BFG GTX 260 OCX MAXCORE (216SP) 896MB Video Card Review

Temperature Testing & Acoustics

As usual, with higher clockspeeds comes an increase in temperature over stock values when the card is under load. This also results in this card having a slightly louder acoustical profile than the EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked but it is still quite quiet when compared to the likes of the GTX 280 and the ATI HD 4870 512MB. One thing that should be mentioned is that when the card is under load, the amount of heat coming out of its exhaust is staggering. This in turn will definitely have a significant impact on the ambient air temperature of your room.

Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption. Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.


It always amazes us how well all the cards in the GTX 200-series behave when they are idling and the MAXCORE is no different; the idle power consumption values are nothing short of stunning. On the other hand, when under load it will definitely suck a good amount of juice. If you are running this card with an overclocked quad core processor, we would recommend you look at investing in a good 700W power supply.