give us an idea of how much extra power the 260 OC'd is going to use versus a 275. If you game enough, the power savings might even nearly negate the extra $10 you save over 2 or 3 years, depending on where you live.
Finally - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Thanks for pointing this out. I was about to ask that.I guess that is the card's weak spot that would stand in the way of a "recommendation"...
Under the rug, under the rug...
7Enigma - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Ryan did mention in the comments above that his Kill-A-Watt died during testing so that would explain why the info is not there.What should have been mentioned (I may have missed it) in the article was this explaination. No where did I find it, and like most of us my first thought was, OK but how much more power is this thing using, as that makes a big difference in my personal buying decisions (and why the 5850 is so darn likable across the board).
Stas - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
As noted, 4890 is $20 cheaper than this Gigabyte card. Performance almost equal. But don't forget that you can easily get extra 100-150Mhz on the 4890 GPU with stock cooling, and 100-200 on memory. Which would make it 5-10% faster. So now we have a card (HD4890) that's cheaper ($20) AND faster than Gigabyte GTX260 O/C. I think it's a no brainer. Of course, Gigabyte did a great job with this card (I love Gigabyte), but you can only compete so well, when the limitation is set by the chip's architecture. Out of all GTX260 cards, this one is probably the best. But it isn't the best value or performance when compared to HD4890.P.S. Even with both cards at stock, in games where GTX260 prevails, it only does so by 10% or so. Wherever the HD4890 comes atop, it beats the other by up to 30%.