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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Jamahl - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
It must be difficult to review fairly right now but this was a nice review.I do feel that the overall recommendation should be towards the 5850 more strongly. Yes it is priced a little higher, yes it is "only" 25% faster and 30% more costly, but the additional features double that 25% faster and we all know this.
I suspect the 5850 is going to increase the gap as time goes on, and I believe most of us will agree with that too.
A more forceful point on the pricing of this card (the 260 being reviewed) would have been another alternative. Overall it was a decent and interesting review.
DC 10 - Saturday, December 26, 2009 - link
This Review was a long time in the coming!!!Yet this review seems to almost seems to have a chip on it's shoulder - when it is clearly seen to be just as good card as a GTX275-280 - I got the impression that it was regrettable that this card was too good - kinda silly to me
I have the MSI GTX260 OCv3 and It's OC'd to 690 on the core / 1436 shader / and 1200 mem clock- It pretty much comes close to a GTX280 -
Anything in the GTX275-280 range this card or MY MSI Card which is the same as this card, but with Better Cooling (not factory cooling) should be considered easily.
FYI - MSI did a great job by going with a Non traditional cooling setup for their OCV3 cards - especially SLI or Tri-SLI - This card reviewed and my MSI card simply reveal what is at stake here - Pricing and Marketing...
The review showed what most of us already knew who own these cards - That NVidia could slash prices the way AMD has done - instead of being uppidy knuckle-heads...
It's good to see Anandtech - review something like this - could not deny what these cards cand do price/performance wise - hard to ignore...
yacoub - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
I dunno, the 5770 is shaping up nicely for a $160 card:http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33953...">http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33953...
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1458978">http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1458978
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15876/1/">http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15876/1/
palladium - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Hmm... wonder how SiliconDoc would reply to this.The0ne - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Why would you even care? O.oteohhanhui - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
He's got an appointment with the psychiatrist.sparkuss - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
Is there something I should read into this difference in the charts?I'm probably going to update to 5850/5870 before a full box upgrade and I'm following all the reviews I can find.
Ryan Smith - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
The 5850 data has been added. We pruned some old data to keep the charts smaller, and I pruned a little too much there.As for the 5870; Anand and I have matching rigs, but it's not possible to replicate thermal/noise characteristics. He did the noise/thermal testing for the 5800 series articles, while I did this one. As a result new data based on the cards I have was collected, and at the moment I don't have a 5870.
sparkuss - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
Thanks,Just wanted to be sure I didn't miss something in the text.